The scientific community’s push to improve undergraduate biology education over the past decade prompted the creation of numerous open educational resources. A group of researchers, including one from the University of Maine, will evaluate how well these materials have met this demand and deliver positive learning outcomes. Read full UMaine News article here: Researchers assess […]
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A study article by Master of Science in Teaching graduate research assistant Camden Bock and RiSE Center faculty Justin Dimmel was recently published in Digital Experiences in Mathematics Education. Digital Representations without Physical Analogues: a Study of Body-Based Interactions with an Apparently Unbounded Spatial Diagram (link to article) Abstract: In this study, we report on […]
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RiSE Faculty member and Graduate Coordinator Franziska Peterson’s pilot study article was recently published in Educational Research: Theory and Practice. Working with Real-World Data: A Pilot Study of Pre-Service Elementary Teachers (link to article) Abstract: The purpose of this pilot study was to engage pre-service elementary teachers in a semester-long project to deepen their quantitative […]
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I’ve explored teacher learning and knowledge in middle school since about 2010. I love working with teachers, and interacting with them has not only changed my career but has made me a better physicist and scientist. Learning to think about energy, force, or motion in terms of middle school students has made me re-think things […]
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One of the most fundamental things about watching people learn (and helping them in the classroom) is that people have fragmented understanding of the world around them. Researchers have modeled this in terms of a Knowledge-in-Pieces (KiP) model, simply accepting the way things are as a basis for building models of knowledge and learning. I […]
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What’s fascinating when a mathematician and a physicist talk about the math that is used in physics is that we often use a set of words that mean something different to each person in the conversation. A physicist sees nothing wrong with putting the x-value on the y-axis of a graph, when x is measuring […]
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RiSE Faculty member Michael Wittmann published a new paper in December, 2020 with co-author Jeffrey Morgan as part of a focused collection on how research theory can be used to support curriculum design. The paper explores the authors’ approaches while using research to inform design of a quantum physics course for non-science majors. In particular, […]
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Master of Science in Teaching student Emma Toth defended her thesis, titled “The High School to First Year College Transition: An Investigation of the Predictions and Perceptions of STEM Students” in December, 2018. Her thesis research included developing, testing, and revising a survey administered at the start and end of two semesters. At the start […]
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Master of Science in Teaching students Bryn Keenhold and Laura Millay present thesis research at Northeast Education Research Association (NERA) with RiSE faculty member Franzi Peterson.
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Members of the Physics Education Research Laboratory (PERL) were extremely active at national meetings this past summer. The conference season started off with the Third Conference on Laboratory Instruction Beyond the First Year (BFY III) at Loyola University Maryland, where two members of PERL presented one poster and also offered a workshop on flexible resources […]
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