Publications

2023
Kelly Miller, Tobias Espinosa, Ives Araujo, and Isaura Gallegos. 2023. “Response-shift bias in student self-efficacy during an actively taught physics course.” Physical Review Physics Education Research, 19, 2, Pp. 020167. Publisher's Version
2022
Greg Kestin and Kelly Miller. 2022. “Harnessing active engagement in educational videos: Enhanced visuals and embedded questions.” Physical Review Physics Education Research, 18, 1, Pp. 010148. Publisher's Version
Kelly Miller, Greg Kestin, and Olivia Miller. 2022. “How gender composition and group formation impact the effectiveness of group work in two-stage collaborative exams.” Physical Review Physics Education Research, 18, 2, Pp. 020137. Publisher's Version
2021
Ives Araujo, Tobias Espinosa, Kelly Miller, and Eric Mazur. 2021. “Innovation in the teaching of introductory physics in higher education: The Applied Physics 50 course at Harvard University.” Revista Brasileira de Ensino de F{\'\i}sica, 43.
2020
Greg Kestin, Kelly Miller, Logan S McCarty, Kristina Callaghan, and Louis Deslauriers. 2020. “Comparing the effectiveness of online versus live lecture demonstrations.” Physical Review Physics Education Research, 16, 1, Pp. 013101.
Kelly Miller, Gerhard Sonnert, and Philip Sadler. 2020. “ The Influence of Student Enrollment in Pre-College Engineering Courses on Their Interest in Engineering Careers Courses on Their Interest in Engineering Careers .” Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER) , 10, 1, Pp. 90-102. Publisher's Version
2019
Ana Rita Mota, Nilüfer Didiş Körhasan, Kelly Miller, and Eric Mazur. 2019. “Homework as a metacognitive tool in an undergraduate physics course.” Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15, 1, Pp. 010136.
Louis Deslauriers, Logan S McCarty, Kelly Miller, Kristina Callaghan, and Greg Kestin. 2019. “Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116, 39, Pp. 19251–19257.
Meghan Marshall, Lydia Wilkinson, Viviane Yargeau, Maria Orjuela-Laverde, Myra Bloom, Brandiff Caron, Louise Meunier, Greg Zilberbrant, Paul Okrutny, Jonathan Verrett, and others. 2019. “Preparing Tomorrow’s Engineer-Communicators: A Review of Models for Effective Communication Instruction.” Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA).
Tobias Espinosa, Kelly Miller, Ives Araujo, and Eric Mazur. 2019. “Reducing the gender gap in students’ physics self-efficacy in a team-and project-based introductory physics class.” Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15, 1, Pp. 010132.
Nilüfer Didiş Körhasan and Kelly Miller. 2019. “Students’ mental models of wave-particle duality.” Canadian Journal of Physics, ja.
2018
Kelly Miller, Brian Lukoff, Gary King, and Eric Mazur. 2018. “Use of a social annotation Platform for Pre-class reading assignments in a Flipped introductory Physics class.” In Frontiers in Education, 3: Pp. 8. Frontiers.
2017
Kelly Miller, Gerhard Sonnert, and Philip Sadler. 11/7/2017. “The influence of students’ participation in STEM competitions on their interest in STEM careers.” International Journal of Science Education, Part B, Pp. 1-20. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Pre-college student participation in science fairs, robotics competitions, computing contests and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) competitions increases every year in the United States. This is despite the fact that little is known about the relationship between STEM competition participation and career interest in STEM. Through logistic regressions, this study addresses three main research questions: Controlling for student background variables and prior STEM career interest, does participating in a STEM competition increase the likelihood of STEM career interest at the end of high school? Does the field of competition (robotics, engineering, science fair, information technology) a student participates in influence the sub-discipline of STEM career interest? And, what is the relationship between the number of competitions participated in and the probability of interest in a STEM career? The study uses data from the ‘Outreach Programs and Science Career Intentions’ survey (N = 15,847), a large-scale sample of university students enrolled in mandatory English courses. Our data reveal three results of interest. First, students who participate in STEM competitions are more likely to express interest in a STEM-related career at the end of high school than are students who do not participate, even when students’ prior career interest in STEM is controlled for. Second, the relationship between competition participation and interest in a STEM career appears to be domain specific. Third, the impact of competition participation on pursuit of a STEM career is three times stronger when students compete in more than one competition. These findings suggest that competitions are an effective way to foster career interest in specific STEM careers.
Hyewon Jang, Nathaniel Lasry, Kelly Miller, and Eric Mazur. 3/1/2017. “Collaborative exams: Cheating? Or learning?” American Journal of Physics , 85, 3, Pp. 223-227. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Virtually all human activity involves collaboration, and yet, collaboration during an examination is typically considered cheating. Collaborative assessments have not been widely adopted because of the perceived lack of individual accountability and the notion that collaboration during assessments simply causes propagation of correct answers. Hence, collaboration could help weaker students without providing much benefit to stronger students. In this paper, we examine student performance in open-ended, two-stage collaborative assessments comprised of an individually accountable round followed by an automatically scored, collaborative round. We show that collaboration entails more than just propagation of correct answers. We find greater rates of correct answers after collaboration for all students, including the strongest members of a team. We also find that half of teams that begin without a correct answer to propagate still obtain the correct answer in the collaborative round. Our findings, combined with the convenience of automatic feedback and grading of open-ended questions, provide a strong argument for adopting collaborative assessments as an integral part of education.
2016
Kelly Miller, Sacha Zyto, David Karger, Junehee Yoo, and Eric Mazur. 2016. “Analysis of student engagement in an online annotation system in the context of a flipped introductory physics class,” 020143, Pp. 1–12.Abstract
We discuss student participation in an online social annotation forum over two semesters of a flipped, introductory physics course at Harvard University. We find that students who engage in high-level discussion online, especially by providing answers to their peers' questions, make more gains in conceptual understanding than students who do not. This is true regardless of students' physics background. We find that we can steer online interaction towards more productive and engaging discussion by seeding the discussion and managing the size of the sections. Seeded sections produce higher quality annotations and a greater proportion of generative threads than unseeded sections. Larger sections produce longer threads; however, beyond a certain section size, the quality of the discussion decreases.
Philip M Sadler, Gerhard Sonnert, Harold P Coyle, and Kelly A Miller. 2016. “Identifying Promising Items: The Use of Crowdsourcing in the Development of Assessment Instruments.” Educational Assessment, 21, 3, Pp. 196–214. Publisher's Version
2015
Kelly Miller, Julie Schell, Andrew Ho, Brian Lukoff, and Eric Mazur. 2015. “Response switching and self-efficacy in Peer Instruction classrooms.” Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research, 11, 1, Pp. 1–8.Abstract
Peer Instruction, a well-known student-centered teaching method, engages students during class through structured, frequent questioning and is often facilitated by classroom response systems. The central feature of any Peer Instruction class is a conceptual question designed to help resolve student misconceptions about subject matter. We provide students two opportunities to answer each question-once after a round of individual reflection and then again after a discussion round with a peer. The second round provides students the choice to switch their original response to a different answer. The percentage of right answers typically increases after peer discussion: most students who answer incorrectly in the individual round switch to the correct answer after the peer discussion. However, for any given question there are also students who switch their initially right answer to a wrong answer and students who switch their initially wrong answer to a different wrong answer. In this study, we analyze response switching over one semester of an introductory electricity and magnetism course taught using Peer Instruction at Harvard University. Two key features emerge from our analysis: First, response switching correlates with academic selfefficacy. Students with low self-efficacy switch their responses more than students with high self-efficacy. Second, switching also correlates with the difficulty of the question; students switch to incorrect responses more often when the question is difficult. These findings indicate that instructors may need to provide greater support for difficult questions, such as supplying cues during lectures, increasing times for discussions, or ensuring effective pairing (such as having a student with one right answer in the pair). Additionally, the connection between response switching and self-efficacy motivates interventions to increase student self-efficacy at the beginning of the semester by helping students develop early mastery or to reduce stressful experiences (i.e., high-stakes testing) early in the semester, in the hope that this will improve student learning in Peer Instruction classrooms.
2014
Kelly Miller, Nathaniel Lasry, Brian Lukoff, Julie Schell, and Eric Mazur. 2014. “Conceptual question response times in Peer Instruction classrooms.” Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research, 10, 2, Pp. 020113. Publisher's Version
Kelly Miller, Sacha Zyto, David Karger, and Eric Mazur. 2014. “Improving Online Class Forums by Seeding Discussions and Managing Section Size.” In Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale Conference, Pp. 173––174. Atlanta, Georgia, USA: ACM.
James M Fraser, Anneke L Timan, Kelly Miller, Jason E Dowd, Laura Tucker, and Eric Mazur. 2014. “Teaching and physics education research: bridging the gap.” Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society (Great Britain), 77, 3, Pp. 032401. Publisher's VersionAbstract
Physics faculty, experts in evidence-based research, often rely on anecdotal experience to guide their teaching practices. Adoption of research-based instructional strategies is surprisingly low, despite the large body of physics education research (PER) and strong dissemination effort of PER researchers and innovators. Evidence-based PER has validated specific non-traditional teaching practices, but many faculty raise valuable concerns toward their applicability. We address these concerns and identify future studies required to overcome the gap between research and practice.

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