Background: Physics textbooks are a learning resource for students to acquire knowledge and information. The findings of previous studies on physics textbooks analysis have mostly focused on representations of gender, the nature of science, and scientific literacy. This study, therefore, extends the critical content analysis of physics textbooks…

Fully online courses and degree programs are popular with students. These courses should provide the rigor and value of traditional learning in a face-to-face classroom to ensure mastery of concepts and learning objectives. This research expands previous work to investigate the effectiveness of online laboratory exercises in enhancing student…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Research on nontraditional laboratory (lab) activities in physics shows that students often expect to verify predetermined results, as takes place in traditional lab activities. This understanding of what is taking place, or…

Protocol-guided teaching is a student-centered instructional model in which the teacher creates the learning protocol prior to the lesson in order to direct students toward active and autonomous learning. A well-structured learning protocol is essential for the effective application of this instructional paradigm. This article evaluates the…

Writing and genre scholarship has become increasingly attuned to how various nontextual features of written genres contribute to the kinds of social actions that the genres perform and to the activities that they mediate. Even though scholars have proposed different ways to account for nontextual features of genres, such attempts often remain…

We report the findings of an empirical study that investigated whether the source of data--firsthand or secondhand data gained from lab work experiments--has an influence on students' learning outcomes. Results indicate that students' choice of a correct or incorrect hypothesis for a pendulum lab experiment on the influence of the mass of the bob…

Over the last decade, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been recognized as a way to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education by engaging students in authentic discovery. CUREs have been shown to have positive benefits similar to traditional undergraduate research experiences;…

Aim/Purpose: The objective of this study is to explore the effectiveness of using virtual experiments on students' level of achievement and on their practical skills as well as their views on applying the virtual experiments in a general physics lab. Background: There is a continuous debate in the literature on the effect of using virtual…

The ability to develop, use, and refine models of experimental systems is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. However, no assessments of students' model-based reasoning exist for upper-division labs. This study is the first step toward development of modeling assessments for optics and electronics labs.…

Contribution: There are many on-line resources available to learn about optics and photonics, but no assessment tools exist to evaluate the learning achievements. This paper presents an assessment framework whose validity has been proven on a course with over 70 engineering students. Background: There is evidence that on-line resources complement…

In this paper, we examined teachers' understanding of electrical concepts such as power, current and potential difference based on how these concepts were applied to understand the relative brightness seen in bulbs of different wattage under different connections--series or parallel. From the responses of teachers to a concept question, we…

Virtual worlds are used in many educational and business applications. At the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology (NTID/RIT), deaf college students are introduced to the virtual world of Second Life, which is a 3-D immersive, interactive environment, accessed through computer software. NTID students use…

This work is part of a research project whose main objective is to understand the impact that the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has on the teaching and learning process on the subject of Physics. We will show that, with the use of a storm simulator, physics students improve their learning process on one hand they understand…

In this study, the research problem was: "Is the computer based physics instruction as effective as laboratory intensive physics instruction with regards to academic success on electric circuits 9th grade students?" For this research of experimental quality the design of pre-test and post-test are applied with an experiment and a control…

In this study, the research problem was: "Is the computer based physics instruction as effective as laboratory intensive physics instruction with regards to academic success on electric circuits 9th grade students?" For this research of experimental quality the design of pre-test and post-test are applied with an experiment and a control…