Search for: All records

We describe a study focusing on students' and faculty members' reasoning about problems of differing cognitive complexity related to the double-slit experiment (DSE) with single particles. In the first phase of the study, students in advanced quantum mechanics courses were asked these questions in written form. Additionally, individual interviews were conducted with ten students in which they were asked follow-up questions to make their thought processes explicit on the challenging problems. Students did well on the straightforward problem, showing they had some knowledge of the DSE after traditional instruction, but they struggled on the more complex ones. Even if explicitly asked to do so in interviews, students were often uncomfortable performing calculations or making approximations and simplifications, instead preferring to stick with their gut feeling. In the second phase of the study, the problems were broken down into more pointed questions to investigate whether students had knowledge of relevant concepts, whether they would do calculations as part of their solution approach if explicitly asked, and whether they explicitly noted using their gut feeling. While the faculty members' responses suggest that they could seamlessly move between conceptual and quantitative reasoning, most students were unable to combine concepts represented by different equations to solve the problems quantitatively. We conclude with instructional implications. 

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection in Investigating and Improving Quantum Education through Research.] One hallmark of expertise in physics is the ability to translate between different representations of knowledge and use the representations that make the problem-solving process easier. In quantum mechanics, students learn about several ways to represent quantum states, e.g., as state vectors in Dirac notation and as wave functions in position and momentum representation. Many advanced students in upper-level undergraduate and graduate quantum mechanics courses have difficulty translating state vectors in Dirac notation to wave functions in the position or momentum representation and vice versa. They also struggle when translating the wave function between the position and momentum representations. The research presented here describes the difficulties that students have with these concepts and how the research was used as a guide in the development, validation, and evaluation of a Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial (QuILT) to help students develop a functional understanding of these concepts. The QuILT strives to help students with different representations of quantum states as state vectors in Dirac notation and as wave functions in position and momentum representation and with translating between these representations. We discuss the effectiveness of the QuILT from in-class implementation and evaluation. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

Students in introductory college physics often have wide ranges of preparation, making it challenging to deliver effective instruction for all. While numerous educational products and strategies have been shown to be broadly effective, there is a need for research-based online materials that support personalized learning and focus specifically on improving problem-solving abilities. Building from our Interactive Video Vignettes (IVVs), we are developing freely available Interactive Video-Enhanced Tutorials (IVETs). These combine videos of real instructors who guide students through an expert-like problem-solving process using a series of required questions that motivate students to interact with the material. Research on the effectiveness of the IVETs is underway and preliminary results are encouraging.