Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer, Western Washington University, “Teaching and learning how to troubleshoot in upper-division labs”

Troubleshooting systems is an integral part of experimental physics in both research and educational settings. Accordingly, developing students’ ability to troubleshoot is an important goal for undergraduate physics lab courses. My colleagues and I have investigated student approaches to troubleshooting using think-aloud interviews in which pairs of students from two institutions were asked to diagnose and repair a malfunctioning circuit. We have also conducted national-scale studies in which we interviewed over 50 lab instructors about their teaching strategies, with one study focused specifically on efforts to improve students’ troubleshooting abilities. In this presentation, I will draw on findings from these studies and the literature more broadly to paint a picture of teaching and learning how to troubleshoot. I will focus on the roles of model-based reasoning, peer-to-peer metacognitive interactions, and the cognitive apprenticeship style of instruction. Finally, I will discuss practical implications for upper-division lab courses.

Elizabeth Gire, Oregon State University, “How do you teach students to evaluate their answers to physics problems?”

Physicists need ways to evaluate our solutions to the problems we consider – the universe has no solution manual! This “solution evaluation” is just one aspect of physics sensemaking. To help students become more powerful physics sensemakers and build a habit of evaluating their solutions, my research team has developed an intermediate mechanics course for sophomore-level physics majors that has an explicit focus on physics sensemaking, particularly solution evaluation. The strategies we emphasize include: thinking about mathematical and physical “beasts,” considering special cases, and thinking about the covariational behavior of functions. I will describe how we’ve been thinking about evaluative sensemaking, some of the instructional strategies we’ve used the course, and some of our research about the ways students evaluate algebraic solutions to physics problems. We find that the variety of ways students make sense of algebraic answers to physics problems is dizzying, even when we suggest specific strategies to try.