In 1993, Laws shared the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Education with Ronald K. Thornton, for their development of the Workshop Physics program. In 2010, she and University of Oregon professor David Sokoloff won the APS Excellence in Physics Education Award, for their work with the Activity Based Physics Group, "for twenty-three years of national and international leadership in the design, testing, validation, and dissemination of research-based introductory physics curricula, computer tools and apparatus that engage students in active learning based on the observation and analysis of real phenomena".