Epistemology/Ownership

Promoting students' sense of ownership over their work is an important aspect of learning, both in instructional and research settings. The importance of ownership is recognized by many instructors and advisors to be an important outcome of their students' efforts. However, for many instructors and researchers, what it means to have a sense of ownership may be understood only in broad and surface-level terms. In physics, one promising venue for engaging students in projects over which they feel ownership is the instructional lab course.

The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) was developed as a broadly applicable assessment tool for undergraduate physics lab courses. At the beginning and end of the semester, the E-CLASS assesses students' views about their strategies, habits of mind, and attitudes when doing experiments in lab classes. Students also reflect on how those same strategies, habits of mind, and attitudes are practiced by professional researchers.