We report on how a college and university physics-based research-practice partnership (RPP) has flourished in the greater Montreal area. The RPP has fostered bringing discipline content knowledge AND pedagogical knowledge together to design effective instructional innovations. It has co-designed activities and built resources that engage students meaningfully with the physics content (including for waves, optics, and modern physics), and provide evidence of statistically significant learning gains. This partnership has informed the development of a community of practice, Supporting Active Learning & Technological Innovation in Studies of Education (SALTISE), which facilitated the knowledge mobilization. SALTISE infrastructure allows us to share with other instructors, using a peer-to-peer professional development approach. These resources include: 1) a repository of peer-generated teaching and learning materials on the SALTISE website, 2) peer mentoring and support, 3) monthly virtual meetings and information sharing, and 4) a free annual conference that brings together practitioners and researchers. We discuss how this model could be useful for the SPIE community.
Inquiry-based instruction is a form of active learning that scaffolds investigation of authentic problems. It relies on collaborative activities that engage students in discipline-specific practices that promote the use of high-level cognitive skills – analysis, decision-making, and evaluation. Inquiry-Based Laboratories extends this approach to lab experimentation. Compared to traditional labs, inquiry-based labs require students to make decisions that are critical to the process – what methods to use, what data to collect, etc. We report on a case study conducted in Fall 2021, featuring a design focus IBL implementation in a college Waves and Modern Physics course. The case study spanned the 15-week semester with students’ scientific reasoning assessed at three points: pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test. Students showed improvements in their scientific reasoning with positive changes to their epistemic beliefs – i.e., thinking more like scientists.
We present three case studies focused on different types of feedback scenarios, each featuring a different technological tool. Results show greater student participation and engagement, and facilitation of teacher orchestration of active learning pedagogy.
We show how Error-Detection Tasks (EDT) are an effective way for students to practice giving peer feedback. In EDT, students are presented with a solved physics problem, prepared by a fictional in-class peer, containing one or more errors - algebraic, procedural, or conceptual. Students must identify and explain how to correct the error(s), as though they were explaining it to the “peer” who wrote the solution. EDTs have been developed for a web-based learning platform (myDALITE.org) that provides students with asynchronous peer instruction such that students can provide feedback and evaluate feedback from other students. Results show that students trained with EDT significantly outperform a control group in correctly identifying errors and providing more meaningful feedback to their fictional in-class peer.
We present the design and use of myDALITE, a web-based learning platform that provides students with asynchronous peer instruction that can be used in- and out-of-class. Supporting active learning pedagogy, myDALITE engages students in 1) written explanation (rationales for their answers); 2) comparison of these rationales to those of peers; and 3) reflection on the quality of the rationales. Furthermore, myDALITE assignments provide teachers with the opportunity to see what their students are thinking, before and/or after classroom instruction.
When implemented correctly, active learning pedagogies increase student engagement with discipline content. In addition, there is accumulating evidence that they also positively impact the learning of this content. This is particularly relevant for teaching science disciplines because many students perceive science as being difficult to fully understand. However, an ongoing problem is that instructors have difficulty implementing active learning pedagogies effectively and therefore see no benefit to it. Without persistence or guidance, instructors can become discouraged and return to a more traditional style of teaching. We report on how the Faculty of Science at Vanier College is getting more instructors to engage in active learning pedagogies through mentoring and activity co-design.
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