Departmental Doctoral Oral Examination (Thesis Title: “Learning Physics with Interactive Simulations: Inductive Inquiry Learning Activities for an Introductory Electromagnetism Course”)

Event Date:
2021-07-14T09:00:00
2021-07-14T11:00:00
Event Location:
via ZOOM
Speaker:
JONATHAN MASSEY-ALLARD
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Intended Audience:
Graduate
Local Contact:

Physics and Astronomy

Event Information:

Abstract:
In this work, the use of interactive simulations in the context of an inductive learning pedagogical approach in the tutorials of a large enrollment introductory electromagnetism course is investigated. Interactive simulations are educational tools that allow students to uncover the rules that govern a simulated physics phenomenon through a process of scientific inquiry. These simulations can be designed with affordances and constraints that implicitly scaffold inquiry such that students can more efficiently uncover important features of the simulated phenomenon. As such, interactive simulations are a promising tool to use in the context of invention activities, where students invent a rule for a target physics domain before receiving any formal instruction on it.
We report the results of a study comparing the educational benefits of invention activities where students invent a rule either by generating their own cases from a simulation or from a set of contrasting cases designed to directly highlight important domain features when compared to one another. The simulation-based invention activities provide students with an opportunity to practice and develop valuable exploration skills but the greater agency in their exploration can also makes it harder to successfully explore all important domain features. This thesis details the design of a series of three collaborative and scaffolded practice invention activities that aim to mitigate this issue. Results show that generating cases from a simulation in these activities is less likely to lead students to invent the correct rule and generally leads to poorer immediate conceptual learning outcomes as compared to using instructor designed contrasting cases. Results also demonstrate that a student's ability to explore and identify all important features of the target rule is largely determined by how well the instructional material provided affords the investigation of those features. Finally, the above student outcomes are also compared across two final assessment invention activities where students worked individually without scaffolding; in the first students invent by generating their own cases from a simulation, while in the other they use instructor-design contrasting cases. We show that students that had previously practiced inventing with contrasting cases performed the same or better on all outcomes compared to those that practiced inventing by generating cases from a simulation.

Add to Calendar 2021-07-14T09:00:00 2021-07-14T11:00:00 Departmental Doctoral Oral Examination (Thesis Title: “Learning Physics with Interactive Simulations: Inductive Inquiry Learning Activities for an Introductory Electromagnetism Course”) Event Information: Abstract: In this work, the use of interactive simulations in the context of an inductive learning pedagogical approach in the tutorials of a large enrollment introductory electromagnetism course is investigated. Interactive simulations are educational tools that allow students to uncover the rules that govern a simulated physics phenomenon through a process of scientific inquiry. These simulations can be designed with affordances and constraints that implicitly scaffold inquiry such that students can more efficiently uncover important features of the simulated phenomenon. As such, interactive simulations are a promising tool to use in the context of invention activities, where students invent a rule for a target physics domain before receiving any formal instruction on it. We report the results of a study comparing the educational benefits of invention activities where students invent a rule either by generating their own cases from a simulation or from a set of contrasting cases designed to directly highlight important domain features when compared to one another. The simulation-based invention activities provide students with an opportunity to practice and develop valuable exploration skills but the greater agency in their exploration can also makes it harder to successfully explore all important domain features. This thesis details the design of a series of three collaborative and scaffolded practice invention activities that aim to mitigate this issue. Results show that generating cases from a simulation in these activities is less likely to lead students to invent the correct rule and generally leads to poorer immediate conceptual learning outcomes as compared to using instructor designed contrasting cases. Results also demonstrate that a student's ability to explore and identify all important features of the target rule is largely determined by how well the instructional material provided affords the investigation of those features. Finally, the above student outcomes are also compared across two final assessment invention activities where students worked individually without scaffolding; in the first students invent by generating their own cases from a simulation, while in the other they use instructor-design contrasting cases. We show that students that had previously practiced inventing with contrasting cases performed the same or better on all outcomes compared to those that practiced inventing by generating cases from a simulation. Event Location: via ZOOM