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Full-Text Articles in Education
Networks Identify Productive Forum Discussions, Adrienne L. Traxler, A. Gavrin, Rebecca Lindell
Networks Identify Productive Forum Discussions, Adrienne L. Traxler, A. Gavrin, Rebecca Lindell
Physics Faculty Publications
Discussion forums provide a channel for students to engage with peers and course material outside of class, accessible even to commuter and nontraditional populations. Forums can build classroom community and aid learning, but students do not always take up these tools. We use network analysis to compare three semesters of forum logs from an introductory calculus-based physics course. The networks show dense structures of collaboration that differ significantly between semesters, even though aggregate participation statistics remain steady. After characterizing network structure for each semester, we correlate students’ centrality—a numeric measure of network position—with final course grade. Finally, we use a …
Item-Level Gender Fairness In The Force And Motion Conceptual Evaluation And The Conceptual Survey Of Electricity And Magnetism, Rachel Henderson, Paul Miller, John Stewart, Adrienne L. Traxler, Rebecca Lindell
Item-Level Gender Fairness In The Force And Motion Conceptual Evaluation And The Conceptual Survey Of Electricity And Magnetism, Rachel Henderson, Paul Miller, John Stewart, Adrienne L. Traxler, Rebecca Lindell
Physics Faculty Publications
Gender gaps on the most widely used conceptual inventories created by physics education researchers have been extensively studied. Most of the research exploring the consistent gender gaps has been performed at the student level using the total evaluation score; less research has been performed examining these assessments at the item level and this research has been predominately restricted to the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). Many studies have identified subsets of FCI items as unfair to either men or women. An item is fair if men and women of equal ability in conceptual physics score equally on the item. This study …
Gender Fairness Within The Force Concept Inventory, Adrienne L. Traxler, Rachel Henderson, John Stewart, Gay Stewart, Alexis Papak, Rebecca Lindell
Gender Fairness Within The Force Concept Inventory, Adrienne L. Traxler, Rachel Henderson, John Stewart, Gay Stewart, Alexis Papak, Rebecca Lindell
Physics Faculty Publications
Research on the test structure of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has largely ignored gender, and research on FCI gender effects (often reported as “gender gaps”) has seldom interrogated the structure of the test. These rarely crossed streams of research leave open the possibility that the FCI may not be structurally valid across genders, particularly since many reported results come from calculus-based courses where 75% or more of the students are men. We examine the FCI considering both psychometrics and gender disaggregation (while acknowledging this as a binary simplification), and find several problematic questions whose removal decreases the apparent gender …