Electrostatics

Research Associated with the Course

The course is currently under study by Bethany R. Wilcox, a Graduate Student in the Physics Department at CU Boulder. Previously, Stephanie V. Chasteen, a Science Teaching Fellow, and Rachel E. Pepper, now a post-doc at UC Berkeley, developed these materials and began instituting research efforts into student challenges. Research efforts are funded by the University of Colorado's Science Education Initiative and NSF-CCLI Grant #1023028.

Ongoing Research Projects

Student difficulties with course material -

We are investigating which topics, concepts, and methods are challenging for students to learn and why. Our current research efforts focus on students' use of mathematics in context-rich physics problems.

Publications

Posters and Talks

Past Research Projects

Considerable research was conducted during the development of these materials to determine their impact on student outcomes. We have a large amount of evidence that implementation of our research-based resources has a significant positive impact on students' conceptual understanding without sacrificing performance on calculation intensive problems. Additional research has been performed on the implementation and sustainablitity of these course transformations.

Posters and Talks