Physics Education Research at the University of Washington

Physics Education Research (PER) is a form of disciplined-based education research conducted mostly in physics departments.  The Physics Education Group (PEG) at the University of Washington (UW) has spent more than 30 years developing methodologies to improve comprehension in introductory and advanced physics courses at the undergraduate level.  Scientific methodologies are used to identify student conceptual and reasoning difficulties and to develop instructional materials to address these difficulties.  Tutorials in Introductory Physics (Pearson, 1st Ed, 2002), consists of a set of worksheets designed for groups of four or five students to work on in weekly sessions.  The Tutorials are used in many colleges and universities in the US as well as in a number of other countries.  In addition to giving an overview on the use of Tutorials at UW, this work will report specific examples related to the effectiveness of tutorials in the introductory calculus based physics course.