Beyond "flipping the classroom": Behavioral, cognitive, and socioemotional aspects of learning in college physics
Zhang, Muxin
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/122086
Description
Title
Beyond "flipping the classroom": Behavioral, cognitive, and socioemotional aspects of learning in college physics
Author(s)
Zhang, Muxin
Issue Date
2023-07-28
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Kuo, Eric
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Stelzer, Tim
Committee Member(s)
Krist, Christina
Holder, Gilbert
Department of Study
Physics
Discipline
Physics
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
physics education research
active learning curriculum
problem-solving
group work
student emotions
Abstract
In this thesis, I present research projects aimed at understanding and improving components of the active learning curriculum in the context of introductory college physics courses. This thesis has three parts. First, to support students in mastering essential problem-solving skills, I conducted intervention studies to investigate the effects of online learning tools on student study behaviors and performance. My colleagues and I found that an in-situ implementation of the mastery-style homework was highly effective, but interventions designed to impact student metacognition and exam preparation behaviors had null results. Second, to explore ways of improving collaborative learning in discussion and lab sections, I collected video data of group work to characterize patterns of group interactions and analyze selected episodes for a focal group. My colleagues and I found that, moments when group members raised divergent ideas were rare, but these moments can lead to productive discussions of conceptual resources and development of coherent reasonings when students take up, refine, and extend each other’s ideas. Third, to investigate the relationship between student emotion and learning, I conducted a literature review and two case studies. These studies demonstrate that a complex range of emotions arise from multiple aspects of science learning, navigations of socio-emotional risks are consequential for group work, and individuals’ emotions are situated in microscopic classroom interactions as well as macroscopic institutional and cultural structures. An overarching argument of this thesis is that, to improve a college physics course, instructors need to attend to and support behavioral, cognitive, and socio-emotional aspects of physics learning.
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