Speaker: Dr. Eric Burkholder, Auburn University
Title: "Equitable approach to introductory physics courses focused on problem-solving"
Abstract: Introductory mechanics (“Physics 1”) is an important gateway course for students desiring to pursue a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career. A major challenge with this course is the large spread in the students’ incoming physics preparation. This level of preparation is strongly predictive of a students’ performance because of the overlap between Physics 1 and high school physics courses. Because the level of students’ incoming preparation is largely determined by the quality of their high school physics courses, Physics 1 can amplify K–12 educational inequities and be a barrier for marginalized students wishing to pursue a STEM career. In this talk, I will present a novel introductory course design to address this equity challenge. The design and implementation are based on the concept of deliberate practice as applied to learning real-world problem solving. Students explicitly practice research-identified decision-based skills required for problem solving in the context of solving real-world problems. The problems used in the course and their solutions have little resemblance to what students encounter in high school physics, thereby reducing the dependence of course performance on the high school physics preparation. In recent iterations of this course, the students (1) scored higher on a post-semester conceptual knowledge test than a control group, (2) received higher grades in physics 2 compared to a control group, (3) persisted in engineering at much higher rates than a control group, and (4) gained valuable problem-solving skills. Most notably, the students’ performance in this course was not correlated with their high school physics preparation (R-squared = 0.05). This work provides a template for course design that has the potential to address substantial equity challenges in introductory physics while simultaneously better preparing students for careers in STEM.

Light refreshments served.