IGE Track 1: Assessing and improving real-world problem-solving skills in graduate physics coursework

Physics graduate programs are designed to prepare students to be critical thinkers and independent scientists. Yet, most of the early parts of a physics graduate degree are focused on content-specific coursework in which students solve formulaic problems which bear little resemblance to the kind of ill-defined (“real-world”) problems they will encounter in the workplace. Indeed, most physics PhD recipients don’t necessarily do work directly related to physics. They need transferrable problem-solving skills that can be applied in a range of contexts so that they are able to solve problems that may not even be known at this point. This National Science Foundation Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) Track 1 award to Auburn University will develop and validate assessments of real-world problem solving suitable for graduate physics coursework and use those assessments as a basis for program evaluation and teaching innovations. This work will modernize physics graduate education by bringing the canonical sets of physics content knowledge into the real-world. It will also contribute to literature on effective, research-based teaching in graduate STEM programs. This project will bring together graduate students and practicing physicists to collaboratively (1) define skills-focused learning outcomes for graduate physics programs, (2) develop and validate assessments of those problem-solving skills, and (3) redesign graduate coursework to improve students’ training in those problem-solving skills. The first step will be done through focus groups with physicists from a range of subdisciplines to better understand how fundamental physics knowledge is used in practice. These focus groups will then inform the design of research-based assessments which can be used to measure the application of this knowledge to novel problems in physics. These assessments will be validated with a nationwide sample of physics researchers and graduate students through think-aloud interviews. These results will then form the basis of a quasi-experimental pilot test of a novel problem-solving based curriculum at Auburn University. This will set the stage for broad-scale educational innovations across graduate STEM education. The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.