Changing University Students’ Alternative Conceptions of Optics by Active Learning

Zalkida Hadžibegović,Josip Sliško

doi:10.26529/cepsj.230

Abstract

Active learning is individual and group participation in effective activities such as in-class observing, writing, experimenting, discussion, solving problems, and talking about to-be-learned topics. Some instructors believe that active learning is impossible, or at least extremely difficult to achieve in large lecture sessions. Nevertheless, the truly impressive implementation results of the SCALE-UP learning environment suggest that such beliefs are false (Beichner et al., 2000). In this study, we present a design of an active learning environment with positive effect on students. The design is based on the following elements: (1) helping students to learn from interactive lecture experiment; (2) guiding students to use justified explanation and prediction after observing and exploring a phenomenon; (3) developing a conceptual question sequence designed for use in an interactive lecture with students answering questionsin worksheets by writing and drawing; (4) evaluating students’ conceptual change and gains by questions related to light reflection, refraction, and image formation in an exam held a week after the active learning session. Data were collected from 95 science freshmen with different secondary school backgrounds. They participated in geometrical optics classes organized for collecting research results during and after only one active learning session. The results have showed that around 60% of the students changed their initial alternative conceptions of vision and of image formation. It was also found that a large group of university students is likely to be engaged in active learning, shifting from a passive role they usually play during teacher’s lectures.

Highlights

During their education, science students are expected to develop critical thinking and learning skills to address novel problem-solving and team-workbased issues that will be essential in their future careers and lives
The main aim of this paper is to describe an in-class learning sequence for the active learning of physics designed for a large group of science students
It is necessary to emphasise that before the active learning sequence (ALS) was implemented in the Physics II lecture, many students studied geometrical optics at three levels of physics education

Summary

Introduction

Based on experience and education research in general, science students finishing the first cycle of the Bologna model of study do not have enough knowledge to cope with problem solving in real life. It is well known that students’ ‘inert knowledge’ is a key problem in modern education (Whitehead, 1959) Both students and teachers should learn techniques for the practical use of their knowledge in order to understand the underlying concepts in a particular field of study. This teaching paradigm shift should be accepted by both students’ and teachers, and at a level of accepting declarations and documents in the Bologna Process as a main process in higher education in Europe. Active learning in science means a shift in the traditional teaching methodology to enable students to take an active role as investigators, problem solvers and to change a role of teachers to be students’ guides and facilitators instead of knowledge presenters (Adams et al, 1988)

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Conclusion