It is an important means to measure the learning effect of students, educational data mining based on test results will help to understand the quality of course teaching. This studying takes the university physics course and teaching physics-experiment course as an example. Based on the three-parameter logical model in item response theory (IRT), the difficulty, discrimination and guessing coefficients of the three types of questions: multiple choices, fill-in-blanks and calculation, were calculated in different teaching classes. The analysis results showed that the guessing coefficients of fill-in-blanks could reflect the quality of class teaching effects. Our research shows that with either the box plot or the cluster analysis method, the guessing coefficients of filling-in-blanks can be used to detect the outlier classes. By the means of accurate teaching quality management, the overall quality of teaching will be improved.

Resource theory depicts resources as dynamic, context-dependent “pieces of knowledge,” and defines learning as building from students’ conceptual resources. Our team has developed research-based instructional materials meant to elicit and build on common conceptual resources for understanding circuits. We refer to these as ACORN Physics tutorials, for Attending to Conceptual Resources in Physics. We will use a classroom video example of students working through these resource-oriented instructional materials to explore how one group of students, using ideas about circuits that we characterize as conceptual resources, construct a model for what makes a lightbulb light.

In collaborative problem-solving activities, students communicate and develop their ideas through many modes, using external tools like whiteboards and laboratory instruments for modeling and experimentation. Paying attention to gesture is especially useful when investigating the nature of the students’ understanding of physics phenomena. We examined gestures performed by groups of 3-4 students solving problems about mechanical energy  from the Collaborative Learning through Active Sense-Making in Physics (CLASP) curriculum in an introductory, algebra-based undergraduate physics course. We show how students' gestures about physics phenomena incorporate both concrete and abstract forms of iconic representation. Concrete iconic gestures depict objects and actions that make up the physical system, like illustrating tossing a ball. Abstract iconic gestures depict disciplinary forms of representation such as coordinate systems. By blending these two types of representational gestures, students laminate layers of information together to support their collaborative problem-solving discussions. Becoming more aware of and making sense of how students use gesture for sense making can aid educators in assessing and building on students’ understanding of physics.

A major challenge with calculus-based physics 1 is the range of physics backgrounds. This level of preparation is strongly predictive of a students' performance and hence can amplify K–12 educational inequities. Here, we present a novel introductory course design to address this equity challenge. The design and implementation are based on the concept of deliberate practice as applied to learning real-world problem solving. The problems used in the course and their solutions have little resemblance to what students encounter in high school physics, thereby reducing the dependence of course performance on high school physics preparation.The students who took the course learned the physics content knowledge they needed for future courses, particularly in engineering, and their problem-solving skills improved substantially. Furthermore, their course performance had much less correlation with their incoming physics preparation than was the case for the outcomes from the traditional Physics 1 courses at both institutions: in one case the correlation dropped from r=0.62 to 0.14, and on the other case the correlation dropped from r=0.56 to 0.26. These findings suggest this course design can be a more equitable version of the traditional Physics 1 course, and hence particularly beneficial for marginalized students.

Over the years, I have included different games and activities to help students better understand physics.  Some of these focus on understanding a current topic or problem solving strategy while others have been used as a review tool, and still others have focused on looking at these concepts from a different perspective including pictures and language.  The goal of this poster is to highlight several of the activities I have implemented in the past year including one focused on saying the same word as your partner, another on using different words to allow a teammate to guess the clue word, and a third on using a single word to guess a range from low to high. 

In Fall 2019 the Rutgers - Newark physics department reformed all of their introductory physics courses using ISLE. We describe how we assess students’ skills in physics in weekly quizzes from the Fall 2022 semester on mechanics. Students took quizzes in class and had the opportunity to resubmit quizzes. This study presents data from students’ first quiz submission. Twelve skills were assessed during the semester, with most skills assessed twice and some up to four times. We present student work demonstrating different levels of proficiency and share overall trends in the development of these skills.

Prior research has shown that active learning can enhance students' academic performance in physics courses. However, very few studies have examined the effect of active learning on students' sense of belonging in physics classes. In this study, we analyzed data from an introductory physics course at a large public research university, taught independently by three instructors, one of whom employed research-based active learning strategies. Our analysis revealed a significant decrease in students' sense of belonging in traditionally taught classes, while students in the active learning class experienced a slight improvement in their sense of belonging. Moreover, we observed a significant gender difference in students’ sense of belonging in both active learning and traditional classes at the beginning of the course, which were closed by the end of the active learning class but not in the traditional classes. Additionally, the active learning class positively impacted students' academic performance, as measured by final exam and diagnostic test scores, with the effect partially mediated by sense of belonging. Our findings suggest that active learning classes with intentional efforts to create inclusive environments have the potential to enhance students' sense of belonging and academic performance.

Multimedia communication refers to more than one medium of communication. For example, if we consider a textbook, it has some text at minimum. It may also have pictures, graphs, tables of data, and so on.  In the modern era of digital technology, its span has widened to audio and video recordings and even interactive animations. We have been using interactive multimedia in teaching physics concepts in college physics courses. I will present student perceptions of such interactive multimedia in learning physics concepts.

Researchers have found that when students spend class time actively engaging with course material instead of passively listening to lectures, student understanding of the course material is improved. Process Oriented Guided Inquiry (POGIL) is an effective method of active learning, in which students work through guided inquiry materials in small groups, and which focuses on students communicating and explaining concepts to peers.  While many active learning methods have been developed for physics, POGIL activities have not been developed for calculus-based physics classes. In this poster, I present a few preliminary guided inquiry materials I developed and used for a calculus-based introductory electricity and magnetism class. I had 23 students in the class, with interests in engineering, chemistry, and physics.