PROCEEDINGS OF THE 19TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2016
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Beyond procedures: Quantitative reasoning in upper-division Math Methods in Physics
Page: 1077
Many upper-division physics courses have as goals that students should ‘think like a physicist.’ While this is not well-defined, most would agree that thinking like a physicist includes quantitative reasoning skills: considering limiting cases, dimensional analysis, and using approximations. However, there is often relatively little curricular support for these practices and many instructors do not assess them explicitly. As part of a project to investigate student mathematical learning in upper-division physics, we have developed a number of written questions testing the extent to which students in an upper-division course in Mathematical Methods in Physics can employ these skills. Although there are limitations to assessing these skills with written questions, they can provide insight to the extent to which students can apply a given skill when prompted.