Using drawings to compare groupmates' experiences in an introductory physics lab

Introductory physics labs not only develop students' conceptual learning, but they also enculturate students into STEM as a community-oriented profession based on cooperative work around shared resources.An introductory lab can be thought of as a Community of Practice, defined as a group of members pursuing a common set of goals by using conventional practices.Students can develop different perspectives of the community within an introductory lab, embedded in each student's mental model of the lab.We administered a survey in which students drew a picture of their mental model of Introductory Physics for Life Sciences.In analyzing the contents of these drawings, we need to establish whether students are drawing their internalized perspectives as intended, or are drawing photographic depictions of the literal lab environment.To address this concern, here we examine drawings from three groupmates with a shared lab experience.We arrange the contents of these drawings in a Venn diagram and look for similarities and differences in their literal, figurative, and abstract elements.We find that they hold only a few literal and figurative elements in common, with a broad diversity of unique literal, figurative, and abstract elements.This diversity gives us confidence that this survey collects information about students' perspectives as intended.