∎ The Ohio State University's (OSU) Physics Education Research Group has been developing and test... more ∎ The Ohio State University's (OSU) Physics Education Research Group has been developing and testing Virtual Reality (VR) simulations∎ Winter quarter, 2005, we worked in conjunction with OSU's Center for Cognitive Science Eye Tracking Lab for an exploratory study of how students use the simulations∎ This poster discusses:
Abstract. Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The... more Abstract. Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The Ohio State University's existing labs are not meeting their educational goals and students consistently rate them as having low value. This paper explores some of the reasons that standard introductory physics laboratories are not having the expected impact, and describes the implementation of Virtual Reality based experiments to improve upon lab effectiveness.
Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University and Rochester Institu... more Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University and Rochester Institute of Technology are involved in an ongoing study addressing issues related to writing activities in the physics classroom. In summer quarter, 2005, the introductory calculus‐based physics lab students wrote essays, some sections with and some without explicit writing instruction. We found a student's essay grade for English correlated strongly with that assigned for physics.
Experimentation appears to be an ideal context in which several key aspects of scientific thinkin... more Experimentation appears to be an ideal context in which several key aspects of scientific thinking can be addressed. However, the traditional freshman laboratory does not appear to be successful in doing so. This paper argues that this has much to do with the way in which tasks are formulated. We propose a simple descriptive model based on the notion of the “idea space” that can be used to analyze task formulation that can promote meaningful critical thinking. A number of factors that affect the size of the idea space are discussed, such as conceptual metaphor and the perceived nature of questioning from a socio-cultural perspective, described in terms of knowledge and information flow.
At Oregon State University, we are undergoing curriculum reform in our large-enrollment introduct... more At Oregon State University, we are undergoing curriculum reform in our large-enrollment introductory calculus-based physics sequence. As part of this reform, we are integrating materials borrowed from the ISLE (Investigative Science Learning Environment) at Rutgers and California State University, Chico. ISLE has been found to help develop scientific abilities through processes practiced as authentic scientists. Using Peer Instruction to engage students in these practices, our curricular reforms assist the development of a community of practice [1] which enables students to participate in social interactions and make meaning of their experiences in class to build a shared repertoire of knowledge. Additionally students develop practice beyond our physics community as they participate in other academic as well as non-academic communities of practice throughout their daily lives. This poster will describe the development of students doing physics in the network of communities of practice and how we can support it.
Oregon State University’s (OSU) upper-division physics courses rearrange the traditional content ... more Oregon State University’s (OSU) upper-division physics courses rearrange the traditional content to center around conceptual and mathematical ideas, with the aim of having students engage in authentic practices of physics in an interactive environment. The physics majors’ introduction to Quantum Mechanics is the Quantum Measurements and Spin Paradigm (Spins). I taught this course using the existing activities in my first year at OSU. I am heavily influenced by the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) curriculum model that mirrors the goals of these upper- division courses. Having since spent two years implementing ISLE in the lower-division courses, when I taught the Spins course this year I modified some activities to align with ISLE methodology. I will discuss how the constructivist, scientific-abilities approach of ISLE helped me personalize the Spins course by providing connectivity between activities and a stronger emphasis on the goals surrounding preparing our students to think like physicists.
At Oregon State University, the introductory calculus-based physics sequence utilizes social enga... more At Oregon State University, the introductory calculus-based physics sequence utilizes social engagement as a learning tool. The reformed curriculum is modeled after the Interactive Science Learning Environment from Rutgers University, and makes use of Peer Instruction as a pedagogical tool to facilitate interactions. Over the past two years we have utilized a number of techniques to understand how to facilitate activities that promote productive discussion within the large lecture classroom. We specifically seek student discussion that goes beyond agreement on conceptual questions, encouraging deeper discussions such as what assumptions are appropriate, or how different assumptions would change the chosen answer to a given question. We have quantitative analysis of engagement based on video data, qualitative analysis of dialogue from audio data, and classroom observations by an external researcher. In this paper we share a subset of what we have learned about how to engage students in deep-level discussions during lecture.
At Oregon State University, we are reforming our large-enrollment introductory calculus-based phy... more At Oregon State University, we are reforming our large-enrollment introductory calculus-based physics sequence. We are integrating course goals and materials borrowed from ISLE (Investigative Science Learning Environment) which promotes student practice of processes of authentic scientists, and Peer Instruction which helps them engage in these practices. To help our students be able to justify their own knowledge, and develop ownership of that knowledge the instructor works to develop a productive community of practice [1] enabling students to participate in social interactions and make meaning of their experiences to build a shared repertoire of knowledge. This paper reports on strategies the instructor uses, challenges faced, and present evidence of both successes and failures in terms of achieving this aim.
Students who enroll for the special access course in physics at the University of Cape Town gener... more Students who enroll for the special access course in physics at the University of Cape Town generally do not speak English as first language and have experienced poor science teaching. As a consequence students experience a large range of difficulties in trying to learn physics. We discuss research carried out in two such areas (a) understanding of measurement and (b) engagement with the textbook. With regard to (a) an overview of the methodology, analysis framework and findings of previous work will be presented together with more recent preliminary findings regarding audience dependence when conveying measurement results. With regard to (b) the idea of writing chapter summaries was used to guide students through the book with the aim that the textbook would come to be valued an accessible resource. Findings from the analysis of the student summaries are presented
We want to fill the knowledge gap for the research on student practices in and out of the physic ... more We want to fill the knowledge gap for the research on student practices in and out of the physic classroom community of practice in order to help teachers attend to the students’ learning needs across settings and inform teachers how to make stronger connections between the students’ daily and classroom experiences. We first need to examine the classroom community to see how students and teacher negotiate meaning and practices so that we can better facilitate student learning in terms of moving towards more sophisticated epistemologies and forming identities as scientists. Looking beyond the four walls of the classroom where students also engage in scientific endeavors, we can examine how these communities of practice are linked to the classroom community and interact to strengthen or misdirect each other. The aim of this study is to construct a descriptive picture of these interlaced communities of practice and how they are connected to the physics classroom community. This would enable us to examine how the students’ perceived identity in these communities brings to bear on student physics learning. The introductory calculus based physics course is a large enrollment lecture taken as a requirement by many engineering and science majors. The year long sequence introduces the students to a large range of physics topics such as Newton’s laws, optics and electromagnetism in order to set a foundation for scientific reasoning and problem solving skills. To better facilitate the learning of these skills, the sequence is undergoing curricular reform that integrates materials borrowed from the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) curriculum at Rutgers and California State University at Chico (Etkina & Van Heuvelen, 2007). The curricular reforms also incorporate Peer Instruction (Crouch et al., 2007) to engage students in these practices and assist the development of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) through which students participate in social interactions and make meaning of their experiences in class to build a shared repertoire of knowledge. In order to explore the various communities of practice in the students’ daily life, interviews were conducted with individual students using personal meaning maps (Falk, 2003).
In Spring 2010, the Oregon State University physics department instituted a SCALE-UP (Student-Cen... more In Spring 2010, the Oregon State University physics department instituted a SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs) style studio classroom in the introductory, calculus-based physics series. In our initial implementation, comprised of two hours lecture, two hours of studio, and two hours lab work, the studio session was lead by a faculty member and either 2 GTAs or 1 GTA and 1 LA. We plan to move to a model where senior GTAs can lead studio sections after co-teaching with the faculty member. It is critical that we know how to prepare and support the instructional team in facilitating student learning in this setting. We examine GTA and LA pedagogical beliefs through reflective journaling, interviews, and personal experience of the authors. In particular, we examine how these beliefs changed over their first quarter of instruction, as well as the resources used to adapt to the new classroom environment.
The majority of “special access” students at the University of Cape Town are second language Engl... more The majority of “special access” students at the University of Cape Town are second language English speakers for whom reading the physics textbook is daunting. As a strategy to encourage meaningful engagement with the text, students wrote textbook summaries due the day material was covered in class. The summaries were returned, and they could bring them or re-write them for use during their examinations. A framework was developed to analyze the summaries based on Waywood, defining three cognitive levels seen in mathematics journaling: recounting, summarizing, and dialoging. This framework was refined, expanded, and tested. Interviews with students were conducted for their views on summary writing and survey questions were included on their final exams. The study was carried out in the 2007 spring semester of the “Foundation Physics Course,” a component of the special access program.
Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University (OSU) and Rochester I... more Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University (OSU) and Rochester Institute of Technology are involved in an ongoing study addressing issues related to writing activities in the physics classroom. Students in the physics 103 and 104 course sequence at OSU “The World of Energy” view weekly videos then turn in summaries as part of their homework grade. These summaries are given one point if turned in; they are not graded for the quality of their content. In winter quarter, 2006, some students were given substantial feedback on these summaries with comments aimed to improve their writing. An observed improvement in their video summaries is demonstrated in this paper as an example of using written feedback to effect student work with no external grade motivator.
Ininquirylabswetrytohelpstudentslearntomakescientificdecisions.Howsuccessfularewe?Aretheinstructo... more Ininquirylabswetrytohelpstudentslearntomakescientificdecisions.Howsuccessfularewe?Aretheinstructor and the lab material getting the message across to the students? A modified version of the Laboratory Program Variables Inventory (LPVI) [5], a Q-type instrument, has been used to study students’ perceptions of introductory physics labs. We identified statements related to student dependence on instructors, separating the statements into categories of “student directed”, “intermediate”, and “instructor directed”. We analyzed different labs from different universities and found that students’ perceptions of how much control they had over the lab varied with lab type. We also found a dependence of student perceptions on lab instructor within each type of lab (THIS SENTENCE DOESN’T MAKE SENSE TO ME). The variation between different types of lab was greater than the variation between instructors within the lab type. This is a promising tool for assessing lab material and instruction.
At the Ohio State University (OSU), some laboratory sections were replaced with Investigative Sci... more At the Ohio State University (OSU), some laboratory sections were replaced with Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) labs during the 3-quarter calculus-based introductory physics sequence this past academic year. The ISLE labs have been developed by the PAER Group at Rutgers University; implementation at OSU is discussed, making a direct comparison of OSU students participating in ISLE labs with students in pre-existing labs under the same large-lecture instruction. Assessment included diagnostic tests and feedback from a Q-type instrument. The ISLE environment focuses on helping students develop scientific abilities, so we also administered a voluntary lab ‘practical exam’ aimed at testing if these abilities were gained by the students in the ISLE labs.
Innovative STEM curricula such as the ISLE (Investigative Science Learning Environment) curriculu... more Innovative STEM curricula such as the ISLE (Investigative Science Learning Environment) curriculum [1] are centered on active engagement in social learning processes as a means to achieve curricular goals. Classroom practices are highly interactive to facilitate students' development of authentic scientist abilities. To the students, these classroom practices often seem very different from their previous learning experiences in terms of behavioral expectations, attitude, and what it means to learn. Consequently, students must modify ...
Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The Ohio Stat... more Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The Ohio State University’s existing labs are not meeting their educational goals and students consistently rate them as having low value. This paper explores some of the reasons that standard introductory physics laboratories are not having the expected impact, and describes the implementation of Virtual Reality based experiments to improve upon lab effectiveness. Student response to these experiments and preliminary results regarding their impact on student learning will be discussed.
It is received wisdom that writing in a discipline helps students learn the disci- pline, and mil... more It is received wisdom that writing in a discipline helps students learn the disci- pline, and millions of dollars have been committed at many universities to supporting such writing. We show that evidence for effectiveness is anecdotal, and that little data-based material informs these prejudices. This thesis begins the process of sci- entific study of writing in the discipline, in specific, in physics, and creates means to judge whether such writing is effective. The studies culminating in this thesis are an aggressive start to addressing these complex questions. Writing is often promoted as an activity that, when put into classrooms in specific disciplines, not only helps students learn to write in the methods of that discipline but also helps students learn content knowledge. Students at the Ohio State University are being asked to write more in introductory courses, and the Engineering schools want their students to have more writing skills for the job market. Combined with the desire of many educators to have students be able to explain the course content knowledge clearly, it would seem that writing activities would be important and useful in physics courses. However, the question of whether writing helps learning or whether students learn writing within a non-English classroom helps learning in the discipline are open to debate, and data are needed before such claims can be made. This thesis presents several studies aimed at understanding the correlation of writing and content, and tracking and characterizing student writing behaviors to see how they are impacted by writing in physics courses. It consists of four parts: summer and autumn 2005 focus on writing in introductory physics labs with and without explicit instruction, while winter and spring 2006 focus on tracking and analyzing student writing and revising behavior in Physics by Inquiry (PbI). With these related projects, we establish three main results. First, there is a need for quantitative studies of Writing to Learn, and in specific of Writing to Learn within physics. Second, we have also made progress in characterizing student behaviors in an effort to quantify the study of writing: the link between writing and learning content is not obvious, and we have shown that students may not even be learning to write through practice in the context of physics. Third, we have developed a valuable new tool, a novel program to track and analyze student writing, that supplies quantitative information about student writing. In Summer quarter, 2005, introductory calculus-based physics lab students wrote essays, some sections with and some without explicit writing instruction. When analyzing student writing, we found that an essay’s grade based solely on English correlated strongly with its grade based on physics, and that explicit writing instruc- tion improved the physics content more than writing practice alone. In addition, we have studied the location and type of comments made by both physics and English instructors on individual student essays. We find a strong correlation between the location and type of comments made by both instructors, and find that when stu- dents struggle overall with the content of an essay they make more mistakes with the writing. A similar study in Autumn quarter, 2005, reduced the writing to one specific physics content area, and increased the content knowledge testing to look for changes in content knowledge with the writing activities, and differences in content knowledge based on the inclusion of explicit writing instruction. Limited impact of the writing or instruction on content knowledge was observed; students who completed the writing activities in place if traditional lab activities did better on lab quizzes immediately following the activities, but not on quizzes and tests taken later. However, this null result indicates that time can be devoted to writing within an introductory physics class without reducing the focus on physics content. Differences between those who wrote with and without explicit writing instruction were minimal, which may be due to the shorter time spent on writing during this project. In Winter quarter, 2006, our focus shifted toward tracking writing behavior, char- acterizing student writing, and looking for any impact of the writing on these behav- iors. Students in Physics by Inquiry wrote essays requiring two drafts; the second being half the length, which required the students to make significant revisions. Al- though we learned a lot about how to do such studies, we did not observe many consistent significant correlations. It did not appear there were strong correlations between writing behaviors and essay grades, nor were there changes in student be- havior over time. We developed a novel tracking program that allows us to obtain much more data in a more ideal fashion than existing programs, and also automates part of the analy- sis process, allowing larger studies needed for generalizing behaviors because they are no longer be time prohibitive. We used this tracking program for the same student population and assignment type in Spring quarter, 2006. We were able to better char- acterize student writing and observe behavior consistent with the literature: students who had better grades exhibited more revisions, and more non-trivial revisions. How- ever, these results were not consistent week to week, and we saw no change in writing behavior through the quarter. Case studies presented help us validate the information we obtain from the tracking, and suggest changes we can make for improved further studies.
This paper reviews introductory physics labs. The history of physics labs is discussed, with emph... more This paper reviews introductory physics labs. The history of physics labs is discussed, with emphasis on novel course developments during the Sputnik Era. Modern physics labs are considered as labs which have been developed after the advent of computers and physics education research. These modern teaching ap- proaches are discussed in detail with focus on answering three questions: what problems did this method attempt to overcome, were the labs successful in reach- ing their goals, and how was this success determined. A discussion of the problems, goals, and assessment techniques is presented.
∎ The Ohio State University's (OSU) Physics Education Research Group has been developing and test... more ∎ The Ohio State University's (OSU) Physics Education Research Group has been developing and testing Virtual Reality (VR) simulations∎ Winter quarter, 2005, we worked in conjunction with OSU's Center for Cognitive Science Eye Tracking Lab for an exploratory study of how students use the simulations∎ This poster discusses:
Abstract. Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The... more Abstract. Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The Ohio State University's existing labs are not meeting their educational goals and students consistently rate them as having low value. This paper explores some of the reasons that standard introductory physics laboratories are not having the expected impact, and describes the implementation of Virtual Reality based experiments to improve upon lab effectiveness.
Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University and Rochester Institu... more Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University and Rochester Institute of Technology are involved in an ongoing study addressing issues related to writing activities in the physics classroom. In summer quarter, 2005, the introductory calculus‐based physics lab students wrote essays, some sections with and some without explicit writing instruction. We found a student's essay grade for English correlated strongly with that assigned for physics.
Experimentation appears to be an ideal context in which several key aspects of scientific thinkin... more Experimentation appears to be an ideal context in which several key aspects of scientific thinking can be addressed. However, the traditional freshman laboratory does not appear to be successful in doing so. This paper argues that this has much to do with the way in which tasks are formulated. We propose a simple descriptive model based on the notion of the “idea space” that can be used to analyze task formulation that can promote meaningful critical thinking. A number of factors that affect the size of the idea space are discussed, such as conceptual metaphor and the perceived nature of questioning from a socio-cultural perspective, described in terms of knowledge and information flow.
At Oregon State University, we are undergoing curriculum reform in our large-enrollment introduct... more At Oregon State University, we are undergoing curriculum reform in our large-enrollment introductory calculus-based physics sequence. As part of this reform, we are integrating materials borrowed from the ISLE (Investigative Science Learning Environment) at Rutgers and California State University, Chico. ISLE has been found to help develop scientific abilities through processes practiced as authentic scientists. Using Peer Instruction to engage students in these practices, our curricular reforms assist the development of a community of practice [1] which enables students to participate in social interactions and make meaning of their experiences in class to build a shared repertoire of knowledge. Additionally students develop practice beyond our physics community as they participate in other academic as well as non-academic communities of practice throughout their daily lives. This poster will describe the development of students doing physics in the network of communities of practice and how we can support it.
Oregon State University’s (OSU) upper-division physics courses rearrange the traditional content ... more Oregon State University’s (OSU) upper-division physics courses rearrange the traditional content to center around conceptual and mathematical ideas, with the aim of having students engage in authentic practices of physics in an interactive environment. The physics majors’ introduction to Quantum Mechanics is the Quantum Measurements and Spin Paradigm (Spins). I taught this course using the existing activities in my first year at OSU. I am heavily influenced by the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) curriculum model that mirrors the goals of these upper- division courses. Having since spent two years implementing ISLE in the lower-division courses, when I taught the Spins course this year I modified some activities to align with ISLE methodology. I will discuss how the constructivist, scientific-abilities approach of ISLE helped me personalize the Spins course by providing connectivity between activities and a stronger emphasis on the goals surrounding preparing our students to think like physicists.
At Oregon State University, the introductory calculus-based physics sequence utilizes social enga... more At Oregon State University, the introductory calculus-based physics sequence utilizes social engagement as a learning tool. The reformed curriculum is modeled after the Interactive Science Learning Environment from Rutgers University, and makes use of Peer Instruction as a pedagogical tool to facilitate interactions. Over the past two years we have utilized a number of techniques to understand how to facilitate activities that promote productive discussion within the large lecture classroom. We specifically seek student discussion that goes beyond agreement on conceptual questions, encouraging deeper discussions such as what assumptions are appropriate, or how different assumptions would change the chosen answer to a given question. We have quantitative analysis of engagement based on video data, qualitative analysis of dialogue from audio data, and classroom observations by an external researcher. In this paper we share a subset of what we have learned about how to engage students in deep-level discussions during lecture.
At Oregon State University, we are reforming our large-enrollment introductory calculus-based phy... more At Oregon State University, we are reforming our large-enrollment introductory calculus-based physics sequence. We are integrating course goals and materials borrowed from ISLE (Investigative Science Learning Environment) which promotes student practice of processes of authentic scientists, and Peer Instruction which helps them engage in these practices. To help our students be able to justify their own knowledge, and develop ownership of that knowledge the instructor works to develop a productive community of practice [1] enabling students to participate in social interactions and make meaning of their experiences to build a shared repertoire of knowledge. This paper reports on strategies the instructor uses, challenges faced, and present evidence of both successes and failures in terms of achieving this aim.
Students who enroll for the special access course in physics at the University of Cape Town gener... more Students who enroll for the special access course in physics at the University of Cape Town generally do not speak English as first language and have experienced poor science teaching. As a consequence students experience a large range of difficulties in trying to learn physics. We discuss research carried out in two such areas (a) understanding of measurement and (b) engagement with the textbook. With regard to (a) an overview of the methodology, analysis framework and findings of previous work will be presented together with more recent preliminary findings regarding audience dependence when conveying measurement results. With regard to (b) the idea of writing chapter summaries was used to guide students through the book with the aim that the textbook would come to be valued an accessible resource. Findings from the analysis of the student summaries are presented
We want to fill the knowledge gap for the research on student practices in and out of the physic ... more We want to fill the knowledge gap for the research on student practices in and out of the physic classroom community of practice in order to help teachers attend to the students’ learning needs across settings and inform teachers how to make stronger connections between the students’ daily and classroom experiences. We first need to examine the classroom community to see how students and teacher negotiate meaning and practices so that we can better facilitate student learning in terms of moving towards more sophisticated epistemologies and forming identities as scientists. Looking beyond the four walls of the classroom where students also engage in scientific endeavors, we can examine how these communities of practice are linked to the classroom community and interact to strengthen or misdirect each other. The aim of this study is to construct a descriptive picture of these interlaced communities of practice and how they are connected to the physics classroom community. This would enable us to examine how the students’ perceived identity in these communities brings to bear on student physics learning. The introductory calculus based physics course is a large enrollment lecture taken as a requirement by many engineering and science majors. The year long sequence introduces the students to a large range of physics topics such as Newton’s laws, optics and electromagnetism in order to set a foundation for scientific reasoning and problem solving skills. To better facilitate the learning of these skills, the sequence is undergoing curricular reform that integrates materials borrowed from the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) curriculum at Rutgers and California State University at Chico (Etkina & Van Heuvelen, 2007). The curricular reforms also incorporate Peer Instruction (Crouch et al., 2007) to engage students in these practices and assist the development of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) through which students participate in social interactions and make meaning of their experiences in class to build a shared repertoire of knowledge. In order to explore the various communities of practice in the students’ daily life, interviews were conducted with individual students using personal meaning maps (Falk, 2003).
In Spring 2010, the Oregon State University physics department instituted a SCALE-UP (Student-Cen... more In Spring 2010, the Oregon State University physics department instituted a SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs) style studio classroom in the introductory, calculus-based physics series. In our initial implementation, comprised of two hours lecture, two hours of studio, and two hours lab work, the studio session was lead by a faculty member and either 2 GTAs or 1 GTA and 1 LA. We plan to move to a model where senior GTAs can lead studio sections after co-teaching with the faculty member. It is critical that we know how to prepare and support the instructional team in facilitating student learning in this setting. We examine GTA and LA pedagogical beliefs through reflective journaling, interviews, and personal experience of the authors. In particular, we examine how these beliefs changed over their first quarter of instruction, as well as the resources used to adapt to the new classroom environment.
The majority of “special access” students at the University of Cape Town are second language Engl... more The majority of “special access” students at the University of Cape Town are second language English speakers for whom reading the physics textbook is daunting. As a strategy to encourage meaningful engagement with the text, students wrote textbook summaries due the day material was covered in class. The summaries were returned, and they could bring them or re-write them for use during their examinations. A framework was developed to analyze the summaries based on Waywood, defining three cognitive levels seen in mathematics journaling: recounting, summarizing, and dialoging. This framework was refined, expanded, and tested. Interviews with students were conducted for their views on summary writing and survey questions were included on their final exams. The study was carried out in the 2007 spring semester of the “Foundation Physics Course,” a component of the special access program.
Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University (OSU) and Rochester I... more Members of the Physics and English departments at The Ohio State University (OSU) and Rochester Institute of Technology are involved in an ongoing study addressing issues related to writing activities in the physics classroom. Students in the physics 103 and 104 course sequence at OSU “The World of Energy” view weekly videos then turn in summaries as part of their homework grade. These summaries are given one point if turned in; they are not graded for the quality of their content. In winter quarter, 2006, some students were given substantial feedback on these summaries with comments aimed to improve their writing. An observed improvement in their video summaries is demonstrated in this paper as an example of using written feedback to effect student work with no external grade motivator.
Ininquirylabswetrytohelpstudentslearntomakescientificdecisions.Howsuccessfularewe?Aretheinstructo... more Ininquirylabswetrytohelpstudentslearntomakescientificdecisions.Howsuccessfularewe?Aretheinstructor and the lab material getting the message across to the students? A modified version of the Laboratory Program Variables Inventory (LPVI) [5], a Q-type instrument, has been used to study students’ perceptions of introductory physics labs. We identified statements related to student dependence on instructors, separating the statements into categories of “student directed”, “intermediate”, and “instructor directed”. We analyzed different labs from different universities and found that students’ perceptions of how much control they had over the lab varied with lab type. We also found a dependence of student perceptions on lab instructor within each type of lab (THIS SENTENCE DOESN’T MAKE SENSE TO ME). The variation between different types of lab was greater than the variation between instructors within the lab type. This is a promising tool for assessing lab material and instruction.
At the Ohio State University (OSU), some laboratory sections were replaced with Investigative Sci... more At the Ohio State University (OSU), some laboratory sections were replaced with Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) labs during the 3-quarter calculus-based introductory physics sequence this past academic year. The ISLE labs have been developed by the PAER Group at Rutgers University; implementation at OSU is discussed, making a direct comparison of OSU students participating in ISLE labs with students in pre-existing labs under the same large-lecture instruction. Assessment included diagnostic tests and feedback from a Q-type instrument. The ISLE environment focuses on helping students develop scientific abilities, so we also administered a voluntary lab ‘practical exam’ aimed at testing if these abilities were gained by the students in the ISLE labs.
Innovative STEM curricula such as the ISLE (Investigative Science Learning Environment) curriculu... more Innovative STEM curricula such as the ISLE (Investigative Science Learning Environment) curriculum [1] are centered on active engagement in social learning processes as a means to achieve curricular goals. Classroom practices are highly interactive to facilitate students' development of authentic scientist abilities. To the students, these classroom practices often seem very different from their previous learning experiences in terms of behavioral expectations, attitude, and what it means to learn. Consequently, students must modify ...
Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The Ohio Stat... more Physicists consider laboratories to be a vital part of any introductory course, yet The Ohio State University’s existing labs are not meeting their educational goals and students consistently rate them as having low value. This paper explores some of the reasons that standard introductory physics laboratories are not having the expected impact, and describes the implementation of Virtual Reality based experiments to improve upon lab effectiveness. Student response to these experiments and preliminary results regarding their impact on student learning will be discussed.
It is received wisdom that writing in a discipline helps students learn the disci- pline, and mil... more It is received wisdom that writing in a discipline helps students learn the disci- pline, and millions of dollars have been committed at many universities to supporting such writing. We show that evidence for effectiveness is anecdotal, and that little data-based material informs these prejudices. This thesis begins the process of sci- entific study of writing in the discipline, in specific, in physics, and creates means to judge whether such writing is effective. The studies culminating in this thesis are an aggressive start to addressing these complex questions. Writing is often promoted as an activity that, when put into classrooms in specific disciplines, not only helps students learn to write in the methods of that discipline but also helps students learn content knowledge. Students at the Ohio State University are being asked to write more in introductory courses, and the Engineering schools want their students to have more writing skills for the job market. Combined with the desire of many educators to have students be able to explain the course content knowledge clearly, it would seem that writing activities would be important and useful in physics courses. However, the question of whether writing helps learning or whether students learn writing within a non-English classroom helps learning in the discipline are open to debate, and data are needed before such claims can be made. This thesis presents several studies aimed at understanding the correlation of writing and content, and tracking and characterizing student writing behaviors to see how they are impacted by writing in physics courses. It consists of four parts: summer and autumn 2005 focus on writing in introductory physics labs with and without explicit instruction, while winter and spring 2006 focus on tracking and analyzing student writing and revising behavior in Physics by Inquiry (PbI). With these related projects, we establish three main results. First, there is a need for quantitative studies of Writing to Learn, and in specific of Writing to Learn within physics. Second, we have also made progress in characterizing student behaviors in an effort to quantify the study of writing: the link between writing and learning content is not obvious, and we have shown that students may not even be learning to write through practice in the context of physics. Third, we have developed a valuable new tool, a novel program to track and analyze student writing, that supplies quantitative information about student writing. In Summer quarter, 2005, introductory calculus-based physics lab students wrote essays, some sections with and some without explicit writing instruction. When analyzing student writing, we found that an essay’s grade based solely on English correlated strongly with its grade based on physics, and that explicit writing instruc- tion improved the physics content more than writing practice alone. In addition, we have studied the location and type of comments made by both physics and English instructors on individual student essays. We find a strong correlation between the location and type of comments made by both instructors, and find that when stu- dents struggle overall with the content of an essay they make more mistakes with the writing. A similar study in Autumn quarter, 2005, reduced the writing to one specific physics content area, and increased the content knowledge testing to look for changes in content knowledge with the writing activities, and differences in content knowledge based on the inclusion of explicit writing instruction. Limited impact of the writing or instruction on content knowledge was observed; students who completed the writing activities in place if traditional lab activities did better on lab quizzes immediately following the activities, but not on quizzes and tests taken later. However, this null result indicates that time can be devoted to writing within an introductory physics class without reducing the focus on physics content. Differences between those who wrote with and without explicit writing instruction were minimal, which may be due to the shorter time spent on writing during this project. In Winter quarter, 2006, our focus shifted toward tracking writing behavior, char- acterizing student writing, and looking for any impact of the writing on these behav- iors. Students in Physics by Inquiry wrote essays requiring two drafts; the second being half the length, which required the students to make significant revisions. Al- though we learned a lot about how to do such studies, we did not observe many consistent significant correlations. It did not appear there were strong correlations between writing behaviors and essay grades, nor were there changes in student be- havior over time. We developed a novel tracking program that allows us to obtain much more data in a more ideal fashion than existing programs, and also automates part of the analy- sis process, allowing larger studies needed for generalizing behaviors because they are no longer be time prohibitive. We used this tracking program for the same student population and assignment type in Spring quarter, 2006. We were able to better char- acterize student writing and observe behavior consistent with the literature: students who had better grades exhibited more revisions, and more non-trivial revisions. How- ever, these results were not consistent week to week, and we saw no change in writing behavior through the quarter. Case studies presented help us validate the information we obtain from the tracking, and suggest changes we can make for improved further studies.
This paper reviews introductory physics labs. The history of physics labs is discussed, with emph... more This paper reviews introductory physics labs. The history of physics labs is discussed, with emphasis on novel course developments during the Sputnik Era. Modern physics labs are considered as labs which have been developed after the advent of computers and physics education research. These modern teaching ap- proaches are discussed in detail with focus on answering three questions: what problems did this method attempt to overcome, were the labs successful in reach- ing their goals, and how was this success determined. A discussion of the problems, goals, and assessment techniques is presented.
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The introductory calculus based physics course is a large enrollment lecture taken as a requirement by many engineering and science majors. The year long sequence introduces the students to a large range of physics topics such as Newton’s laws, optics and electromagnetism in order to set a foundation for scientific reasoning and problem solving skills. To better facilitate the learning of these skills, the sequence is undergoing curricular reform that integrates materials borrowed from the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) curriculum at Rutgers and California State University at Chico (Etkina & Van Heuvelen, 2007). The curricular reforms also incorporate Peer Instruction (Crouch et al., 2007) to engage students in these practices and assist the development of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) through which students participate in social interactions and make meaning of their experiences in class to build a shared repertoire of knowledge. In order to explore the various communities of practice in the students’ daily life, interviews were conducted with individual students using personal meaning maps (Falk, 2003).
Writing is often promoted as an activity that, when put into classrooms in specific disciplines, not only helps students learn to write in the methods of that discipline but also helps students learn content knowledge. Students at the Ohio State University are being asked to write more in introductory courses, and the Engineering schools want their students to have more writing skills for the job market. Combined with the desire of many educators to have students be able to explain the course content knowledge clearly, it would seem that writing activities would be important and useful in physics courses. However, the question of whether writing helps learning or whether students learn writing within a non-English classroom helps learning in the discipline are open to debate, and data are needed before such claims can be made.
This thesis presents several studies aimed at understanding the correlation of writing and content, and tracking and characterizing student writing behaviors to see how they are impacted by writing in physics courses. It consists of four parts: summer and autumn 2005 focus on writing in introductory physics labs with and without explicit instruction, while winter and spring 2006 focus on tracking and analyzing student writing and revising behavior in Physics by Inquiry (PbI).
With these related projects, we establish three main results. First, there is a need for quantitative studies of Writing to Learn, and in specific of Writing to Learn within physics. Second, we have also made progress in characterizing student behaviors in an effort to quantify the study of writing: the link between writing and learning content is not obvious, and we have shown that students may not even be learning to write through practice in the context of physics. Third, we have developed a valuable new tool, a novel program to track and analyze student writing, that supplies quantitative information about student writing.
In Summer quarter, 2005, introductory calculus-based physics lab students wrote essays, some sections with and some without explicit writing instruction. When analyzing student writing, we found that an essay’s grade based solely on English correlated strongly with its grade based on physics, and that explicit writing instruc- tion improved the physics content more than writing practice alone. In addition, we have studied the location and type of comments made by both physics and English instructors on individual student essays. We find a strong correlation between the location and type of comments made by both instructors, and find that when stu- dents struggle overall with the content of an essay they make more mistakes with the writing. A similar study in Autumn quarter, 2005, reduced the writing to one specific physics content area, and increased the content knowledge testing to look for changes in content knowledge with the writing activities, and differences in content knowledge based on the inclusion of explicit writing instruction. Limited impact of the writing or instruction on content knowledge was observed; students who completed the writing activities in place if traditional lab activities did better on lab quizzes immediately following the activities, but not on quizzes and tests taken later. However, this null result indicates that time can be devoted to writing within an introductory physics class without reducing the focus on physics content. Differences between those who wrote with and without explicit writing instruction were minimal, which may be due to the shorter time spent on writing during this project.
In Winter quarter, 2006, our focus shifted toward tracking writing behavior, char- acterizing student writing, and looking for any impact of the writing on these behav- iors. Students in Physics by Inquiry wrote essays requiring two drafts; the second being half the length, which required the students to make significant revisions. Al- though we learned a lot about how to do such studies, we did not observe many consistent significant correlations. It did not appear there were strong correlations between writing behaviors and essay grades, nor were there changes in student be- havior over time.
We developed a novel tracking program that allows us to obtain much more data in a more ideal fashion than existing programs, and also automates part of the analy- sis process, allowing larger studies needed for generalizing behaviors because they are no longer be time prohibitive. We used this tracking program for the same student population and assignment type in Spring quarter, 2006. We were able to better char- acterize student writing and observe behavior consistent with the literature: students who had better grades exhibited more revisions, and more non-trivial revisions. How- ever, these results were not consistent week to week, and we saw no change in writing behavior through the quarter. Case studies presented help us validate the information we obtain from the tracking, and suggest changes we can make for improved further studies.
The introductory calculus based physics course is a large enrollment lecture taken as a requirement by many engineering and science majors. The year long sequence introduces the students to a large range of physics topics such as Newton’s laws, optics and electromagnetism in order to set a foundation for scientific reasoning and problem solving skills. To better facilitate the learning of these skills, the sequence is undergoing curricular reform that integrates materials borrowed from the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) curriculum at Rutgers and California State University at Chico (Etkina & Van Heuvelen, 2007). The curricular reforms also incorporate Peer Instruction (Crouch et al., 2007) to engage students in these practices and assist the development of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) through which students participate in social interactions and make meaning of their experiences in class to build a shared repertoire of knowledge. In order to explore the various communities of practice in the students’ daily life, interviews were conducted with individual students using personal meaning maps (Falk, 2003).
Writing is often promoted as an activity that, when put into classrooms in specific disciplines, not only helps students learn to write in the methods of that discipline but also helps students learn content knowledge. Students at the Ohio State University are being asked to write more in introductory courses, and the Engineering schools want their students to have more writing skills for the job market. Combined with the desire of many educators to have students be able to explain the course content knowledge clearly, it would seem that writing activities would be important and useful in physics courses. However, the question of whether writing helps learning or whether students learn writing within a non-English classroom helps learning in the discipline are open to debate, and data are needed before such claims can be made.
This thesis presents several studies aimed at understanding the correlation of writing and content, and tracking and characterizing student writing behaviors to see how they are impacted by writing in physics courses. It consists of four parts: summer and autumn 2005 focus on writing in introductory physics labs with and without explicit instruction, while winter and spring 2006 focus on tracking and analyzing student writing and revising behavior in Physics by Inquiry (PbI).
With these related projects, we establish three main results. First, there is a need for quantitative studies of Writing to Learn, and in specific of Writing to Learn within physics. Second, we have also made progress in characterizing student behaviors in an effort to quantify the study of writing: the link between writing and learning content is not obvious, and we have shown that students may not even be learning to write through practice in the context of physics. Third, we have developed a valuable new tool, a novel program to track and analyze student writing, that supplies quantitative information about student writing.
In Summer quarter, 2005, introductory calculus-based physics lab students wrote essays, some sections with and some without explicit writing instruction. When analyzing student writing, we found that an essay’s grade based solely on English correlated strongly with its grade based on physics, and that explicit writing instruc- tion improved the physics content more than writing practice alone. In addition, we have studied the location and type of comments made by both physics and English instructors on individual student essays. We find a strong correlation between the location and type of comments made by both instructors, and find that when stu- dents struggle overall with the content of an essay they make more mistakes with the writing. A similar study in Autumn quarter, 2005, reduced the writing to one specific physics content area, and increased the content knowledge testing to look for changes in content knowledge with the writing activities, and differences in content knowledge based on the inclusion of explicit writing instruction. Limited impact of the writing or instruction on content knowledge was observed; students who completed the writing activities in place if traditional lab activities did better on lab quizzes immediately following the activities, but not on quizzes and tests taken later. However, this null result indicates that time can be devoted to writing within an introductory physics class without reducing the focus on physics content. Differences between those who wrote with and without explicit writing instruction were minimal, which may be due to the shorter time spent on writing during this project.
In Winter quarter, 2006, our focus shifted toward tracking writing behavior, char- acterizing student writing, and looking for any impact of the writing on these behav- iors. Students in Physics by Inquiry wrote essays requiring two drafts; the second being half the length, which required the students to make significant revisions. Al- though we learned a lot about how to do such studies, we did not observe many consistent significant correlations. It did not appear there were strong correlations between writing behaviors and essay grades, nor were there changes in student be- havior over time.
We developed a novel tracking program that allows us to obtain much more data in a more ideal fashion than existing programs, and also automates part of the analy- sis process, allowing larger studies needed for generalizing behaviors because they are no longer be time prohibitive. We used this tracking program for the same student population and assignment type in Spring quarter, 2006. We were able to better char- acterize student writing and observe behavior consistent with the literature: students who had better grades exhibited more revisions, and more non-trivial revisions. How- ever, these results were not consistent week to week, and we saw no change in writing behavior through the quarter. Case studies presented help us validate the information we obtain from the tracking, and suggest changes we can make for improved further studies.