ERIC Number: EJ1440506
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 25
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2469-9896
Using a Research-Based Assessment Instrument to Explore Undergraduate Students' Proficiencies around Measurement Uncertainty in Physics Lab Contexts
Physical Review Physics Education Research, v20 n2 Article 020105 2024
Concepts and practices surrounding measurement uncertainty are vital knowledge for physicists and are often emphasized in undergraduate physics laboratory courses. We have previously developed a research-based assessment instrument--the Survey of Physics Reasoning on Uncertainty Concepts in Experiments (SPRUCE)--to examine student proficiency with measurement uncertainty along a variety of axes, including sources of uncertainty, handling of uncertainty, and distributions and repeated measurements. We present here initial results from the assessment representing over 1500 students from 20 institutions. We analyze students' performance pre- and postinstruction in lab courses and examine how instruction impacts students with different majors and gender. We find that students typically excel in certain areas, such as reporting the mean of a distribution as their result, while they struggle in other areas, such as comparing measurements with uncertainty and correctly propagating errors using formulas. Additionally, we find that the importance that an instructor places in certain areas of measurement uncertainty is uncorrelated with student performance in those areas.
Descriptors: Undergraduate Students, Physics, Science Laboratories, College Science, Science Instruction, Measurement, Science Process Skills, Majors (Students), Gender Differences, Program Effectiveness, Correlation
American Physical Society. One Physics Ellipse 4th Floor, College Park, MD 20740-3844. Tel: 301-209-3200; Fax: 301-209-0865; e-mail: assocpub@aps.org; Web site: https://journals.aps.org/prper/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 1914840; 1913698; PHY2317149