Introductory Physics for Life Sciences: Preparing and Engaging Students through Authentic Interdisciplinary Connections

The lack of diversity and the under-performance of underrepresented students in STEM courses have been the focus of researchers in the last decade. In particular, many hypotheses have been put forth for the reasons for the under-representation and under-performance of women in physics. Here, we present a framework for helping all students learn in science courses that takes into account four factors: (1) the characteristics of instruction and learning tools, (2) student characteristics, (3) implementation of instruction and learning tools, and (4) the students’ environments. While there has been much research on factor 1 (characteristics of instruction and learning tools), there has been less focus on factor 2 (students’ characteristics, and in particular, motivational factors). Here, we focus on the baseline characteristics of introductory physics students obtained from survey data to inform factor 2 of the framework. A longitudinal analysis of students’ motivational characteristics in two-semester introductory physics courses was performed by administering pre- and post-surveys that evaluated students’ self-efficacy, grit, fascination with physics, value associated with physics, intelligence mindset, and physics epistemology. We found that female students reported lower levels of self-efficacy, fascination, and value associated with physics, and held a more “fixed” view of intelligence in the context of physics compared to male students. Female students’ fascination and value associated with physics decreased significantly more than males’ after an introductory physics course sequence. In addition, females’ view of physics intelligence became more “fixed” compared to males’ by the end of an introductory physics course sequence. Grit was the only factor on which females reported averages that were equal to or higher than males throughout introductory physics courses. The findings inform the framework and have implications for the development and implementation of effective pedagogies and learning tools to help all students learn.

To what extent should technology and applied physics be included in introductory physics courses? What is the proper balance between pure and applied physics? Should physics teachers devote precious time to socially relevant issues like nuclear power and alternative sources of energy? How much time should be spent, if any, on applications that are more relevant to the student's world like cars, music, television and refrigeration? Does including applications reduce or enhance student understanding of important classical topics? A response to these questions must be based on goals for physics teaching, on knowledge of how students learn and on the nature of the physics discipline. Since there is not enough time to teach everything in an introductory course, priorities must be determined.

In this study we conduct an integrated assessment of first-year performance in introductory calculus and physics courses. We use well-accepted conceptual assessment instruments, initial state data such as the SAT, and our own recently developed instruments designed to measure aptitude in mathematics to develop a predictive model for student performance. The analyzed population was composed of undergraduate students at Clarkson University, cross-enrolled in the calculus-based introductory physics course and the introductory calculus course from 2004 to 2007. Both the mathematics and physics classes are large-enrollment, lecture-based courses. By analyzing the combined data sets, we found the expected strong correlation between performance (final grade) in the mathematics course and performance in the physics course. We analyze not only the predictive nature of the collected data, but also the impact of the various corrective measures on final grade. This analysis contributes to an integrated evaluation of the current programs which could lead to an assessment-based initiative to offer strategic guidance to incoming students, better placing them for academic and career success in their selected STEM disciplines.

Student-to-student interactions are foundational to many active learning environments, but are most often studied using qualitative methods. Network analysis tools provide a quantitative complement to this picture, allowing researchers to describe the social interactions of whole classrooms as systems. Past results from introductory physics courses have suggested a sharp division in the formation of social structure between large lecture sections and small studio classroom environments. Extending those results, this study focuses on calculus-based introductory physics courses at a large public university with a heavily commuter and nontraditional student population. Community detection network methods are used to characterize pre- and post-course collaborative structure in several sections, and differences are considered between small and large classes. These results are compared with expectations from earlier findings, and comment on implications for instruction and further study.

Students’ genuine understanding (conceptual and operational) of physics is the goal of the majority of physics educators, who agree that the introductory physics course should possess the following features: reflect the currently adopted understanding of nature (the state in the subject matter), employ scientific method (philosophy of science) and expose it to the learner, and reflect our current understanding of the learning process taking place (research in physics education). We bring here two examples of suggested changes, the result of research in physics education, geared to improve the content of the introductory physics course in accordance with the above mentioned principles. More detailed information is available in the quoted publications.

This study investigates how the beliefs and values of physics faculty influence their choice of physics problems for their students in an introductory physics course. The study identifies the goals these instructors have for their students, the problem features they believe facilitate those goals, and how those features correspond to problems they choose to use in their classes. This analysis comes from an artifact-based interview of 30 physics faculty teaching introductory calculus-based physics at a wide variety of institutions. The study concludes that instructors' goals and the problem features they believe support those goals align with research-based curricular materials intended to develop competent problem solvers. However, many of these instructors do not use the beneficial problem features because they believe these features conflict with a more powerful set of values concerned with clarity of presentation and minimizing student stress, especially on exams.

Written quiz responses of 653 students in three separate courses are analyzed in detail. There has been relatively little research on student learning of thermodynamics in physics courses at the university level. A recent study by Loverude et al. has made it evident that students at the introductory level (and beyond) face many significant difficulties in learning fundamental thermodynamic concepts such as the first law of thermodynamics. I have been engaged in an ongoing project with T. J. Greenbowe to investigate student learning of thermodynamics in both physics and chemistry courses. As part of that investigation, a short diagnostic quiz has been administered over the past two years in the calculus-based introductory physics course at Iowa State University (ISU). This quiz focuses on heat, work, and the first law of thermodynamics. At ISU, thermodynamics is studied at the end of the second semester of the twosemester sequence in calculus-based introductory general physics. This course is taught in a traditional manner, with large lecture classes (up to 250 students), weekly recitation sections (about 25 students), and weekly labs taught by graduate students. Homework is assigned and graded every week. Thermal physics comprises 18-20% of the course coverage, and includes a wide variety of topics such as calorimetry, heat conduction, kinetic theory, laws of thermodynamics, heat engines, entropy, etc. The diagnostic quiz used in this study is shown below; it has been administered in three separate classes. The version shown here was administered in May 2001; the other two versions (December 1999 and December 2000) had very minor variations from the one shown here. (There were one or two additional questions on these quizzes which are not discussed here.) The 1999 and 2000 classes were taught by the same instructor, using a different textbook in each course. The 2001 course was taught by a different instructor, using the same text that was employed in the 1999 course. Both instructors are very experienced and have taught introductory physics at ISU for many years. The quiz was administered in two different ways: in 1999 and 2001, it was given as a practice quiz in the final recitation session (last week of class). In almost all cases it was ungraded; one instructor used it as a graded quiz. In 2000 the quiz was administered as an ungraded practice quiz in the very last lecture class of the year. This p-V diagram represents a system consisting of a fixed amount of ideal gas that undergoes two different processes in going from state A to state B:

BackgroundIt is well established in the literature that active learning instruction in introductory STEM courses results in many desired student outcomes. Yet, regular use of high-quality active learning is not the norm in many STEM departments. Using results of a national survey, we identified 16 departments where multiple instructors reported using high levels of active learning in their introductory chemistry, mathematics, or physics courses. We conducted interviews with 27 instructors in these 16 departments to better understand the characteristics of such departments.ResultsUsing grounded theory methodology, we developed a model that highlights relevant characteristics of departments with high use of active learning instruction in their introductory courses. According to this model, there are four main, interconnected characteristics of such departments: motivated people, knowledge about active learning, opportunities, and cultures and structures that support active learning. These departments have one or more people who are motivated to promote the use of active learning. These motivated people have knowledge about active learning as well as access to opportunities to promote the use of active learning. Finally, these departments have cultures and structures that support the use of active learning. In these departments, there is a positive feedback loop that works iteratively over time, where motivated people shape cultures/structures and these cultures/structures in turn increase the number and level of commitment of the motivated people. A second positive feedback loop was found between the positive outcome of using active learning instruction and the strengthening of cultures/structures supportive of active learning.ConclusionsAccording to the model, there are two main take-away messages for those interested in promoting the use of active learning. The first is that all four components of the model are important. A weak or missing component may limit the desired outcome. The second is that desired outcomes are obtained and strengthened over time through two positive feedback loops. Thus, there is a temporal aspect to change. In all of the departments that were part of our study, the changes took at minimum several years to enact. While our model was developed using only high-use of active learning departments and future work is needed to develop the model into a full change theory, our results do suggest that change efforts may be made more effective by increasing the robustness of the four components and the connections between them.

This study shows physicists' discussions on the meaning of Faraday's law where situations involving extended conductors or moving contact points are particularly troublesome. We raise questions to test students' difficulties in applying Faraday's law in motional electromotive force phenomena. We suggest the benefit of analysing these phenomena when teaching Faraday's law in introductory physics courses at university. We are not implying that Faraday's law should be revised, but we do want to set the stage for careful rethinking regarding the meaning and application of each term of the law as it appears in traditional introductory courses.

We report the results of a comparison of student understanding of physics concepts with and without online homework, as measured by the force concept inventory. We compared students in large introductory courses taught by interactive engagement and noninteractive engagement methods and with ungraded homework and with online homework. We also compared the understanding of students in different grade subgroups. The increase in the average force concept inventory normalized gain was statistically significant for all students taught with online homework, indicating that graded homework increases student understanding of physics concepts. The gain was significantly higher for those students taught with interactive engagement methods together with online homework. The C grade subgroup taught by interactive engagement methods benefited more from the implementation of online homework than the other subgroups.

Throughout North America the curriculum of introductory physics courses is nearly standardized. In 1992, Tobias wrote that four texts dominate 90% of the introductory physics market1 and current physics education research is focusing on how to sustain educational reforms.2 The instructional team at the University of British Columbia (UBC) recently implemented some key curriculum and pedagogical changes in Physics 100, their algebra-based introductory course for non-physics majors. These changes were aimed at improving their students' attitudes toward physics and their ability to apply physics concepts to useful real-life situations. In order to demonstrate that physics is relevant to real life, a theme of energy and environment was incorporated into the course.

In the 1930s, the teaching staff of the University of Chicago devised a clever way to deliver experimental data to their introductory students without meeting them in the laboratory. The university’s curriculum included a required Introductory Course in the Physical Sciences. There were probably too many students to allow for a standard face-to-face laboratory experience. In this article, I will discuss the solution that was reached about 80 years ago, and muse on how it can be used during a time when a pandemic makes regular laboratory instruction impossible. Their approach may be useful to present-day teachers trying to deliver a laboratory experience to students in introductory physics courses without face-to-face instruction.

Students’ learning performance and its correlation with exam scores are examined using a unique factor: the day the online quiz was submitted. By collecting information on quizzes through an online learning management system for each subject in an introductory physics course for first-grade medical students, student learning performance is thoroughly analysed and compared with the final exam score. The results show a statistically significant negative correlation between the exam score and quiz submission day. Furthermore, by combining several parameters that are potentially related to the exam score, we are able to evaluate the student’s learning attitude in more detail. Based on the results, we discuss the negative effects of procrastinating behaviour and successful learning practices.

Tests of formal operational reasoning and mathematics knowledge have been correlated with performance measures in introductory physics courses. A score based on collected homework was also used in our analyses in an attempt to control for the confounding effects of study effort. Course totals were broken down into separate scores for performance on test problems and performance on conceptual questions. A multiple-regression analysis indicates that the test of formal operational reasoning is a stronger predictor of course performance than the mathematics pre-test, particularly for the conceptual portion of the course totals. Possible reasons for failure in some studies to find significant correlations of course performance with measures of formal reasoning are discussed.

Since 1983, the Maryland University Project in Physics and Educational Technology (M.U.P.P.E.T.) has been investigating the implication of including student programming in an introductory physics course for physics majors. Many significant changes can result. One can rearrange some content to be more physically appropriate, include more realistic problems, and introduce some contemporary topics. One can begin training the student in professional research-related skills at an earlier stage than is traditional. An interesting point to note is that the inclusion of carefully considered computer content requires an increased emphasis on qualitative and analytic thinking.