Epistemology and expectations survey about experimental physics: Development and initial results

In response to national calls to better align physics laboratory courses with the way physicists engage in research, we have developed an epistemology and expectations survey to assess how students perceive the nature of physics experiments in the contexts of laboratory courses and the professional research laboratory. The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) evaluates students’ epistemology at the beginning and end of a semester. Students respond to paired questions about how they personally perceive doing experiments in laboratory courses and how they perceive an experimental physicist might respond regarding their research. Also, at the end of the semester, the E-CLASS assesses a third dimension of laboratory instruction, students’ reflections on their course’s expectations for earning a good grade. By basing survey statements on widely embraced learning goals and common critiques of teaching labs, the E-CLASS serves as an assessment tool for lab courses across the undergraduate curriculum and as a tool for physics education research. We present the development, evidence of validation, and initial formative assessment results from a sample that includes 45 classes at 20 institutions. We also discuss feedback from instructors and reflect on the challenges of large-scale online administration and distribution of results.

Figure 1

Two epistemological beliefs statements as they are presented to students in the pre and post E-CLASS online survey.

Figure 2

Two expectations questions as they are presented to students in the postsemester E-CLASS online survey.

Figure 3

The pre and post response data for a single statement summarized as a 2D histogram. The number inside each box corresponds to the number of students with each (pre, post) response.

Figure 4

Pre and post changes in students’ personal views about “What do YOU think when doing experiments for class?” for your class (red) and all students in similar level classes (i.e., introductory calculus-based physics classes) (blue). The circles show the presemester survey values. The arrows indicate the pre and post changes. The shaded bars are 95% confidence intervals. The data shown are for a subset of 3 out of 30 statements.

Figure 5

Comparison between overall pre and post scores for students’ personal views about “What do YOU think when doing experiments for class?” Your class (red) is compared with all students in similar-level classes (i.e., introductory calculus-based physics classes) (blue). The error bars show 95% confidence intervals. The overall mean shown here averages over all students and all statements on the survey.

Figure 6

Students’ views of the importance of different activities for earning a good grade in your class (red) and in similar-level classes (i.e., introductory calculus-based physics classes) (blue). The data shown are for a subset of 3 out of 23 statements.

Figure 7

Comparison of changes in students’ personal views versus their views about professional physicists. Red shows the change in students’ response to “What do YOU think when doing experiments for class?”. Green shows the change in students’ responses to “What would experimental physicists say about their research?”. The circles show the presemester survey values. The arrows indicate the pre and post shift. The shaded bars are 95% confidence intervals. The data shown are for a subset of 3 out of 30 statements.

Figure 8

Change in students’ interest in physics. Your class (red) refers to your own class. Similar-level classes (blue) refers to a set of students in all classes at the calculus-based introductory level.

Figure 9

Distribution of participation levels for all classes taking the E-CLASS survey. The percentage is calculated by diving the number of matched pre and post responses by the total number of students reported to be enrolled in the class.