Blog

Incorporating Student Choice into IPLS

Listening to the most recent paper-cast episode on student choice has given me some good ideas. This paper makes a very good case for providing students with choices of additional work beyond that which is mandatory. One way this could be done in 131 and 132 is by allowing for the option of Perusall comments within the textbook. This would allow students to opt in to the Perusall, an assignment which I believe to be valuable, but has traditionally been divisive. Perhaps that would encourage more detailed reading along with the homework.

Another idea would be for students to turn in additional practice problems. Many students request that I collect the additional practice problems for a grade. I have traditionally not done as an acknowledgement of the amount of work required for preparation in these flipped courses. However, if students can opt in to that assignment, then my concern is rendered moot.

Of course we wouldn’t be able to grade all of the problems. However we might be able to do a grade a subset or allow students to you know choose to turn in a certain number and we will grade a subset of that or some combination. For example we could require students to turn in a total of 10 problems with you know at least two from each worksheet by the end of the unit we would then grade five of these 10 on a 0-1-2-3 type scale.

In terms of the overall course grade distribution, we currently have a small percentage dedicated to the metacognitive journals which I also believe to be valuable but are, again, divisive. Some students find them quite valuable, but others see it as busy work. I suspect this is mostly a reflection of the amount of time students’ spend on it. However, I could make that percentage a student choice: they could choose for that portion of the grade to be one of these assignments. Perhaps even allowing for some switching over the course of the semester on a unit-by-unit basis. Students would then have the option of choosing an activity that best supports their learning, or they could choose to do none of these activities and have that additional portion of the grade just be reallocated to the standard preparatory homework or something to that effect.

Thoughts on A Case for Domain-Specific Curiosity in Mathematics

I recently finished listening to this review on curiosity in mathematics forwarded to me by Bethany Lisi at the University of Massachusetts Center for Teaching and Learning. As I read I’ve had some thoughts: 

First: The distinction between curiosity and confusion and frustration is important:

  1. In curiosity a solution is visible even if not immediately visible one can see how to approach the solution. 
  2. In confusion, one doesn’t see exactly how to get to a solution but believes that it is possible. 
  3. In frustration one doesn’t even have enough information to begin to see how a solution is possible. 

This is very important for the instruction of physics as well because students often report feeling confusion or frustration when what I’m really going for is curiosity. A key to making to helping students with this transition could be making sure that they have sufficient information to approach the problem, and letting them know about these different distinctions themselves because of course I can’t possibly provide enough information for everyone all the time.

Another important thought from the paper is that students generally believe that any math problem math homework problem should be solvable in 2 minutes. Furthermore, the amount of time that they report being willing to spend on a problem before giving up is somewhere between 11:00 and 12 minutes this is an important thing to begin to address particularly for 131 students but also for my physics 181 lab. It is really important to know that many students have this expectation in fact it might be worth asking them what their expectation is and clarifying how much time they should spend on various problems. However, if you do that you need to make sure that your homework assignments reflect that time expectation. I think, I’m going to ask faculty graduate students and my new undergrads how much who are Majors how much time they think they should spend in designing an experiment before giving up before they think that that path of exploration is in fact ultimately fruitless. If I can get this information before class on Friday then I could fold it in to my lecture.

Why the PaperCast is Quiet

The PaperCast is quiet right now as I am listening to the audio book of Life as No One Knows It by Sara Imari Walker. This is a very interesting book which explores the concept of Assembly Theory: a new conceptual paradigm for physics in which the lineages of objects takes center stage. In effect, it folds the idea of evolution into physics. I am not yet sure what I think. However, I do want to run an Honors seminar around this book – ideally including students from both my 132 and my quantum II class. The motivation for such a seminar would be an investigation on how physics is a living discipline and that we may not even yet have the “final” paradigm. I am also interested because Prof. Walker seems a physicist who is very fluent in the cultural ways of the life sciences, which is also of interest to me.

Thoughts on “Using Framing as a Lens to Understand Context Effects on Expert Reasoning”

After listening to this paper, a few things are interesting right out of the gate:

  1. The resource model of cognition hasn’t really propagated to biology yet.
  2. Two they point out that experts have learned to reason across disciplines using cross-cutting concepts. Could it possibly be that experts have gained this ability because they were exposed to it in different contexts? I don’t think this is true but it’s worth thinking about the fact that it could possibly be.
  3. I like the idea of engineers as existing in the middle of the idealized/real-example continuum with physics on the idealized end and biology on the other.

Teaching the “Energy Story” Next Time

As described in the page on my Physics 131, I like to present content in terms of concepts first. I want students to think conceptually and then move to translating that story to mathematics. I refined this process this past semester and next time, I want energy the energy story to be presented thus:

  • What types of energy do you have at the beginning/end?
  • Are the totals the same or did some come in or out?
  • What came in or out?

In general, ask them to structure it as:

  • Initial energies
    • What went in/out and as heat/work.
      • Final Energies

Also, as we did on the forces unit: go through all the problems for the unit doing just the story first. Ask them to keep their work. Then cycle back through and solve.