My recent research has focused on student understanding on the learning of physics. This is a field classified as Physics Education Research. A Google search will yield many PER groups, notably those at the Unviersity of Maryland, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Minnesota, NCSU, Montana State, and University of Washington to name only a few.

My research has also centered around students' use of auditory graphs. I worked with the Science Access Project research group at Oregon State University's Physics Department, and my advisor was Dr. John Gardner. I most recently headed studies to develop information and manuals for the TRIANGLE and Accessible Graphing Calculator programs. I have also worked on non-visual methods to represent information contained in graphs and pictures that are used in physics. Specifically, I have developed web based tests to compare visual and auditory (sound) graphs.

Several examples of auditory graphs can be found on the Sonitypes page. For this project I created a data conversion program, called DataReader, which converts X Y data pairs into a SLG sound file format.

The main focus of my Ph.D. research was centered on the Auditory vs. Visual Graph Test that I developed. This test compares subjects' abilities to answer math and physics questions when receiving either visual or auditory graphs. Another study that I developed and conducted used the Auditory Preference Test to compare subjects' preferences for different types of auditory graphs. Results from these tests are in my Ph.D. Thesis which I successfully defended on April 30, 1999.

http://academics.uww.edu/physics/scs/index.html