Cooperative learning, using small groups to complete a common goal, has a positive effect on student achievement and potential in foundational engineering mechanics courses. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively examine the effects of cooperative learning on student performance, if these effects are concept-specific, and perceptions of…

The need for geoscience students to develop a quantitative skillset is ever increasing. However, this can be difficult to implement in university-style lecture courses in a way that is both manageable for the instructor and does not involve lengthy, potentially repetitive, question sheets for the students. Here, a method for teaching dimensional…

As introductory chemistry courses expose students to many distinctive properties of matter, it is helpful to systematically evaluate and relate different measures such as mass, moles, and molarity, or specific heat capacity and heat capacity. Intensive and extensive designations help distinguish intrinsic and component properties of a system and…

Instructional physics labs offer students unique opportunities to develop an understanding of experimentation. By transforming labs to be more open ended and experimentation focused, instructors can better support student agency and choice. In this study, we examine students' overall sense of and perceptions about agency in two…

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are key partners in the education of undergraduates. Given the potentially large impact GTAs can have on undergraduate student learning, it is important to provide them with appropriate preparation for teaching. But GTAs are students themselves, and not all of them desire to pursue an academic career. Fully…

The COVID-19 pandemic presented several challenges to both teachers and students. The rapid shift to an online learning environment demanded the development of effective teaching strategies to support student learning. This work describes teaching strategies developed to teach physics during the COVID-19 period. The strategies included posting…

This study examines the design and enactment of a secondary physics unit on electromagnetism. The unit used an educational videogame to support peer dialogic engagement in a Singapore secondary school by engaging learners with qualitative physics phenomena. As an example of game-based learning, the unit includes activities and resources that…

In quantum mechanics courses, students are often asked to solve bound and scattering state problems. The use of an ordinary differential equation is a standard technique to solve these questions. Here, we investigated students' problem-solving processes for two typical problems of a single particle in one spatial dimension: a bound state problem…

This study presents an experimental method that illustrates and quantifies the Doppler-effect phenomenon. Two stages of the experimental process were carried out. First, a simplified ripple tank was used to depict the Doppler effect, and the whole experiment was recorded by a digital camera. Second, video analyses of the recorded experiment were…

In times of the explosion of distance learning, because of emergency due to the pandemic, smartphone sensors and cameras are extremely valuable for teachers as they allow students to perform significant experimental activities in their own homes. The open-source software Tracker can be used in combination with the smartphone camera to perform…

The drag effect on a falling ball caused by air is a conventional subject in the most well-known textbooks of classical mechanics and fluid dynamics. Further, there are some papers that employ video analysis to track objects movements in the air making it possible to obtain position data as a function of time and its graphs. However, none of them…

The law of conservation of momentum can be applied to a wide range of processes whether it is the collision of subatomic particles, rocket propulsion, or the recoil of a cannon. In this experiment two technologies, the Arduino microcontroller and a PASCO smart cart, are used to create a movable rubber band launcher. The Arduino microcontroller is…

In Vietnam, nuclear physics is a fundamental part of the national curriculum for physics. However, due to a lack of experimental apparatus (detectors, radioactive sources, etc) at most of the schools, the majority of students do not have opportunities to experience the phenomena behind the concepts. Moreover, safety is another major concern when…

In this dissertation I will present my work in both the fields of spintronics and physics education research. In the first section, I present a method to account for spin pumping in spin torque ferromagnetic resonance (ST-FMR) measurements. A spin current can be generated via the spin Hall effect (SHE), which is typically transverse to the charge…

Females are underrepresented in all levels of physics, while a simultaneous need exists to increase the physical science workforce pipeline. A review of current literature found exposure to more advanced pSTEM courses might influence students to pursue those career-fields, however enrollment in Advanced Placement (AP) Physics remains…