Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Tutorials in Physics: Quantum Mechanics is a set of curricular materials for supplementing upperdivision quantum mechanics instruction, developed by the physics education group at the University of Washington. We describe the development of a sequence of three tutorials that focused on quantum measurements and time dependence. This sequence of tutorials is based on prominent findings in the research literature related to student understanding, as well as classroom techniques and strategies that have proved effective in other instructional contexts in physics. We also present data from a set of four exam questions used to evaluate how effectively these tutorials improve student ability to use correct mathematical and conceptual reasoning to predict the time evolution of quantum probabilities. We find that student performance on each question is significantly better than on corresponding questions given after only traditional instruction, with effect sizes that range from small to moderate. This improvement, along with a decrease in the prevalence of common incorrect lines of reasoning, supports our claim that this set of three tutorials from Tutorials in Physics: Quantum Mechanics assists advanced undergraduate students’ in developing a conceptual understanding of some of the fundamental quantum concepts about time evolution and measurements when given after traditional lecture instruction. However, our results also show that there are some topics with which many students still struggle and, thus, that there remains room for further research and development of materials for these topics.