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When engaging with a textbook, students are inclined to highlight key content. Although students believe that highlighting and subsequent review of the highlights will further their educational goals, the psychological literature provides no evidence of benefits. Nonetheless, a student’s choice of text for highlighting may serve as a window into their mental state—their level of comprehension, grasp of the key ideas, reading goals, etc. We explore this hypothesis via an experiment in which 198 participants read sections from a college-level biology text, briefly reviewed the text, and then took a quiz on the material. During initial reading, participants were able to highlight words, phrases, and sentences, and these highlights were displayed along with the complete text during the subsequent review. Consistent with past research, the amount of highlighted material is unrelated to quiz performance. However, our main goal is to examine highlighting as a data source for inferring student understanding. We explored multiple representations of the highlighting patterns and tested Bayesian linear regression and neural network models, but we found little or no relationship between a student’s highlights and quiz performance. Our long-term goal is to design digital textbooks that serve not only as conduits of information into the mind of the reader, but also allow us to draw inferences about the reader at a point where interventions may increase the effectiveness of the material.
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Multivariable calculus textbook representation of non-cartesian coordinates: a misalignment between multivariable calculus textbook content and upper-division physics application
Abstract Upper-division undergraduate physics coursework necessitates a firm grasp on and fluid use of mathematical knowledge, including an understanding of non-cartesian (specifically polar, spherical and cylindrical) coordinates and how to use them. A limited body of research into physics students’ thinking about coordinate systems suggests that even for upper-division students, understanding of coordinate system concepts is emergent. To more fully grasp upper-division physics students’ incoming understanding of non-cartesian coordinates, the prevalence of non-cartesian content in seven popular Calculus textbooks was studied. Using content analysis techniques, a coding scheme was developed to gain insight into the presentation of coordinate system content both quantitatively and qualitatively. An initial finding was that non-cartesian basis unit vectors were absent in all but one book. A deeper analysis of three of the calculus textbooks showed that cartesian coordinates comprise an overwhelming proportion of the textbooks’ content and that qualitatively the cartesian coordinate system is presented as the default coordinate system. Quantitative and qualitative results are presented with implications for how these results might impact physics teaching and research at the middle and upper-division.
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- PAR ID:
- 10527548
- Publisher / Repository:
- European Journal of Physics
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- European Journal of Physics
- Volume:
- 45
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0143-0807
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 035702
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6404/ad2b98
