PHYS 598 COS :: Physics Illinois :: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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General Information

Course Description

–We will base the course largely on the PER synthesis review by Docktor & Mestre, Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 10, 020119 – Published 16 September 2014
–Can get pdf of article here: https://journals.aps.org/prper/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.10.020119
–There has been PER work done after this review was written but this seminar is meant to fill in background holes in your knowledge  and there is a huge amount of good work covered in the synthesis
–A secondary and equally important goal of this seminar is to introduce you to experimental techniques in PER and cognitive psychology. It’s important that you have a wide set of experimental skills in designing your experiments.

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Policies

Grading

•Class participation: 50%   I want you to participate but NOT to dominate discussions
•Your presentations: 25%
•Design of an Experiment: 25%   You will design an experiment with specific research questions and appropriate methodology. You will begin with a literature review and lead into the questions you will investigate that flow from past research.
–Typical sections: Intro., Lit. Review. Questions being Investigated, Methodology/Experimental design.
–We are shooting for a lab-based experiment, not a messy, classroom-based experiment that would take one or more semesters to do.
–I am hoping that most, or all of the experiments you design are carried out and published (but that is not a requirement for the course).

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