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OSU Physics Education Research Group

Funding

Funding

Current Funding

Generative AI and Creativity in Computational Physics

This project aims to refine physics course materials and activities in response to the growth of generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI). This project intends to target the development of creativity among computational physics students at Oregon State University. By updating activities to engage students with gen-AI and carrying out interviews and observations with students in this environment, the project team seeks to generate knowledge about how students leverage gen-AI tools to develop their creativity and build proficiency as the computational scientists of tomorrow. These findings will be used to create guidelines for curriculum development with the goal of leveraging modern tools for doing science that utilize technological advancements in gen-AI. The project will also iteratively develop a suite of classroom activities to support students in using gen-AI to solve computational physics problems.

Personnel

  • Patti Hamerski
  • Pachi Her

Funding Sources

Past Funding

Paradigms in Physics

Funded work spanning 1997-2002 and 2003-2023.

The Paradigms in Physics Program at Oregon State University is an internationally renown restructuring of the traditional upper-division curriculum to be more modern, more flexible, and more inclusive.

We study how physics experts and learners reason about physics and math topics is advanced undergraduate physics courses. The results of this primarily qualitative research informs curriculum design at several grain sizes, from individual activities to entire sequences of courses.

Paradigms courses use active engagement and student-centered teaching strategies in an intensive 5-week structure. Members of the OSU physics department, both in and out of OSUPER, work collaborative to teach and develop these courses.

Personnel

Funding Sources

Raising Physics to the Surface

The Raising Physics to the Surface project is to create a set of hands-on, discovery-style, discussion-based classroom activities where students develop meaningful understandings of physical systems that depend on multiple variables.

Most physical systems depend on more than one variable. However, when solving problems about these systems, many students merely apply algebraic manipulations to memorized formulas. Students gain meaningful understandings by thinking conceptually and geometrically about the relationships between variables. During the Raising Physics activities, students develop these understandings by working with custom, dry-erasable, 3D surfaces, corresponding contour and gradient maps, and computer-based models. The activities span physics topics in classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and thermal physics.

The research components of this project will investigate the effectiveness of the activities and will advance understanding of how students reason about multivariable functions in physics using multiple representations.

Personnel

Funding Sources

Physics 111, Inquiring into Physical Phenomena (Integrating Physics and Literacy Instruction in a Physics Course for Prospective Elementary and Middle School Teachers)

Inquiring into Physical Phenomena is a course for prospective early childhood, elementary, and middle school teachers in which participants learn how to enhance literacy learning as they engage students in inquiries into physical phenomena. Emphasis is on questioning, predicting, exploring, and discussing what one thinks and why. The course meets in a laboratory for 2.5 hours, twice a week, for ten weeks.

Personnel

Funding Sources

The Vector Calculus Bridge Project

Project website.

There is a "vector calculus gap" between the way vector calculus is usually taught by mathematicians and the way it is used by other scientists. This material is essential for physicists and some engineers due to its central role in the description of electricity and magnetism. The goals of this long-term project to understand this gap and to develop curricular materials to help bridge it from both the mathematics and physics sides.

Personnel

Funding Sources

Workshop on the Status of the Upper-Division Physics Curriculum

In 2014, the Paradigms group hosted the Workshop on the Status of the Upper-Division Physics Curriculum. Roughly 50 participants were invited, representing faculty, curriculum developers, textbook authors, education researchers, and developers of assessment tools, as well as experts in professional development, adoption, connections with other disciplines, and representatives of both professional societies and funding agencies.

Personnel

Funding Sources

  • Can't find NSF award link
  • NSF DUE Grant No. 1256606 ($40,684)
  • AAPT workshop organizer grant ($2500)