Education research is our focus
Welcome to PER-Central, a resource collection for physics education researchers. Here you may find articles, theses and dissertations, research groups, curricular material, and news and events of interest to the PER Community. Learn more about PER-Central.
PER Literature
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- Basic Research
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By Topic:
Astronomy, Classical Mechanics, Electricity & Magnetism, Fluid Mechanics, General Physics, Mathematical Tools, Modern Physics, Optics, Oscillations & Waves, Other Sciences, Quantum Physics, Relativity, Thermo & Stat Mech
Reviews in PER
Over the past two decades, the PER community has developed a number of effective instructional strategies for calculus-based university physics classes.
This review article helps to bring a set of those results to the instructional community:
The Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) project
by R. J. Beichner, J. M. Saul, D. S. Abbott, J. J. Morse, D. L. Deardorff, R. J. Allain, S. W. Bonham, M. H. Dancy, and J. S. Risley.
Find more articles that help to bridge research and practice in Volume 1 of Reviews in PER.
Community Resources
PER Programs
Browse the different PER groups and their descriptions on the PER Program Map.
For the Classroom
SEI: Upper-Division Electrodynamics (E&M 2) Course Materials
This web site contains a complete suite of resources suitable for the second semester of an upper-division undergraduate electricity and magnetism class. The materials include clicker questions, in-class activities, homework problems, and assessments.
Find more PER-based Curricular Materials: Course Packages | Student Activities | Pedagogy Guides
Research Instruments
Magnetism Conceptual Survey
The Magnetism Conceptual Survey (MCS), developed by Singh and Li, is designed to evaluate students' conceptual understanding of magnetism up to Faraday's law. It is written for algebra- and calculus-based introductory courses.
