The traditional lecture-based scheme of teaching physics has shown to be ineffective in several aspects. It results in a lack of motivation, with low impact on students, to address more complex physical systems than the ones presented in textbooks. The electromagnetics course is a clear example at junior and senior university-level education, in…

This paper presents and discusses the inclusive inquiry-based alternate reality game (IB-ARGI) approach, a pedagogical gamified approach supporting inclusive contemporary educational contexts. The IB-ARGI approach comprises Inquiry-based Learning, Alternate Reality Games, Universal Design for Learning and Augmented Reality technology in order to…

Identifying students' difficulties in understanding Gauss's and Ampere's laws is important for developing educational strategies that promote an expertlike understanding of the field concept and Maxwell's equations of electromagnetic phenomena. This study aims to analyze and compare students' understanding of symmetry when applying Gauss's and…

To help engage non-physics majors in a General Physics II (Electricity & Magnetism) course at the University of Indianapolis, students used their smartphones to detect magnetic fields on campus in a semester-long data collection project. This paper discusses details about the design of the project, previous studies that utilize smartphones for…

Research in undergraduate physics and in K-12 science education has demonstrated challenges and successes in facilitating student engagement with reasoning practices associated with professional physicists. Here we focus on one important dimension of physics reasoning, using evidence to revise models. While this topic has been explored at the…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection in Artificial Intelligence Tools in Physics Teaching and Physics Education Research.] Artificial intelligence-based chatbots are increasingly influencing physics education because of their ability to interpret and respond to textual and visual inputs. This study evaluates the performance of two large…

We conducted a study with introductory and upper-division level physics students in a Mexican and a Spanish university to learn how students recognize the main characteristics of the electric field in three of its more widely used representations, namely, algebraic notation, vector field plot, and electric field lines, and how the students do…

In an effort to examine students' understanding about the structure of boundary conditions in upper-division courses, think-aloud interviews were conducted in the context of both quantum mechanics and electricity and magnetism. In the quantum mechanics task, students were presented with a standard potential step scenario. In the electricity and…

The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) is a multiple-choice survey that contains a variety of electricity and magnetism concepts from Coulomb's law to Faraday's law at the level of introductory physics used to help inform instructors of student mastery of those concepts. Prior studies suggest that many concepts on the survey are…

We present an analysis of students' thinking skills as evidenced by free-response exam problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare two inquiry-based, laboratory-based classical mechanics courses, one taught online and one taught in person during the pandemic, and two inquiry-based, laboratory-based electricity and magnetism courses, one…

Earth's field nuclear magnetic resonance (EFNMR) spectroscopy offers students a unique opportunity to consolidate their understanding of NMR spectroscopic theory through hands-on practice with a simple spectrometer. A comprehensive, 6 h experiment is presented for the introduction of low-field NMR techniques, covering spectroscopy, relaxivity, and…

Electrostatic potential energy is a topic of great difficulty for many students. In this paper, we empirically test the utility of two approaches for laying a foundation for developing an understanding of energy in an electrostatic context, with interdisciplinary relevance. We examine student responses to a question about how the potential energy…

The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) is a widely used multiple-choice instrument measuring a student's conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism. This study applied modified module analysis (MMA) and modified module analysis-partial (MMA-P), network analytic methods that identify groups of correlated responses, to…

This article presents a qualitative study of the type and quality of questions formulated by prospective elementary teachers (PETs) when designing scientific inquiry activities, depending on the school science content selected. The data were acquired during teacher training instruction on these aspects with 67 participant PETs. The results showed…

In this work we present the application of design based research (DBR) methodology to conduct a systematic iterative study of the design and implementation of a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) on emf (electromotive force). This work is the final part of a broader study that started with the analysis of students' difficulties with emf in the…