Student Perceptions of Structural Messaging in Physics Course

In this talk, I introduce structural messaging – the implicit ways that course structures (e.g., activities, assessments, and course policies) communicate to students how they should engage in learning. I propose that structural messaging is an important consideration when designing courses to support productive beliefs about learning. Although structural messaging and its alignment with instructor messaging (i.e., what an instructor says or does in class) is often implicitly considered in teaching and course design, a clearer understanding of structural messaging can help unify messaging within physics courses and mitigate unintended conflicts with instructors’ goals. I will present examples from current research – in introductory and intermediate-level physics courses – showing how students can explicitly attend to structural messaging and its alignment with instructor messaging. These examples illustrate how the structural messaging embodied in particular groupwork and grading structures can relate to physics students’ perceptions around sense of community, belonging, growth mindset, and care. I will close by discussing implications for course design and future research.