Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.

Next semester I will be attempting something new in our general education, conceptual physics course here at Longwood University. I plan on implementing Lillian McDermott’s Physics by Inquiry (PbI) … with a twist. The suggested enrollment for such a course is 20 students, with 1 instructor and 1-3 teaching assistants. My course next semester will have 50 students with me, all by lonesome. The challenge is to survive!

First, a little background directly from the book:

Physics by Inquiry is a set of laboratory-based modules that provide a step-by-step introduction to physics and the physical sciences … Starting from their own observations, students develop basic physical concepts, use and interpret different forms of scientific representations, and construct explanatory models with predictive capabilities.

Basically, the course will consist of lab everyday. There are no lectures and no problem-solving recitations. There isn’t even a “standard” textbook. The students will be active participants in writing the course textbook. The focus is shifted from memorizing to discovering, with teaching by questioning rather than by telling. This all sounds pretty cool; however, anyone with experience working with students also knows that it is scary as hell, too.

There is a mountain of research behind this curriculum, so I have no doubt that significant learning gains can be achieved with proper implementation. But here’s the rub: I can’t “properly” implement the curriculum. I will be teaching this course to 50 students in a standard lecture room, with no teaching assistants. What in the world am I thinking?

Rachel Scherr already gave this a whirl at Evergreen State College. She reports her results in the Physics Teacher. Apparently, this curriculum still works, even with large groups of students and integrated “check-outs,” that probably come close to being mini-lectures. Of course, Scherr came out of McDermott’s research group, so she has a lot more experience with the curriculum. I’m going to find out what happens when you throw a PbI moron in front of the class.

Here is the skinny on my implementation:

• I’m only using Volume II, since I have a course description I have to stay close to.
• I’ve bought the materials for each module and put everything for the module in a “kit”.
• I will have 12 groups of 4, each group will receive a kit.
• All groups will work through individual sections up until a “check-out”. We will check-out as a class.
• Larger experiments that cannot be placed in a kit will be done together as a class.

I have some pre- and post-tests I plan to implement based on the literature for this curriculum. Also, I’m going to give the Lawson test for scientific reasoning pre- and post-instruction, as well.

Hopefully in December I will have good news to report, unless the students have killed me.