Student decision making in undergraduate physics laboratories
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Date
2025-03
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Publisher
University of New Brunswick
Abstract
With recent changes made to introductory laboratory curriculum, we set out to determine the success of these changes and consequentially see if students were building the experimental skills and habits we intended to teach in their program. Surveys, laboratory notebook and report coding, and interviews were carried out to see what elements are important to incorporate in laboratory exercises. We found that explicit instruction is required for our students to learn a laboratory skill, skills are not carried forward to the following course unless explicit requirement is included in the subsequent course via instruction, our students need to practice a skills more than once, and the participants of our study do not have a complete mental model of experimental physics after completing their laboratory program.