Correlating students' beliefs about experimental physics with lab course success

TL;DR

This study investigates how students' beliefs about experimental physics relate to their success in lab courses, using the E-CLASS survey to measure epistemologies and analyze correlations with course grades.

Contribution

It introduces and validates the E-CLASS survey as a tool to assess students' epistemologies and correlates these beliefs with course performance.

Findings

E-CLASS scores show significant correlation with final grades.

The survey effectively measures students' beliefs about experimental physics.

Results support the validity of E-CLASS as an indicator of student learning outcomes.

Abstract

Student learning in instructional physics labs is a growing area of research that includes studies exploring students' beliefs and expectations about experimental physics. To directly probe students' epistemologies about experimental physics and support broader lab transformation efforts both at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) and nationally, we developed the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). Previous work focused on establishing the accuracy and clarity of the instrument through student interviews and preliminary testing. Ongoing validation efforts include establishing the extent to which student epistemologies as measured by E-CLASS align with other measures of student learning outcomes (e.g., course grades). Here, we report on correlations between final course grades and E-CLASS scores from two semesters of introductory and upper-division lab courses at CU and discuss implications of our findings for the validity of the E-CLASS instrument.