Nandana Weliweriya

In my research, I investigate students' problem-solving processes with representations.

I look at the macroscopic level on how students connect representations (diagrams, mathematics, gestures ...). Still, I also look at the microscopic level on how students generate spontaneous representations, decisions that students to evaluate the current status of their presentations, and steps they make to build on to representations.

In particular, this semester, 

• We investigate how students construct and coordinate among representations while making problem-solving videos.
• We compare how making problem-solving videos affect introductory-level physics students' performance in the course. 
• We investigate how Hybrid instruction during the pandemic affects students' study strategies, motivations, and group work in SCALE-UP classrooms.

Further, I'm interested in studying students' eye movement patterns when they solve physics problems, mainly when they develop representations as a part of their solution process.

[Physics problem-solving requires students to construct and coordinate multiple representations (algebraic, gestural, graphical, and verbal) that play a vital role in making physics knowledge and communication.  However, extensive research on students' ability to solve physics problems found that students have difficulties interpreting, constructing, and switching between representations.

In our recent work on upper-division student problem-solving processes, we use students' oral exam data to look at representations at a microscopic level. We use social semiotic resources' disciplinary affordances to describe how the representations are developed, determined to be insufficient, and replaced or augmented by new ones brought in by the students. Our analysis solely depends on student reasoning and the interviewer's notes to reason for students' thought processes. As the next step of this project, we wonder if we could track students' eye movements to investigate what representations or what features of representations they pay attention to while solving problems. This work aims to determine if and how students engage with and solve physics problems in a virtual reality platform. While solving problems, what features of representations students pay attention to how that affects student problem-solving processes. In this project, we use eye tracking-enabled Virtual Reality (VR) headsets and graphics-tablets that allows individuals or groups of students to enhance the immersive virtual reality platform with shared whiteboards. We plan to use this approach both in-person classrooms and across the internet, allowing collaborators to be in geographically distant locations.  While using VR+eye-tracking to learn about student gaze patterns during lectures and problem solving, we could easily use VR applications to allow students to see and interact with abstract physics concepts (like electric and magnetic fields) that are not physically available. VR helps us as educators to facilitate students go beyond relying on our words and 2-D drawings to see it directly to know how these physics concepts look like in 3-D.  This approach makes course material (notes, lab manuals, worksheets, etc.) and problem-solving activities in introductory, Upper-division Physics courses and broadly in STEM are interacting and welcoming to our students.]