Collaborative Research: Investigating How to Better Prepare Undergraduate Students for Physics Labs that Focus on Experimental Science

Tufts University, Medford MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by identifying strategies to support students’ understanding of experimental science. The major goal is to identify instructional strategies that better prepare undergraduate students for doing authentic scientific experimentation in physics labs. Traditional laboratory exercises have trained students to view instructional laboratories as places to do rote procedures that lead to known results. This project will probe how to help students reframe their expectations so that they consider physics labs as places to engage in scientific experiementation. Specifically, this project intends to identify strategies that help students think of physics labs as places where they will design their own experiments and draw their own conclusions from the data they collect. By working across multiple institutions, the project will provide many examples of students’ authentic science laboratory activities, as well an extensive database of students' work and engagement. The latter will document the rich diversity of resources and experiences students bring from their diverse backgrounds to their science laboratory work. This project aims to understand student experiences in non-traditional science labs, specifically physics, through the theoretical lens of framing. A person's frame is defined here as a stable (either local or more global) set of expectations about the activity taking place. Prior literature suggests that small things can influence the ways students frame an instructional activity, which in turn can have a large impact on student learning. This research project is designed to (a) identify the various ways students frame activities in a diverse set of non-traditional labs, (b) identify ways students shift or change how they frame lab activities, and (c) formulate testable predictions for ways to help students develop stable, productive frames for experimental science. This project is supported by the EHR Core Research program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.