Student Understanding and Enjoyment in Introductory Physics

Recent research in physics education has shown that a student's perception of enjoyment may have a large influence on what they understand. When they have a favorable attitude to what and how they can learn new concepts they generally also have strong reasoning ability and conceptual understanding. Our research was conducted through the administration of three diagnostic tests (EBAPS, Lawson, CSEM/FCI) at BYUI over the last several semesters and shows what we think are some interesting correlations.