This article describes a curricular innovation designed to help students experience authentic physics inquiry with an emphasis on computational modeling and scientific communication. The educational design centers on a new type of assignment called a computational essay, which was developed and implemented over the course of two semesters of an intermediate electricity and magnetism course at the University of Oslo, Norway. We describe the motivation, learning goals, and scaffolds used in the computational essay project, with the intention that other educators will be able to replicate and adapt our design. We also report on initial findings from this implementation, including key features of student-written computational essays, student reflections on the inquiry process, and self-reported conceptual and attitudinal development. Based on these findings, we argue that computational essays can serve a key role in introducing students to open-ended, inquiry-based work and setting the foundation for future computational research and studies.

中文翻译：

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使用计算论文来支持专业物理实践

本文描述了一项旨在帮助学生体验真实物理探究的课程创新，重点是计算建模和科学交流。教育设计以一种称为计算论文的新型作业为中心，该作业是在挪威奥斯陆大学两个学期的中级电学和磁学课程中开发和实施的。我们描述了计算论文项目中使用的动机、学习目标和支架，旨在让其他教育工作者能够复制和调整我们的设计。我们还报告了此实施的初步结果，包括学生撰写的计算论文的主要特征、学生对探究过程的反思以及自我报告的概念和态度发展。