Free-response research-based assessments, like the Colorado Upper-division Electrostatics Diagnostic (CUE), provide rich, fine-grained information about students' reasoning. However, because of the difficulties inherent in scoring these assessments, the majority of the large-scale conceptual assessments in physics are multiple choice. To…

We discuss common difficulties in upper-division electricity and magnetism (E&M) in the areas of Gauss's law, vector calculus, and electric potential using both quantitative and qualitative evidence. We also show that many of these topical difficulties may be tied to student difficulties with mathematics. At the junior level, some students…

Over the course of four years, we have researched and transformed a key course in the career of an undergraduate physics major--junior-level electricity and magnetism. With the aim of educating our majors based on a more complete understanding of the cognitive and conceptual challenges of upper-division courses, we used principles of active…

As part of an effort to systematically improve our junior-level E&M I course, we have developed a tool to assess student conceptual learning of electrostatics at the upper division. Together with a group of physics faculty, we established a list of learning goals for the course that, with results from student observations and interviews, served as…

Our previous research [Kost et al., Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 5, 010101 (2009)] examined gender differences in the first-semester, introductory physics class at the University of Colorado at Boulder. We found that: (1) there were gender differences in several aspects of the course, including conceptual survey performance, (2) these…

Previous research [S. J. Pollock et al., Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 3, 1 (2007)] showed that despite the use of interactive engagement techniques, the gap in performance between males and females on a conceptual learning survey persisted from pretest to post-test at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Such findings were counter to…

While it is well known which curricular practices can improve student performance on measures of conceptual understanding, the sustaining of these practices and the role of faculty members in implementing these practices are less well understood. We present a study of the hand-off of "Tutorials in Introductory Physics" [McDermott and Schaffer…

Previous research [Lorenzo et al., Am. J. Phys. 74, 118 (2006)] demonstrated that the difference in performance between male and female students can be reduced and even eliminated, in consistent fashion, by using interactive engagement techniques in the introductory physics classroom. The present paper describes similar studies in a different,…