Development of Interactive Examples for Concept-Based Problem Solving in Introductory Undergraduate Physics Courses

传统的物理入门课程通常不能显著提高学生对物理的概念理解和态度。最近，几个小组通过应用物理教育研究的见解来改进课程内容和课堂、实验室和复习部分的教学方法，记录了这些领域的重大改进。该项目基于从物理教育研究中获得的知识，解决了本科物理教育中剩余的关键组成部分-家庭作业问题-并仔细地将技术和教学相结合。该项目的主要目标是创建教学材料，供物理入门课程的学生使用，以发展基于概念分析的问题解决策略。特别是，该项目正在创建一套完整的(总共约60个)以研究为基础的“互动例子”(IES)，可用于本科院校基于微积分的入门物理课程。这些IES是基于网络的练习，旨在让学生积极参与苏格拉底对话，旨在帮助他们开发基于概念的策略来解决家庭作业问题。开发的问题解决了记录在案的学生困难，并由与马萨诸塞大学和华盛顿大学的研究人员合作指导。这些新的IES还利用了以前成功开发用于基于代数的物理入门课程的IES的经验教训。我们正在对新的IES在提高学生对基本物理原理的功能理解方面的有效性进行量化评估。最初将向社区学院和同行机构传播这些独立教育项目，在项目过程中正在改进进一步的传播。

Physics (13) Traditional introductory physics courses typically fail to significantly improve students' conceptual understanding of, and attitude towards, physics. Recently, several groups have documented significant improvements in these areas by applying insights from physics education research to improve curricular content and instructional methods for lectures, labs and recitation sections.This project addresses the remaining critical component of undergraduate physics education-the homework problems-with a careful integration of technology and instruction, based on knowledge gained from physics education research. The primary goal of the project is to create instructional materials that students in introductory physics courses can use to develop problem-solving strategies based on conceptual analysis. In particular, the project is creating a complete set (about 60 total) of research-based "Interactive Examples" (IEs) that can be used in introductory calculus-based physics courses in undergraduate institutions. These IEs are web-based exercises that actively engage students in a Socratic dialog designed to help them develop a concept-based strategy to solve a homework problem.The problems developed address documented student difficulties and are guided by collaborations with researchers at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Washington. These new IEs also exploit the lessons learned from previous successful development of IEs for introductory algebra-based physics courses.Quantitative evaluation is being done of the effectiveness of the new IEs in improving students' functional understanding of basic physics principles. Initial dissemination of these IEs will be to community colleges and peer institutions, and further dissemination is being refined during the course of the project.