Exploring student learning in design- and project-based laboratory courses

The physics department at Queen's University in Canada has embarked on a journey to transform its advanced undergraduate laboratory courses using a holistic backward design approach. Student learning activities and course assessments have been redeveloped to align with a common set of learning objectives adapted from the AAPT recommendations for the Undergraduate Physics Laboratory Curriculum. Our main focus has been to shift the traditional prescribed lab courses to be more design- and project-based. We have been measuring the effectiveness of this shift by employing a set of educational research tools including observing students in the labs, evaluating student learning in their assignments, and surveying students on their experimental strategies. I will talk about the various strategies we employed in transforming our 2nd, 3rd and 4th year lab courses. I will showcase our research findings of the effect of these changes on student learning. These include qualitative data analysis of student reflections on their project experience as well as audio recordings comparing students performing prescribed versus design-based experiments.