Developing an online tool to collect causal maps of student reasoning

Physics majors often face uncertainty, struggling to identify specific subfields of interest within the discipline. To address this, it is crucial to understand how positive and negative factors affect students’ career interests. Our initiative focuses on the development of a unique digital tool that helps students map their subfield interests. This tool aids students by guiding the creation of information-rich causal maps to better understand the challenges they encounter. Unlike traditional surveys our tool works to capture the chronological story of an individual and identifies the level of impact specific experiences and beliefs have of subfield interest. This data includes interpretable graphical maps that have meaning to students and researchers. This presentation will highlight the development process of our tool, its role in assessing students' subfield interests in physics, and preliminary results from the network analysis of collected maps. In the long-term, data from this assessment will help departments provide more effective support for students’ career decision-making.