Student behavior in undergraduate physics laboratories: Designing experiments

Abstract

We investigated physics students’ behavior in a second-year laboratory by analyzing transcribed audio recordings of laboratory sessions. One student group was given both a problem and procedure and asked to analyze and explain their results. Another was provided with only the problem and asked to design and execute the experiment, interpret the data, and draw conclusions. These two approaches involved different levels of student inquiry and they have been described as guided and open inquiry, respectively. The latter gave students more opportunities to practice “designing experiments,” one of the six major learning outcomes in the recommendations for the undergraduate physics laboratory curriculum by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Qualitative analysis was performed of the audio transcripts to identify emergent themes and it was augmented by quantitative analysis for a richer understanding of student behavior. An important finding is that significant improvements can be made to undergraduate laboratories impacting student behavior by increasing the level of inquiry in laboratory experiments. This is most easily achieved by requiring students to design their own experimental procedures.