02/08/2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️Rika Mardiana is a Fulbright scholar from Indonesia. 🇮🇩She is a PhD student in STEM Education specializing in physics in the Department of Teaching and Learning, College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University.
Her research focuses on cognitive psychology and Discipline-Based Physics Education Research (DBER-Physics), particularly conceptual understanding and the implications of teaching and learning physics in the classroom. She aims to improve students’ conceptual understanding of physics by exploring how different representations, problem-solving strategies, and instructional approaches influence learning. Her work integrates insights from cognitive psychology, such as spatial reasoning and mental modeling, to better understand how students and teachers engage with complex physics concepts.
About Indonesia🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩🇮🇩: Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia and has over 17,000 islands and hundreds of ethnic and languages. Sumatra is one of the largest islands, and it is the home of the Minangkabau people (West Sumatra). In the first picture, Rika is wearing a traditional outfit called “Bundo Kanduang,” which represents female wisdom and leadership and symbolizes the matrilineal society of Minangkabau.
Fun fact: The last photo is a clock tower, a.k.a. Jam Gadang, located in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. This clock has the same internal clock mechanism as Big Ben in London.
