An Inquiry-Based Undergraduate Physics Lab Transformation: Structure, Learning Goals, and Student Perceptions

Laboratory courses are an integral part of the introductory physics experience at most universities, but the format, learning goals, and implementation of these courses vary dramatically across institutions and programs. Recently there has been a call to refocus the learning goals of introductory lab courses to move away from content-validation companions to lecture and towards more authentic experimental experiences that highlight practical lab skills including data analysis, experimental design, and experimental modeling. At the University of Colorado - Denver we have taken up this call, rebuilding our introductory physics labs to be stand-alone courses in experimental physics that are completely disconnected from lecture and built on an instructional model of guided inquiry. As part of a larger project analyzing these lab transformations, here I present the structure and learning goals of these transformed courses, and give examples of the types of lab activities and measures of student learning outcomes. Additionally, I’ll discuss shifts in student perceptions of these lab courses, as measured both by responses to course feedback surveys and end of semester course evaluations.