AAPT Abstract Archive
Menu  

Abstract Information

 
spacer
  Session: Physics Education Research I
  Paper Type: Poster
  Title: Tracking Shifts in Students’ Understanding: Force, Acceleration, and Graphs
  Meeting: 2016 Summer Meeting: Sacremento, California
  Location: N/A
  Date:
  Time: 9:15PM
  Author: Trevor I. Smith, Rowan University
856-256-4848, smithtr@rowan.edu
  Co-Author(s): Nicholas J. Wright, Ian T. Griffin
  Abstract: Many studies have shown that students often struggle to interpret and generate graphs of various physical quantities. This can be seen in students’ responses to the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation when class performance differs on questions asking students to select graphs of force vs. time for a described motion compared to questions asking them to choose verbal descriptions of forces. We have previously shown that students are more likely to improve on the graph questions than the natural language questions. We expand on these results by incorporating data from multiple colleges and by including correlations between students’ choices of graphs of force vs. time and acceleration vs. time for identical motions. We relate these results to other analyses of the data and provide evidence that using consistency plots to represent individual students’ transitions from pretest to posttest provides rich information that is unavailable in other representations.
  Footnotes: None
  Presentation: Results_160710.pdf

2003 © American Association of Physics Teachers
Have questions about this site? Email the webmaster.
AAPT Home AAPT Abstract Archive Past Meeting Info