Course design for an introductory science course.

Abstract

This paper presents a course design for an introductory science course that encourages students to take greater responsibility for constructing their own knowledge of science with their professor and fellow students. The course includes two writing activities and a conceptual-conflict activity. (A conceptual-conflict activity, is, one in which two or more opposing viewpoints are discussed.) All of the students became more involved in constructing their own understandings of the subject.

Introduction

It is difficult for students who believe that learning consists of memorizing facts, a position that many students bring to introductory science courses at a university (Meichtry, 1993), to appreciate the conceptual framework of the introductory science course. Some students can dismiss the conceptual basis of the problems, because their epistemology is formula driven and they accept calculated answers as a goal in itself. Early in a course, Lelanna [1] one of the students whom we interviewed, [2] referred to the discussion of concepts this way: oIt clears some things that are really not clear but like helping me actually do physics problems, no it doesn't. You have formulas and you've just got to figure out which formulas to use, you don't need it.o One means of overcoming this is through a combination of instructional activities, which actively engage students to take greater responsibility for constructing knowledge of science with their professor and fellow students.

Course

The course (Mechanics) is the first one-semester course in a sequence of three courses covering an introductory calculus-based introduction to Physics. Typically, there are approximately 100 students in each section. The student population ha the course is multicultural and multilingual and ranges from freshman in university to graduate students. Students in this course include science majors, humanities majors and engineers. At this university, there are typically many foreign students including at least 20% from Middle Eastern countries. Additionally a significant fraction of the students is returning to school often after having completed a degree in another discipline.

Activities

The activities used in the course were; reflective writing each week about information found in the text before this material is covered in class, conceptual-conflict exercises in class, and a writing activity called a ocritiqueo completed one or two weeks later. Class discussions were also generated using a reflective-write-pair share activity that has been discussed elsewhere (Kalman, 2002a). Some of these activities (or variations on them) have been used in other courses. (For example, Physics for non-Science majors see Kalman, 1999, several higher level courses see Kalman, 2002b. The activities have also been the subject of many workshops given by the author and professors in many different disciplines in Science, Engineering, Medicine and the humanities have reported favourable results.). Through participating in these activities, students seemed to become aware of the importance of concepts in solving problems:

   Alexei: Physics it's more like a combination of problem solving and
   understanding the material. a For physics, the problem solving a
   first, you have to understand the concept and everything, for
   mathematics, it's more like templates [3]

Students were requested to hand in their reflective writing, at the latest, at the beginning of the first class of the week. Students receive 4 points if they hand in an adequate amount of reflective-writing (roughly 3/4 page for each section of the textbook). As a follow-up activity, before the first class of the following week, they had to write three separate sentences about three important concepts discussed in class that week. Students receive up to two points for each concept sentence. The nine best submissions (out of 12) for the combined assignment were worth 15% of their total marks for the course. The ocritiqueo activity was worth 5% of studentsAE total mark for the course. This activity was based upon the conceptual-conflict exercises, which were not marked.

Students are asked to complete a mid course inventory every time this course is given, just before the midterm is returned. On the inventory, typically 80% of students approve of the collaborative group exercises and over 90% approve of the reflective writing and ocritiqueo activities. Quantitative tests have also been performed which show that these activities have been associated with conceptual change in students (Kalman, Morris, Cottin & Gordon, 1999 and Kalman, Rohar & Wells, 2003). Although only a small number of students were intensively interviewed, the students were carefully chosen so that they would be representative. The finding is that through use of multiple activities, students can become interested in examining the conceptual underpinnings of the course.

Reflective-writing

Rivard (1994) points out that writing can be used to enhance the learning of science content and that writing is intimately connected to thinking. The activity called reflective writing Kalman & Kalman (1997) engages students with the material before the class even meets. Its purpose is to allow the learner to relate prior knowledge to material being encoded [4] and for the learner to use self-dialogue about recorded ideas to continue the process of comprehension. The instructions to students as to how to perform reflective writing are as follows:

* Read each section (or two sections if one of the sections is short).

* Carefully try to focus on what you donAEt understand, and all points that you would like to be clarified

* During your reading, use whatever techniques you usually use to understand required reading including underlining, highlighting, summarizing, and rereading.

* Having completed this task, free write about what you have read. (About 2/3 of a page per section.)

* Reflective-writing is not essay-writing. You will usually not use capitals, and will often write fragments of sentences. If at any time you feel that you canAEt go on u your mind is a blank u write a ononsenseo word over and over, e.g. science, science, science, science a until you start writing again.

* Write about the section(s) that you have read. Write about what it means. Try to find out what you donner know, and try to understand through your writing the material you donAEt know. [5] When you are finished, you will be prepared to ask questions in class about all the points that you donAEt understand.

Conceptual-conflict Exercise

The conceptual-conflict exercise (Kalman, 1998) introduces students to the idea that there can be more than one equally logical way of looking at a phenomenon and that only experiment, not logic, can be the determining factor for theory. Students are encouraged to explore different viewpoints on a given phenomenon. An inducement for this exploration is that there is an essay question on the midterm and final covering the phenomena examined in the conceptual-conflict exercises. Groups of 3u4 students are organized to discuss each issue. Before doing any conceptual-conflict exercises, students performed a warm-up exercise in which students introduced themselves to the other group members and then had to come to a joint decision on who were the three greatest scientists of all time. Aside from getting students used to the collaborative group framework, the purpose of this warm-up exercise was for the students to learn to come to a joint decision within a fixed time limit.

After the warm-up, the students remain in the same group for all exercises, but may if they wish change roles of reporter, scribe, timekeeper or critic in each activity. The time limits are set so that none of the groups will be waiting for other groups to complete the task. Typically, all group members become actively involved often trying mini- experiments with erasers and other objects nearby. At the completion of the collaborative group discussion, two groups are chosen to report on their results. The first group is chosen entirely at random. Following the report of the first group, a call is made for a group with responses differing from the first group to report. The rest of the students in the class are invited to address questions to the reporters from the two groups. At this stage, the professor does not give his/her own interpretation of the concept, but rather attempts to draw out all the opersonal scientific conceptso [6] held by the students. Typically, the two opposing issues presented by the two groups are identified and the class votes on which they think is correct. This voting is essential to clearly indicate to the students that there are different points of view. At this point, the correct point of view is established by having students view experiments from oThe Video Encyclopedia of Physics Demonstrationso (Berg, 1992). A final wrap-up discussing the correct choice emphasizes the role of experiment in deciding the issue.

Critique Exercise

Each of three conceptual-conflict exercises is followed up to 2 weeks later by students handing in a written work, called a ocritiqueo, in which they are required to present arguments in favour of the opersonal scientific conceptso and of the Newtonian explanation. They must clearly indicate which position is verified by experimental evidence (with references to the evidence [7]). A recent quantitative study (Kalman, 2003) showed that in doing the critiques, students can come to see connections between the concepts in the course.

Interviews

We used semi-structured and structured interviews that repeated central questions at the beginning, middle and end of a 13-week course. Over half the class (around 50 students) volunteered to take part in the study. Out of this cohort, students were selected who represented a variance in level of education, subject major, ethnicity and gender. Students participating in the interviews ranged between average [8] and outstanding performance in the course based on all learning indicators used during the course. Initially, seven students constituted the sample. After the initial focus group interview, two did not continue to participate. One was not responsive in the focus group interview and a second student dropped out voluntarily. Thus, five students participated fully in this study [9]. Students were interviewed by a trained graduate student. At the end of the course, we asked students explicitly "IAEd like you to rank these three activities provided by the instructor in terms of your own learning during the course. IAEd then like you to explain the reasons why you have assigned a rating of one, two or three to each activity. Why has xxxx been the most important activity for your learning?" Other probes were then asked to be sure each student had said all they had to say and to determine if the student held any understanding of how the professor saw the activities working together to support their learning. The results are shown in table 1. See issue's website <http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/win2003.htm>

Some students disliked one activity or found another one not useful, but all the students used one or more of the activities to investigate ideas. We now provide a series of findings that arose from the interviews. The presentation of each finding is given followed by quotations from the interviews that support the finding.

1. As the course progressed, students changed from passive onlookers to active participants in dialogue in the group activities. First individual interview.

Alexei: I also found that the people, if there is a question, which is all too easy where everybody understands it, people don't tend to debate it that much or they don't tend to participate in group activities. They don't really want to input or add anything to the class.

Interviewer: Did the work in small groups in any way prepare you for the writing of your critiques?

Lelana: Not very much. When the guys go up and start explaining in front of the whole class that helped more because I took more notes when they're talking in front of the class 'cause everybody is arguing with everybody else. Sometime they don't know what they're talking about so you just waste your time sitting there. By the time of the final interview, she came to value the activities and changed to an active role.

Lelana: In the group work, I asked like my friends, so what did you think of it? It wasn't like aeokay, look at chapter five and the answer AEs right there.AE It wasn't like that. a The last few times he [referring to Ahmad] was in my group and we usually ended up arguing, because he usually thinks differently than I do. It's good challenging each other.

2. The general discussion in class played an important role in helping students benefit from the conceptual concept activity.

Ahmad: I think the general discussions in class afterwards were more helpful than the small group discussion. The group would tend towards one opinion whereas the general discussion would have all these various opinions. I would be right usually, except for once, once I was wrong. In that case, the group didn't help out but the class discussion helped out with clarifying the subject. It took me some time to think about it but when the right one was said then it was right and you had to agree with it.

3. Working in groups helped students solidify their ideas.

Ahmad: Yeah, I would first think about what I was telling them. I don't want to tell them something wrong and possibly, my ideas at first were a bit fuzzy on the issue. Before I would tell them, I would think about it twice, and then I would solidify my ideas,

4. The critiques helped the students explore the conceptual underpinnings of the course:

Nabilla: Sometimes there, there can be something behind it that we can find out, or sometimes even questions that you ask to yourself, you can find them out while you're doing the critique.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Redish (2003) discusses implications of the cognitive model for instruction. He notes that since individual students construct his or her own mental structures, different students have different mental responses and different approaches to learning. Also for most students, learning is most effectively carried out via social interactions. This study confirms RedishesiAEs points. It is clear that different students related better to one activity than another. At a deeper level it was gratifying to note that the different activities helped the students approach the course in a holistic manner. It seemed that using a variety of different activities was the key to helping all of the students became more involved in constructing their own understandings.

Notes

[1] The names of all the students have been changed.

[2] For details on the interviews, see the interviews section later in this article.

[3] For a discussion of how students, who have major difficulties in solving quantitative physics problems can be taught to solve complex problems by using reflective-writing to find a solution, see Kalman (2001).

[4] The process of categorizing empirical knowledge into concepts.

[5] The reflective writing activity is oworkshoppedo in class. Students are told that they are to try to understand the material. I tell them that of course they will not understand everything, which is why we have the class. One of the points of the activity is to generate questions in class about what they donAEt understand.

[6] Personal scientific concepts are views students hold that are different from or alternative to those that they will be taught in their courses. (For more details, see Kalman, Morris, Cottin, and Gordon (1999).

[7] In correcting the critiques, it is found that over 90% of the students now know the ocorrecto Newtonian position on each of the phenomenon. Nonetheless, it is essential to have the students state the correct position to correct those few students, who do not understand the Newtonian picture.

[8] Some below-average students had initially volunteered. They were asked, to participate in the interviews. None of them showed up at any interview.

[9] Qualitative studies normally involve a small number of representative students because of the intense amount of effort required in interviewing, transcription, and the final analysis of the data.

References

Berg, R. The video encyclopedia of physics demonstrations Los Angeles, CA: The Education Group, 1992.

Kalman, CS. Developing Critical Thinking Using Cooperative Learning Techniques Physics in Canada 1998 (January/February): 15-17

Kalman, CS. Teaching science to nonOscience students using a studentucentred classroom. In K. Ahmet and S. Fallows (Eds.) Inspiring students: Case studies in motivating the learner London, England: SEDAuStaff and Educational Development Series Kogan Page Limited; 1999. (pp. 17-24).

Kalman, CS. Teaching Students to Solve Quantitative Problems in Science courses by Writing Their Way into the Solution, The Successful Professor http://www.thesuccessfulprofessor.com 2001 (May) Sample Issue 3-4.

Kalman, CS. Generating Effective In-Class Discussions The Successful Professor http://www.thesuccessfulprofessor.com 2002a(5): 7-9.

Kalman, CS. Developing Critical Thinking in Undergraduate Courses: A Philosophical Approach Science & Education 2002b 11: 83-94.

Kalman, J, Kalman, CS Writing to Learn. In K. Gillespie (Ed.) Essays on Teaching Excellence. The Professional and Organizational Development in Higher Education; 1997.9(4).

Kalman, CS, Morris S., Cottin C. and Gordon R. Promoting conceptual change using collaborative groups in quantitative gateway courses American Journal of Physics: Physics Educational Research Supplement. 1999 67:S45-S51.

Kalman, CS, Rohar, S. and Wells, D. Promoting conceptual change using writing-to-learn methods which enhance critical thinking in quantitative gateway courses. American Journal of Physics 2003 71(6). To be published.

Meichtry, YJ. The impact of science curricula on student views about the nature of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 1993 30(5): 429-43.

Redish, EF Teaching physics with the physics suite Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

Rivard, LP. A review of writing to learn in science: Implications for practice and research. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 1994:31, 969-83.

Calvin Kalman, Concordia University, Canada

Kalman is full professor, Physics and Adjunct Professor, Educational and Counselling Psychology McGill University. He is the winner of the Canadian Association of Physicists Medal for Excellence in Teaching 1999.