The Sankey plot shows the change in learning goals of the instructors who completed the instructor survey from before (left side of plot) to after (right side of plot) remote instruction.
Laboratories are an important part of the undergraduate physics curriculum. They allow for hands-on learning in complex, collaborative environments involving various technical equipment and low student-to-teacher ratios. However, due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, a multitude of colleges and universities across the U.S. transitioned to teaching labs remotely. We seek to measure the impact of this transition on student learning in lab courses, document the creative approaches to teaching remote labs, and assess the effectiveness of remote lab teaching strategies. We collected survey responses and interview data from students and instructors across the country as well as took an in-depth look at student experiences in a large, introductory-level, remote course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) that we designed for CU Boulder students.
In the News
- CU Boulder prof wins grant funded by the CARES Act to study the impact of physics labs going remote
- Rethinking Lab Courses When the Labs Are Closed
- During the pandemic, students do field and lab work without leaving home
- Lab teaching could be revolutionised by switch to online
The Physics Frontiers Centers (PFC) program supports university-based centers and institutes where the collective efforts of a larger group of individuals can enable transformational advances in the most promising research areas. The program is designed to foster major breakthroughs at the intellectual frontiers of physics by providing needed resources such as combinations of talents, skills, disciplines, and/or specialized infrastructure, not usually available to individual investigators or small groups, in an environment in which the collective efforts of the larger group can be shown to be seminal to promoting significant progress in the science and the education of students. PFCs also include creative, substantive activities aimed at enhancing education, broadening participation of traditionally underrepresented groups, and outreach to the scientific community and general public.