Beyond "flipping the classroom": Behavioral, cognitive, and socioemotional aspects of learning in college physics

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Physics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Zhang, Muxin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kuo, Eric
• Stelzer, Tim
• Krist, Christina
• Holder, Gilbert

• Physics Education Research
• Active Learning Curriculum
• Problem-solving
• Group Work
• Student Emotions

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Muxin Zhang

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/122086

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F122086