Higher education

Publications¶

This is a list of publications for higher education physics education. The list is not complete, other relevant publications are listed under the research/publications tab. Note that some of the publications are in Dutch.

vitruvian man Teaching a hands-on course during corona lockdown: from problems to opportunities: Teaching a hands- and minds-on course, in which feedback is essential in order to learn, is difficult, especially in times of COVID-19 where student progression cannot be monitored directly. During the lockdown period, the workshops of an undergraduate Design Engineering course had to be transferred to the home situation, which required a redesign of this course by the staff. It also provided new opportunities for students to adapt to this situation, which required extra creativity and problem-solving skills. The adapted workshops revealed conditions that enhance maker education. However, providing timely feedback required a substantial amount of time not anticipated for. We also report that short instruction videos seem to work much better than longer lectures or tedious materials. As we practice what we preach, we will evaluate the course and apply our design knowledge acquired over the years.

A pandemic-resilient open-inquiry physical science lab course which leverages the Maker movement Students’ report on an open inquiry: As part of the final projects of our introductory lab course, students conceived experiments related to the umbrella topic of ‘Physics of toys and sports’ and carried out the experiments at their homes. This paper revisits two of these experiments described by student teams and illustrates how self-conceived experiments provide opportunities to truly engage students in doing science.

Elements of proper conclusions: Investigating first-year physics students’ ability to draw proper conclusions, we analysed 87 conclusions from the same experiment. Through rankings by teaching assistants we identified seven key elements of effective conclusions. These findings reveal a significant gap in students’ skills, with about half of the conclusions deemed inadequate. This study underscores the necessity for targeted educational interventions to enhance conclusion-drawing capabilities in physics education. The set of seven elements might provide guidance to improve students’ ability to draw proper conclusions.

One setup for many experiments: enabling versatile student-led investigations: This article presents an experimental setup capable of conducting various experiments. The setup is used to accurately determine the acceleration due to gravity using either the pendulum or free fall experiment, as well as to allow students to conceive and conduct their own experiment. We discuss the design of the setup and the experiments conducted with it, highlighting the versatility and potential use for open inquiry. We include students’ perception on this particular experiment and how it led to an interesting and educational open inquiry.