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Preliminary model for student ownership of projects written by Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer, Laura Ríos, and H. J. Lewandowski In many upper-division lab courses, instructors implement multiweek student-led projects. During such projects, students may design and carry out experiments, collect and analyze data, document and report their findings, and collaborate closely with peers and mentors. To better understand cognitive, social, and affective aspects of projects, we conducted an exploratory investigation of student ownership of projects. Ownership is a complex construct that refers to, e.g., students' willingness and ability to make strategic decisions about their project. Using data collected through surveys and interviews with students and instructors at five institutions, we developed a preliminary model for student ownership of projects. Our model describes ownership as a relationship between student and project. This relationship is characterized by student interactions with the project during three phases: choice of topic, execution of experiment, and synthesis of results. Herein, we explicate our model and demonstrate that it maps well onto students' and instructors' conceptions of ownership and ideas presented in prior literature. Physics Education Research Conference 2019 Part of the PER Conference series Provo, UT: July 24-25, 2019 

We report results from a study designed to identify links between undergraduate students' views about experimental physics and their engagement in multiweek projects in lab courses. Using surveys and interviews, we explored whether students perceived particular classroom activities to be features of experimental physics practice. We focused on 18 activities, including maintaining lab notebooks, fabricating parts, and asking others for help. Interviewees identified activities related to project execution as intrinsic to experimental physics practice based on high prevalence of those activities in interviewees' own projects. Fabrication-oriented activities were identified as conditional features of experimentation based on differences between projects, which interviewees attributed to variations in project resources. Interpersonal activities were also viewed as conditional features of experimentation, dependent upon one's status as novice or expert. Our findings suggest that students' views about experimental physics are shaped by firsthand experiences of their own projects and secondhand experiences of those of others. 

Methodological development of a new coding scheme for an established assessment on measurement uncertainty in laboratory courses written by Benjamin Pollard, Robert Hobbs, Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer, and H. J. Lewandowski Student understanding around measurement uncertainty is an important learning outcome in physics lab courses across the US, including at the University of Coloroado Boulder (CU), where it is among the major learning outcomes for the large introductory stand-alone physics lab course. One research tool for studying student understanding around measurement uncertainty, which we use in this course, is the Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ), an open-response assessment for measuring student understanding of measurement uncertainty. Interpreting and analyzing PMQ data involves coding students' written explanations to open-response questions. However, the preexisting scoring scheme for the PMQ does not fully capture the breadth and depth of reasoning contained in our students' responses. Therefore, we created a new coding scheme for the PMQ based on responses from our students. Here, we document our process to develop a new coding scheme for the PMQ, and describe the resulting codes. We also present examples of what can be learned from applying the new coding scheme at our institution. Physics Education Research Conference 2019 Part of the PER Conference series Provo, UT: July 24-25, 2019 

Although developing proficiency with modeling is a nationally endorsed learning outcome for upper-division undergraduate physics lab courses, no corresponding research-based assessments exist. Our longterm goal is to develop assessments of students' modeling ability that are relevant across multiple upper-division lab contexts. To this end, we interviewed 19 instructors from 16 institutions about optics lab activities that incorporate photodiodes. Interviews focused on how those activities were designed to engage students in some aspects of modeling. We find that, according to many interviewees, iteration is an important aspect of modeling. In addition, interviewees described four distinct types of iteration: revising apparatuses, revising models, revising data-taking procedures, and repeating data collection using existing apparatuses and procedures. We provide examples of each type of iteration, and discuss implications for the development of future modeling assessments.