We redesigned the upper-level chemical engineering laboratory sequence at Stanford University to shift the focus from learning various analytic techniques, to having students learn to make the same decisions that an expert experimentalist makes in the laboratory. Each course in the two-course sequence had different levels of structure and available agency to scaffold the decision-making process for students in a way that would help them practice making the relevant decisions.

Omitted variable bias occurs in most statistical models. Whenever a confounding variable that is correlated with both dependent and independent variables is omitted from a statistical model, estimated effects of included variables are likely to be biased due to omitted variables. This issue is particularly problematic in physics education research where many research studies are quasiexperimental or observational in nature due to ethical and logistical limitations.

Physics lab instruction is evolving in response to changing technology, a desire to better prepare students for diverse careers, and renewed focus from physics education researchers. To prepare researchers to evaluate progress in instructional labs in the future, this study set out to understand the current state of instructional physics labs in North America. Using information collected from instructors intending to use two research-based lab assessments, we evaluate the reach, organization, goals, and pedagogies from over 200 unique instructional lab courses at over 100 institutions.

The goals for lab instruction are receiving critical attention in the physics education community due to multiple reports and research findings. In this paper, we describe a theoretically motivated scheme to evaluate instructional lab curricula and apply that scheme to three implementations of an electricity and magnetism lab curriculum.

Students’ positions within the social network of a physics classroom have been shown to correlate with students’ sense of belonging, performance, and persistence in physics. Current research in PER aims to understand how different types of active learning classrooms promote the development of students’ social networks. In this work, we begin to examine how these networks develop in introductory physics labs where there is typically ample space and freedom for students to interact with their peers and build a community of learners.

In physics lab groups, students experience a wide range of equitable and inequitable interactions. After observing videos of students collaborating in an introductory physics lab, we defined that an equitable group is one in which every student’s bids are heard by their peers. We developed a methodology to characterize different lab groups by tracking students’ bid exchanges and assessing their levels of inchargeness.

Problematizing is a physics practice involving the articulation of a gap in understanding into a clear question or problem. Inquiry-based labs may be conducive to problematizing behaviors, as students often collect data that do not agree with simplified models or their intuitive predictions. In this study, we analyzed video of students performing a lab in which they find the acceleration of an object in flight to be different from what the presented models predict. We aimed to identify the various activities that groups engaged in upon recognizing this inconsistency.

. Instructional physics labs are critical junctures for many STEM majors to develop an understanding of experimentation in the sciences. Students can acquire useful experimental skills and grow their identities as scientists. However, many traditionally-instructed labs do not necessarily involve authentic physics experimentation features in their curricula. Recent research calls for a reformation in undergraduate labs to incorporate more student agency and choice in the learning processes. In our institution, we have adopted open-ended lab teaching in the introductory physics courses.