FIRE: Exploring Visual Cueing to Facilitate Problem Solving in Physics

视觉是一种极其重要的交流媒介。在电视、手机和教学过程中，学生们不断地被图像轰炸。尽管设计良好的图像可以促进学习，但设计不佳的图像可能会阻碍学习。本课题验证了这样一种假设，即适当设计物理问题提供的视觉线索，可以提高学生的物理问题解决能力。这个项目加强了认知心理学家导师和物理教育研究员导师之间的现有伙伴关系，通过两项研究的序列来检验上述假设，共有150名参与者参加了以代数为基础的物理入门课程。由两名认知心理学家和一名物理教育研究人员组成的专家小组担任咨询委员会和外部评估员。这些研究延续了过去两年的工作。第一项研究确定了20名专家和50名初学者在学习基于代数的物理入门课程时，在用图表解决物理问题时眼动的差异。每个参与者解决20个概念性物理问题，每个问题都包括一个图表，图表的空间结构与问题的解决方案密切相关。这项研究将测量图表中与解决方案相关的区域以及与解决方案无关但因其他原因而突出的区域的注视总时长。这验证了这样一种假设，即专家将专注于相关领域，而新手将倾向于专注于问题的无关领域。第二项研究验证了这样一种假设，即适当的视觉线索改变新手的眼动可以提高他们解决问题的能力。100名具有适当物理知识水平的参与者是从学习基于代数的物理的学生中挑选出来的。在第一个研究中，每个参与者都被展示了10个物理问题，在这些问题上，专家新手的差异最大。首先，每个参与者都解决了问题，如果不能正确地这样做，就会给她一个类似于最初问题的练习题。如果她正确地解决了练习问题，她会看到一个不同的问题。一半的参与者会收到叠加在练习问题上的视觉提示，而另一半的参与者则没有。这项研究比较了每组人的问题解决能力，以检验假设。两名研究生的论文研究重点是视觉线索，他们将在主要研究人员的指导下参与这个项目。这个项目是第一个在物理问题解决的背景下探索和探索认知和眼动之间的联系的项目。虽然这个项目的重点是解决物理学中的问题，但研究结果对其他STEM学科的学习也有影响，在这些学科中，图像的使用是重要的。除了眼前的范围外，该项目将把认知心理学关于视觉线索的想法注入物理教育研究，从而使物理教育研究领域受益，它还可能改变视觉媒体在物理和其他STEM教学中的使用方式，以更有效地促进学生的学习。

Vision is a critically important medium of communication. Students are continuously bombarded with images on television, cell phones and during instruction. Although well-designed images can facilitate learning, poorly designed images can hinder learning. This project tests the hypothesis that appropriately designed visual cues provided on physics problems, can improve students physics problem solving skills. This project strengthens an existing partnership between a cognitive psychologist mentor and physics education researcher mentee to test the above hypothesis through a sequence of two studies with a total of 150 participants enrolled in introductory algebra-based physics courses. An expert panel of two cognitive psychologists and a physics education researcher serve as the Advisory Board and external evaluators.The studies extend ongoing work over the past two years. The first study identifies differences in the eye movements of 20 experts and 50 novices enrolled in introductory algebra-based physics while solving physics problems with diagrams. Each participant solves 20 conceptual problems in introductory physics, each of which includes a diagram whose spatial structure is intimately connected to the problem's solution. The study will measure the total duration of eye-fixations in the areas of the diagram that are relevant to the solution as well as those that are irrelevant to the solution, but salient for other reasons. This tests the hypothesis that the experts will focus on the relevant areas and the novices will tend to focus on the irrelevant areas of the problem. The second study tests the hypothesis that appropriate visual cueing to change the eye movements of novices can improve their problem solving performance. One hundred participants with an appropriate level of physics knowledge are selected from students enrolled in algebra-based physics. Each participant is shown 10 physics problems on which largest expert novice differences are observed in the first study. First, each participant solves the problem, and if unable to do so correctly, she is given a practice problem which is similar to the initial problem. If she solves the practice problem correctly, she is shown a different problem. One half of the participants receive visual cues overlaid on the practice problem, while the other half do not. The study compares the problem solving performance of each group to test the hypothesis. Two graduate students whose dissertation research focuses on visual cueing will work on this project under the guidance of the principal investigators.This project is one of the first of its kind to explore and exploit the link between cognition and eye movements in the context of physics problem solving. Although this project focuses on problem solving in physics, the results of the research have implications for learning in other STEM disciplines where the use of images is important. Beyond its immediate scope, the project will benefit the field of physics education research by infusing ideas from cognitive psychology regarding visual cueing into physics education research, It will also potentially change the ways visual media are used in physics and other STEM instruction to more effectively facilitate students' learning.