2023
Lecture Notes chapter 6: Empirical Research Process
This "Maker Lab" course focuses on supporting student open inquiries. In other words, students are tasked with doing empirical scientific research and thereby constructing scientific knowledge. This document aims to outline what this entails, and does so by closely following work by Carl Wieman* and Natasha Holmes**. Note: If you do not (yet) have Jupyter Notebook, you cannot fully utilize the .ipynb file. But the attached PDF will give an idea of its content and functionality. Note also: In order to interact with and fully utilize the Jupyter Notebook documents (including their hyperlinks and pointers to data and image files), it is helpful to save the entire collection locally in a way that preserves the original directory structure. This is easiest to accomplish by downloading all files at once via the JupyterPython-materials zip file and unpacking it (extracting the files) to your preferred local directory. This zip file of all Jupyter Notebook materials is located here: https://search.edusources.nl/materialen/d144774e-9705-489a-b3cd-28e3618f7324 C. Wieman, “Comparative cognitive task analyses of experimental science and instructional laboratory courses”, Phys.Teach. 53, 349 (2015). http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/SEI_research/files/Wieman_CTA_PT2015.pdf ** N. G. Holmes and C. Wieman, “Examining and contrasting the cognitive activities engaged in undergraduate research experiences and lab courses”, Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 12, 020103 (2016). https://journals.aps.org/prper/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.12.020103