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Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University (OSU) and Rochester Institute of Technology are involved in an ongoing study addressing issues related to writing activities in the physics classroom. Students in the physics 103 and 104 course sequence at OSU “The World of Energy” view weekly videos then turn in summaries as part of their homework grade. These summaries are given one point if turned in; they are not graded for the quality of their content. In winter quarter, 2006, some students were given substantial feedback on these summaries with comments aimed to improve their writing. Feedback-induced improvement in their video summaries is demonstrated in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University and Rochester Institute of Technology are involved in an ongoing study addressing issues related to writing activities in the physics classroom. In summer quarter, 2005, the introductory calculus-based physics lab students wrote essays, some sections with and some without explicit writing instruction. We found a student’s essay grade for English correlated strongly with that assigned for physics. In addition, we have studied the location and type of comments made by both physics and English instructors on individual student essays, and the statements students made within their essays. The results from the analysis of our data will be presented. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the Ohio State University (OSU), some laboratory sections were replaced with Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) labs during the 3-quarter calculus-based introductory physics sequence this past academic year. The ISLE labs have been developed by the PAER Group at Rutgers University; implementation at OSU is discussed, making a direct comparison of OSU students participating in ISLE labs with students in pre-existing labs under the same large-lecture instruction. Assessment included diagnostic tests and feedback from a Q-type instrument. The ISLE environment focuses on helping students develop scientific abilities, so we also administered a voluntary lab ‘practical exam’ aimed at testing if these abilities were gained by the students in the ISLE labs. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The Ohio State University’s existing labs are not meeting their educational goals and students consistently rate them as having low value. This paper explores some of the reasons that standard introductory physics laboratories are not having the expected impact, and describes the implementation of Virtual Reality based experiments to improve upon lab effectiveness. Student response to these experiments and preliminary results regarding their impact on student learning will be discussed. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physics by Inquiry (PbI) has been adopted and taught at the Ohio State University for more than a decade. A Q-type instrument, the LPVI, was used to assess students’ perceptions of this teaching method and measure the consonance between these and instructors’ goals. We present methods of analysis to make use of all the information collected with this survey. In applying the LPVI to different sections of the PbI course, we found many similarities in students’ perceptions and also some interesting differences. We also found similarities and differences between students’ perceptions and the goals of PbI. © 2006 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]