Physics seminar Feb. 4 at MSUM
MSUM hosts a physics seminar, featuring Dr. Mila Kryjevskaia from the NDSU Department of Physics, Friday, Feb. 4 from 2:30 to 3:20 p.m. in Hagen 325. Her topic is “Physics Education Research as a guide for investigating learning and teaching: examining and interpreting student reasoning.”
Kryjevskaia will discuss an empirical investigation of the approaches that students in large introductory calculus-based physics courses use while reasoning about many basic physics situations.
“In particular, we have been probing the extent to which students recognize and are able to apply the cause and effect relationships between propagation speed, frequency, and wavelength. Questions focusing on wave behavior at boundaries between different medial have been particularly valuable in helping us identify specific incorrect lines of reasoning. Several of the erroneous reasoning strategies do not appear to be limited to the boundary context, and data will be presented to illustrate how such strategies may hinder student understanding of more advanced physics phenomena such as interference and diffraction. Broader insights into student reasoning extending beyond the specific physics contexts of waves and physical optics will also be discussed.”