Students Responses to Innovation in Introductory Physics

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Students Responses to Innovation in Introductory
Physics

• Maria Ruibal Villasenor and Eugenia Etkina
• Rutgers University, New Jersey
• Supported by the NSF, grant REC-059065

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• INTRODUCTION
• ? For the past five years the Rutgers PAER
  group has been modifying Physics for the
  Sciences an algebra-based course for science
  majors at Rutgers University. The course follows
  the Investigative Science Learning Environment
  (ISLE) system that seeks to actively engage
  students in the construction of their own
  knowledge.
• ? Anecdotal students reactions indicated
• that the transition from traditional courses
  to this innovative learning environment was
  difficult.

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• PHYSICS FOR THE SCIENCES
• Instructors do not impart concepts or solutions
  for model problems, but they create the
  conditions and provide the guidance so that
  learners construct their own knowledge.
• The Active Learning Guide (ALG) consists on
  sequences of activities designed to facilitate
  the construction of concepts and the attainment
  of scientific abilities.
• In labs, students must design their own
  experiments with the support of lab write-ups,
  rubrics and instructors. The lab write-ups are
  not sets of step by step directions, but they
  contain guiding questions and prompts.
• In recitations and labs, students work
  collaboratively in groups of 4 members.

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• RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• How do students respond to new teaching methods?
• Do they perceive differences between
  traditional science classes and constructivist
  approaches?
• If they see the differences, do they appreciate
  the changes?
• What factors affect their responses to new
  teaching?
• Answers to these questions will help facilitate
  the
• adoption of new teaching and learning practices.

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• RESEARCH METHOD STUDY
• Grounded theory A qualitative research method,
  which goal of explaining a set of observations
  within certain boundaries and making predictions
  within these boundaries.
• Data collection 9 individual interviews (each
  45-minutes long).
• Data analysis Appearing codes were compared and
  contrasted with one another to reduce the amount
  and to obtain a small number of refined
  categories.

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FINDINGS

• Most of the students participating on this
  study were positive about the course and its
  learning methods. They appreciated that it makes
  you think and it makes you figure things out.
  They also valued collaborative work and
  demonstrations.
• The majority of them protested about aspects
  that were not essential, such as the rush during
  the last minutes. They also companied that no
  textbook was followed in class.
• Most of the students realized that the course
  was dissimilar from traditional ones. But few
  found no noteworthy differences Every course is
  different.

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• FINDINGS EMERGED CATEGORIES
• ?Attitude Positive or negative students
  disposition toward the course.
• ? Perceptions Students awareness and
  interpretation of several relevant aspects of the
  course. Students perceptions affected their
  attitudes.
• Course Purposes Students understanding the
  goals of the course and the purposes of learning
  tasks.
• Learning Students thinking of how they
  learn.
• Difficulty Students perception of the
  affordability of the course goals and effort
  required.
• ?Variableness Changes in students perceptions
  and views of physics and the course.

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LEARNING
PHYSICS REPUTATION
affect
PERCEPTIONS
DIFFICULTY
ATTITUDES
increased by
of
property
UNFAMILIARITY
GOALS PURPOSES
VARIABLENESS
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IMPLICATIONS

• Instructors need to communicate clearly course
  goals and their rationale.
• Student learning development is a priority. We
  need to address this objective explicitly and
  implicitly. It might be helpful for students to
  take a course in epistemology.
• Some students mistrusted innovations because of
  malfunctions due to the novelty of the approach.
  Therefore when implementing innovations, a
  special effort must be made to support
  instructors and train TAs.