North Dakota State University Faculty

Nate presented results of his collaborative work at the Nation AAPT Summer meeting in Philadelphia, PA, 2012.

A poster was presented at the Physics Education Research Conference, in Philadelphia, PA, 2012. 

A research paper is published in CBE-Life Science Education Journal.

J. Momsen, E. Offerdahl, M. Kryjevskaia, L. Montplaisir, E. Anderson, and N. Grosz, "Using assessments to investigate and compare the nature of learning in undergraduate science courses," CBE - LIfe Sciences Education, 12 (1), 30-38, (2013).

In Winter 2013 Nate became interested in student metacognitive thinking.  Results of his work were presented at the AAPT Summer meeting in Portland, OR.    

Nate enjoys participating in outreach activities organized by our department under the leadership of Dr. Denton.  On the pictures at right, Nate discusses the physics of waves with elementary school students.  The kids are doing great!

Kyle Mueller and Levi Remily

Kyle and Levi joined our group in fall 2013.  Currently they are involved in probing student metacognition in introductory physics courses.

Wil worked on a project that focuses on disentangling student conceptual understanding from reasoning skills.  Wil collaborated closely with Nate Grosz (graduate student) on analyzing student responses in lab and probing the effect of socially-mediated metacognition on student reasoning.  Wil presented results of this collaborative effort in a poster symposium at NDSU; Nate gave an oral presentation at the National AAPT Summer Meeting in Minneapolis, MN (July, 2014).

Corey has been applying heuristic-analytic theory of reasoning to probe inconsistencies in student thinking in the context of physics instruction.  In addition, Corey was  interested in examining relationships between individual student thinking styles and reasoning approaches in physics. Results of Corey's work were presented at a poster symposium at NDSU.

When Allie joined our research group in Summer 2013, she was an undergraduate physics student at Mount Holyoke College.  During the summer, Allie participated in an intensive research project focusing on probing the role of spacial-visual abilities in student understanding of wave phenomena. 

Results of Allie's work will be reported at the National AAPT Winter meeting in Orlando, Florida (January 4-7, 2014) in a contributed talk and in a poster presentation. 

Currently, Allie is working on a paper that reports results of her study.

Prior to joining our group in the Summer 2013, Alistair had had a considerable experience with developing reflecting activities for introductory calculus-based physics students at Western Washington University.  Under the guidance of Prof. Andrew Boudreaux, Alistair had been developing research instruments in order to assess the effectiveness of these activities in a lab setting.  These also allowed the researchers to gain insights into student metacognition.  Alistair continues this work at NDSU.  

Results of Alistair's summer work will be reported at the National AAPT Winter meeting (January 2014) in a contributed talk and in a poster presentation.

Cody Gette

Undergraduate student

Cody joined our group in Fall 2012, during his senior year at NDSU.  Cody contributed to our project focused on investigation of student abilities to interpret and apply multi-variable expressions in introductory Physics courses.

Cody presented results of his work at the 5th Annual Undergraduate poster session and at the Physics Department seminar, NDSU.

Cody also gave an oral presentation at the Nation AAPT Winter meeting in Ontario, CA, 2012.

Cody's research with our group became a topic of his Capstone Project.

Cody was awarded the Outstanding Teaching Assistant award by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). He was awarded a one-year subscription to the AAPT, and was presented with an AAPT certificate of achievement.

Cody was twice awarded the prestigious Astronaut Scholarship Foundation scholarship, once in the 2010-2011 academic year, and once in the 2011-2012 academic year. Dr. Orven Swenson, with whom Cody was working at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering, nominated Cody both times.

In Winter 2012, Cody participated in the international Snow Sculpture Competition.  Enjoy Cody's pictures on the right  

Currently, Cody is a graduate student in Astrophysics at the University of Bonn, Germany.