Physics Education Research

Research in Physics Education seeks to find answers to complex questions:

• What is the nature of student understanding (or misunderstanding) of a particular physics topic?
• How to measure student understanding?
• How does understanding evolve with time?
• What role do general cognitive mechanisms play?
• What is the most effective way to teach a particular topic?
• Why are some teaching methods better than others?
• How do you implement instructional methods on a large scale?

Current Work

We are currently working on two main projects. Any students interested in teaching or learning are welcome to join the group.

Project One

One of our projects is assessing aspects of student control of variables reasoning with data presented in graphical and non-graphical ways.

Project Two

We are also studying student learning within the 207 Energy and Environment course. We mostly collect data in two ways:

1. Student interviews- ask a mostly pre-designed set of questions and listen to student ideas on a topic then record notes about their understanding.
2. Designing computer and paper tasks for the students and then analyzing the responses with statistical techniques.