Computational Essays in the Physics Classroom

TL;DR

This paper introduces computational essays as a novel educational tool that combines text and code to enhance students' argumentative writing skills in physics, demonstrated through a pilot in an undergraduate course.

Contribution

It presents the concept of computational essays for physics education and reports initial results from their implementation in an introductory course.

Findings

Students engaged with computational essays showed improved argumentation skills.

The pilot implementation demonstrated feasibility and positive student engagement.

Computational essays effectively integrate coding and writing in physics education.

Abstract

Writing and argumentation are critical to both professional physics and physics education. However, the skill of making an extended argument in writing is often overlooked in physics classrooms, apart from certain practices like lab notebooks or mathematical proofs. Computation is also critical to both professional physics and, increasingly, physics education. In recent years we have begun to develop a class of assignment, known as a computational essay, to both leverage the creative affordances of computation and help students build their argumentative writing skills. Computational essays are a type of essay or report that combine text and code to express an idea or make an argument, usually written in notebook software. In this article, we describe the motivation and philosophy behind computational essays, as well as initial results from a pilot implementation in an introductory undergraduate electricity and magnetism course.