Student experiences in a computational physics lab through the lens of Physics Computational Literacy

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Nearhood, Luke, Hamerski, Patti
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Nearhood, Luke
Hamerski, Patti
author_facet Nearhood, Luke
Hamerski, Patti
contents Computational physics is a key part of what it means to do physics in the twenty-first century. However, upper division computational physics remains a largely understudied area. We set out to understand the experiences of students in an upper division computational physics lab course. To that end we conducted semi-structured interviews with five students at the end of their second of three terms in the course sequence. We then analyzed these interviews utilizing the emerging framework of Physics Computational Literacy. We found that the way students express how they learn computational physics implies they are making tradeoffs between their development of the different aspects of computational literacy. Additionally, we found that how students approach developing social computational literacy varies across individuals, and is driven by unspoken assumptions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_12158
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Student experiences in a computational physics lab through the lens of Physics Computational Literacy
Nearhood, Luke
Hamerski, Patti
Physics Education
Computational physics is a key part of what it means to do physics in the twenty-first century. However, upper division computational physics remains a largely understudied area. We set out to understand the experiences of students in an upper division computational physics lab course. To that end we conducted semi-structured interviews with five students at the end of their second of three terms in the course sequence. We then analyzed these interviews utilizing the emerging framework of Physics Computational Literacy. We found that the way students express how they learn computational physics implies they are making tradeoffs between their development of the different aspects of computational literacy. Additionally, we found that how students approach developing social computational literacy varies across individuals, and is driven by unspoken assumptions.
title Student experiences in a computational physics lab through the lens of Physics Computational Literacy
topic Physics Education
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12158