The GRE: great at acting as a barrier to underrepresented groups, not so good as a predictor of completing graduate school.
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Author: Nick Young
I am a physics graduate student at Michigan State University and the founder of PERbites. I'm interested in applying machine learning to analyze educational datasets and how students use computation in physics courses.
When finding nothing is a result
Null results are often not published, but can provide useful results.
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You seem like a physicist
Explicitly and implicitly recognizing students as physicists can help them identify as physicists.
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How far is far? Investigating students’ knowledge about distance to astronomical objects
Students are often unfamiliar with sizes and distances of astronomical objects. Today’s study compares student knowledge about this topic at different educational levels.
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Not enough variation to explain the gender gap
The men and women earn equal STEM grades but men have higher variability in those grades. This isn’t enough to explain why there are more men in STEM.
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What matters when applying to graduate school and how it impacts diversity
Physics is less diverse than other physical sciences. Do graduate school admission processes contribute to this?
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Extra! Extra! Physics labs may be extra.
Labs have been a standard part of the physics curriculum. Today’s paper suggests that labs don’t help students develop physics knowledge beyond what is already covered in other parts of the course.
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Transitioning between tables, equations, and graphs (oh my!) in physics and math
Using multiple representations is central to the study of physics. Today we look at how well students can change between representations of linear functions.
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Paper or Pla– Electronic For Conceptual Inventories
There is only so much class time during a semester which may make it difficult to incorporate research based assessments. Can we just give them online?
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The lack of a relation between student learning and student evaluations
Student evaluations of instruction are widely used to evaluate instructors. Today’s article suggests these are not correlated with student learning.
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