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  • Open Access

Investigating students’ views of experimental physics in German laboratory classes

E. Teichmann1, H. J. Lewandowski2,3, and M. Alemani1,*

  • 1Universität Potsdam, Institut für Physik und Astronomie, Potsdam 14476, Deutschland
  • 2Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
  • 3JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA

  • *alemani@uni-potsdam.de
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Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 18, 010135 – Published 27 April, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.18.010135

Abstract

There is a large variety of goals instructors have for laboratory courses, with different courses focusing on different subsets of goals. An often implicit, but crucial, goal is to develop students’ attitudes, views, and expectations about experimental physics to align with practicing experimental physicists. The assessment of laboratory courses upon this one dimension of learning has been intensively studied in U.S. institutions using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). However, there is no such an instrument available to use in Germany, and the influence of laboratory courses on students views about the nature of experimental physics is still unexplored at German-speaking institutions. Motivated by the lack of an assessment tool to investigate this goal in laboratory courses at German-speaking institutions, we present a translated version of the E-CLASS adapted to the context at German-speaking institutions. We call the German version of the E-CLASS, the GE-CLASS. We describe the translation process and the creation of an automated web-based system for instructors to assess their laboratory courses. We also present first results using GE-CLASS obtained at the University of Potsdam. A first comparison between E-CLASS and GE-CLASS results shows clear differences between University of Potsdam and U.S. students’ views and beliefs about experimental physics.

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Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 18, 010135– Published 27 April, 2022
  • Received 28 January 2022
  • Accepted 16 March 2022
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