Investigating students` views of experimental physics in German laboratory classes

TL;DR

This study introduces the GE-CLASS, a German adaptation of the E-CLASS survey, to assess students' views on experimental physics in German-speaking institutions, highlighting differences with US students.

Contribution

The paper develops and validates a German version of the E-CLASS survey and provides initial results from its application at the University of Potsdam.

Findings

GE-CLASS differs from E-CLASS in student responses.

Initial results show differences between German and US students' views.

The tool enables assessment of attitudes towards experimental physics in Germany.

Abstract

There is a large variety of goals instructors have for laboratory courses, with different courses focusing on different subsets of goals. An often implicit, but crucial, goal is to develop students` attitudes, views, and expectations about experimental physics to align with practicing experimental physicists. The assessment of laboratory courses upon this one dimension of learning has been intensively studied in US institutions using the Colorado Learning Attitudes Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). However, there is no such an instrument available to use in Germany, and the influence of laboratory courses on students` views about the nature of experimental physics is still unexplored at German-speaking institutions. Motivated by the lack of an assessment tool to investigate this goal in laboratory courses at German-speaking institutions, we present a translated version of the E-CLASS adapted to the context at German-speaking institutions. We call the German version of the E-CLASS, the GE-CLASS. We describe the translation process and the creation of an automated web-based system for instructors to assess their laboratory courses. We also present first results using GE-CLASS obtained at the University of Potsdam. A first comparison between E-CLASS and GE-CLASS results shows clear differences between University of Potsdam and US students' views and beliefs about experimental physics.