1,721,005 research outputs found
Active Learning Methods and Strategies to Improve Student Conceptual Understanding: Some Considerations from Physics Education Research
No full textActive learning methods and strategies are credited to be important means for development of student cognitive skills This paper describes some forms of active learning common in Physics Education and briefly introduces some of the pedagogical and psychological theories at the basis of active learning. Then, some evidence for active learning effectiveness in developing student critical cognitive skills and improving their conceptual understanding are examined. An example study regarding the effectiveness of an Inquiry-Based learning approach in helping students to build mechanisms of functioning and explicative models, and to identify common aspects in apparently different phenomena, is briefly discussed
Fluids in Equilibrium and Hydrodynamics
No full textTeaching fluid mechanics applied to undergraduate and graduate students of STEM disciplines has traditionally been a difficult task for the teacher. It connects to the use of more or less complex mathematics, computer science, and numerical methods. In this chapter, after a brief discussion about the development of pedagogical approaches to introduce students to fluid mechanics from 1950 to today, we discuss some relevant examples of Physics Education Research (PER) literature pieces related to teaching and learning specific aspects of fluid mechanics. The aim is to understand how PER has contributed to our current knowledge in that field, how it has evolved in terms of methodologies used, methods of validation of teaching/learning sequences (TLSs) and pedagogical tools proposed, analysis of student conceptions, learning in this subject, etc. Mainly, we discuss examples from the PER literature focused on
i. Common student ideas on basic concepts of fluid mechanics;
ii. Mathematical tools to resolve essential problems in fluid mechanics and facilitate the learning of
the related concepts;
iii. Computational tools for fluid mechanics;
iv. Novel and creative ways of introducing fluid mechanics to students;
v. Understanding surface phenomena
Energia, potenza, intensità e brillanza di una sorgente luminosa: dagli Specchi Ustori di Ar-chimede ai laser super-intensi.
No full textA critical review, science-based, of the historical epi-sode that Archimedes would burn with mirrors some Roman ships during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, provides an oppor-tunity to consider the main sources of light and the limits im-posed by the Optics in its concentratio
Outcomes of a Teaching Learning Sequence on Modelling Surface Phenomena in Liquids
Full text linkIn this paper we discuss the effects of modelling and computer simulation activities in promoting student use of lines of reasoning useful to explain proposed or observed situations. The activities are part of a structured Teaching/Learning Sequence on surface phenomena in liquids. We outline a model of liquid based on a mesoscopic approach, examples of computer simulations students can use during the activities, and we describe the Teaching/Learning Sequence. During the pedagogical activities, students can simulate the liquid behaviour by controlling many simulation parameters, such as the interaction intensity among liquid and solid particles. The results of the analysis of student answers to a questionnaire before and after instruction, and of other qualitative data, show that these activities can help the students to think in terms of “mechanisms of functioning”
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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