Instructional Laboratory for Experimental Training (INLET)

实验训练教学实验室 (INLET)

• 批准号: 1504874
• 负责人: Brian D'Urso
• 金额: $ 24.87万
• 依托单位: University of Pittsburgh
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-15 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1504874&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Instructional; Laboratory; Experimental; Training; INLET

Numerous reports from government and industry have called for colleges and universities to produce more -- and more capable -- STEM graduates. To attract more students to STEM fields, faculty need to make the curriculum more engaging and relevant. One important shift in instructional approach is to replace traditional laboratory courses with discovery-based courses, giving students exposure to research techniques and equipment. In this project, the investigators will employ a set of design principles to reform three lab experiments used in advanced physics lab courses. The design principles include using research-grade techniques and equipment, encouraging exploration and collaboration in teams, and having students learn to debug experiments by following signals (optical, electrical, etc.) through the experiments as a researcher would. The new labs will provide students an opportunity to design experiments and explore outcomes, provide sufficient flexibility so that students are challenged to take control and reflect upon the direction of the experiments, and provide students an opportunity to perform progressively more complex analyses of experiments. The reformed experiments will be implemented at a reasonable cost and will include completely open hardware and software. The investigators will assess the effectiveness of the reformed experiments by comparing the performance and experiences of students completing the experiments before and after the changes are implemented.Traditional physics lab exercises often do not provide students with authentic experiences to help them develop problem-solving, reasoning, and higher-order thinking skills and learn to think like a physicist. The three reformed labs to be developed in this project (i.e., acoustic resonance, Mossbauer spectroscopy, and noise and filtering) will use a cognitive approach to instructional design and will take into account students' prior knowledge in determining the level of support provided at a given stage of exploration and analysis. In particular, the investigators will apply a field-tested cognitive apprenticeship model in which the instructor will model the criteria of good performance, coach students and provide an appropriate level of scaffolding support, and then reduce the support so that the students develop self-reliance in the design and explorations in the labs. The principles, hardware, and software used in redesigning the physics lab exercises can be adapted to redesign experiments in other STEM fields.

来自政府和行业的许多报告都呼吁高校培养更多、更有能力的STEM毕业生。为了吸引更多的学生进入STEM领域，教师需要让课程更具吸引力和相关性。教学方法的一个重要转变是以发现为基础的课程取代传统的实验课程，让学生接触研究技术和设备。在这个项目中，研究者将采用一套设计原则来改革高等物理实验课中使用的三个实验。设计原则包括使用研究级的技术和设备，鼓励团队探索和合作，让学生学习像研究人员一样通过实验跟踪信号（光、电等）来调试实验。新实验室将为学生提供设计实验和探索结果的机会，提供足够的灵活性，使学生能够挑战控制和反思实验的方向，并为学生提供逐步进行更复杂的实验分析的机会。改革后的实验将以合理的成本实施，并将包括完全开放的硬件和软件。研究者将通过比较改革前后学生完成实验的表现和经验来评估改革实验的有效性。传统的物理实验室练习通常不能为学生提供真实的经验来帮助他们发展解决问题、推理和更高层次的思维技能，并学会像物理学家一样思考。本项目将开发的三个改革后的实验室（即声学共振、穆斯堡尔光谱学和噪声与滤波）将采用认知方法进行教学设计，并将考虑学生先前的知识，以确定在给定的探索和分析阶段提供的支持水平。特别是，研究者将采用实地测试的认知学徒模式，在这种模式中，教师将模拟良好表现的标准，指导学生并提供适当水平的脚手架支持，然后减少支持，以便学生在实验室的设计和探索中发展自力更生。在重新设计物理实验室练习中使用的原理、硬件和软件可以适用于重新设计其他STEM领域的实验。