322,872 research outputs found
Test of understanding graphs in kinematics: Item objectives confirmed by clustering eye movement transitions
No full textOpen-Access-Publikationsfonds 202
Student understanding of graph slope and area under a curve: A replication study comparing first-year physics and economics students
No full textThe understanding of graphs and extraction of relevant information from graphs plays a major role in physics education and is also important in several related fields. Recently, Susac et al. [Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 14, 020109 (2018)10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.14.020109] compared physics and psychology students’ understanding of graphs in the contexts of physics and finance. They showed that physicists scored significantly higher in both domains and that all students solved the slope problems better than the area problems. Moreover, eye-tracking data revealed that physics students spent more time on problems associated with the area under the graph and focused longer on the axis labels of finance graphs, indicating higher cognitive demands. In this eye-tracking study, we aim for a generalization of the results obtained by Susac et al. by comparing physics students to another nonphysics sample, viz., economics students. The findings broadly confirm the results of Susac et al.; that is, physics students perform better than nonphysics students. While economics students likely have better prior knowledge on finance context than psychology students, the physics students still outperform them on the finance questions. In contrast to the work by Susac et al., both groups of students had the same visit duration on the graphs, consequently proving total dwell time to be an inadequate predictor of performance. Instead, we identify that attention on concept-specific areas of interest within the graphs discriminates the correct from the incorrect performers. Furthermore, we analyzed the confidence level of the two student groups and found that physics students have a higher ability to correctly judge their own performance compared to economics students. Overall, our results highlight the importance of an instructional adjustment towards a more mathematical- and graphical-based education
Studying physics during the COVID-19 pandemic: Student perceptions on synchronous and asynchronous course formats and implications for the future
No full textTo investigate how physics students perceived the sudden shift to online learning at the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, 18 semistructured interviews were conducted with university students in Austria, Croatia, and Germany. Based on the interviews, a questionnaire was developed and data from N=578 physics students from five universities in Germany, Austria, and Croatia were gathered. In this paper, we report how students perceived synchronous and asynchronous physics lessons, how their perception correlates with their self-organization skills, which activities and teaching methods were perceived as helpful, and what are the implications for future physics courses. The most common advantages of synchronous course elements reported by students were the possibility to immediately ask questions, the feeling of community and interaction with other students, and the defined daily structure, whereas the most common advantages of asynchronous course elements reported were flexible time management and the possibility to watch videos at their own pace. The data indicate a correlation between preference for synchronous courses and their general self-organization, so instructors should be aware of this connection when planning future courses. Face-to-face lectures at university were perceived as the most helpful course element, followed by the recorded lectures from the instructor and the group work on the assignments, projects, and problems with other students. Furthermore, our results suggest that most students would in the future like to preserve the upload of learning materials and recorded video of the lectures in addition to classroom lectures. Overall, the results of this study suggest that both synchronous and asynchronous course elements should be combined in future online and in-person physics courses
Diffusive author(s), cohesive author: Analysis of S/N (1994)
No full textThis study indicates the ways in which various aspects of the author(s) are brought forth in Dumb type’s performance art, the S/N production. Previous research has suggested a non-hierarchical organization of Dumb type and the absence of a “privileged author” in Dumb type’s collaborative work, S/N. However, the results that I have investigated from member’s interviews on the creative process of S/N along with my analysis of the recorded images of S/N, indicate a different aspect of the author(s). First, S/N was created through, so to speak, the collective ideas of the members of Dumb type. Further, S/N has at least nine quotations from previous performances, installations, and printed writings, besides the work-in-progress technique. Explicating one of the “author functions” as given by Michel Foucault, each text has plural subjects of the author. However, it has been revealed from members’ interviews that Teiji Furuhashi had a decision-making role in selecting the members’ ideas within the performance. Since then, S/N has had plural subjects of creation; however, Furuhashi is one of the subjects of creation along with the “privileged author.” S/N has plural authors (diffusive authors) yet at the same time, it has a “privileged author,” Teiji Furuhashi (cohesive author)
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
Studying physics during the COVID-19 pandemic: Student assessments of learning achievement, perceived effectiveness of online recitations, and online laboratories
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the education system worldwide, which was forced to respond with a sudden shift to distance learning. While successful distance teaching requires careful thinking, planning, and the development of technological and human resources, there was no time for preparation in the current situation. Various physics courses, including lectures, tutorials, and laboratory courses, had to be transferred to online formats, resulting in a variety of simultaneous, asynchronous, and mixed activities. To investigate how physics students perceived the sudden shift to online learning, we developed a questionnaire and gathered data from N=578 physics students from five universities in Germany, Austria, and Croatia. In this article, we report how the problem-solving sessions (recitations) and laboratories were adapted, how students judge the different formats of the courses, and how useful and effective they perceived them. The results are correlated with the students’ self-efficacy ratings and other behavioral measures (such as self-regulated learning skills). This study is descriptive in nature, and a survey study design was implemented to examine the relationships among the variables. We found that good communication abilities (r=0.48, p<0.001) and self-organization skills (r=0.63, p<0.001) are positively correlated with perceived learning achievement. Furthermore, the previous duration of studies had a significant impact on several self-reported achievement measures, resulting in consistently lower scores of students in their first academic year compared with students who were further along academically. We draw conclusions and suggest implications for future online classes on the instructor and faculty level. Suggestions include (i) focusing on first-year courses with on-campus teaching when facing limited lecture hall capacities, (ii) offering special courses for promoting self-regulated learning skills, (iii) emphasizing the positive aspects of distance learning, and (iv) installing networking services for supporting student communication
Lab courses for prospective physics teachers: what could we learn from the first COVID-19 lockdown?
No full textAbstractAt the universities of Dresden, Vienna, and Zagreb, a laboratory course for prospective physics teachers was transferred to an online environment because of the lockdown in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this paper is to present and compare students’ and instructors’ considerations about the experiences with this laboratory course at these three universities and to formulate guidelines for organizing lab courses for prospective physics teachers. The research was conducted in three steps: first, interviews were conducted with prospective physics teachers (N = 10); second, an online questionnaire was administered to course participants (N = 99); and third, lab course instructors completed an online questionnaire (N = 8). The results show that an increase in creativity and confidence was expressed when conducting home experiments. Students who received support and guidance benefited more from the online lab course, but some students also experienced a greater time commitment. On a positive note, all participants thought outside-the-box during this lab experience and found solutions that led to new ways of conducting labs. Our study suggests that in future online or regular lab courses, students should have the chance to make decisions about experiments and be creative, with an emphasis on peer discussions and support from instructors
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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No full textCan archives of audiovisual TV interviews be used to make authors more visible to students, and thereby reduce the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers in college classes? We examined students in a college course who learned about one scholar's ideas through watching an audiovisual TV interview (i.e., visible author format) and about another scholar's ideas through reading a formal text description (i.e., invisible author format). For the invisible author, native language speakers scored significantly higher than the non-native language speakers on a corresponding exam question (i.e., a cognitive measure), generated more words on the exam question (i.e., a motivational measure), and mentioned the author's name more often in answering the exam question (i.e., an affective measure). For the visible author, the groups did not differ on any of these measures. These findings provide evidence for the idea that making the author visible through audiovisual TV interviews can eliminate the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers. 3 Universities around the world serve students who are non-native speakers of th
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