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Characterizing decision-making opportunities in undergraduate physics coursework
Open accessAbstract
A major goal of physics education is to develop strong problem-solving skills for students. To become expert problem solvers, students must have opportunities to deliberately practice those skills. In this work, we adopt a previously described definition of problem solving that consists of a set of 29 decisions made by expert scientists. We quantified the amount of practice undergraduate physics students get at making each decision by coding the decisions required in assignments from introductory, intermediate, and advanced physics courses at a prestigious university. A research-focused capstone course was the only example that offered substantial practice at a large range of decisions. Problems assigned in the traditional coursework required only a few decisions and routinely reduced potential opportunities for students to make other decisions. In addition, we modified traditional physics coursework to offer more decision-making practice. We observed that this increased the number of decisions students actually made in solving the problems. This work suggests that to better prepare undergraduates for solving problems in the real world, we must offer more opportunities for students to make and act on problem-solving decisions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
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STEM disciplines have traditionally relied on well-defined problems in homework assignments and exams to develop and assess student conceptual understanding and problem-solving competency.
“These disciplines have traditionally relied on well-defined problems in homework assignments and exams to develop and assess student conceptual understanding and problem-solving competency (Jonassen and Hung, 2015; Montgomery et al, 2024).”
From Scaffold or Crutch? Examining College Students' Use and Views of Generative AI Tools for STEM Education (2025) · cites this paper as Montgomery et al, 2024
The Introduction describes standard physics-course problems as simplified and well structured, and Problems analyzed confirms that the authors examined homework assignments and exams. The Conclusion finds that traditional physics coursework often provides a single well-defined solution path. The paper supports this characterization for physics, but does not establish it across STEM disciplines or specifically say these problems are used to develop and assess conceptual understanding and problem-solving competency. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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Wang, K. D., Wu, Z., Tufts, L., Wieman, C., Salehi, S., & Haber, N. (2025) · 2025 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) · doi:10.1109/educon62633.2025.11016406 · Cited by 28
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Metadata
- Authors
- Montgomery, B. J., Price, A. M., & Wieman, C. E.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- Venue
- Physical Review Physics Education Research
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Published
- 2024-07-29
- Volume
- 20
- Issue
- 2
- ISSN
- 2469-9896 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4401078035
- Cited by
- 6
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 5
- FWCI
- 7.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Physical Review Physics Education Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Science Education and Pedagogy
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Methods and Outcomes
- Social Sciences › Education › Problem and Project Based Learning
- Keywords
- problem solving, decision-making practices, undergraduate physics, capstone course, course design
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