Abstract
Traditionally, scholars in physics education research have focused on students solving well-structured learning activities at the university. However, due to their constrained nature, these problems hinder collaboration and idea generation. In order to encourage student collaboration and decision making demands among undergraduate students in an introductory physics course, we utilized a real-world problem where groups were asked to compose a well-structured physics problem for younger learners. In this study we explored how they collaborated in composing physics problems. Data collection consisted of audio recording of the group discussions while they were collaborating to develop their physics problems and their respective problem solutions. Through interviews, we accessed participants’ perceptions of the task and related challenges. Results suggest that composing problems is an opportunity for participants to propose ideas and make decisions regarding the goals of the problem, concepts and procedures, contextual details, and magnitudes and units to introduce in their activities. Further, participants valued the open-ended nature of the task and recognized its benefits in utilizing physics ideas into context, which in turn enabled collaboration in a way not experienced by them with traditional well-structured problems. These findings shed light on the nature of composing physics problems in undergraduate courses, where participants assume a different role by facing a real-world activity that encourages expertise through physics-related communication and writing.Received 7 January 2020Accepted 25 January 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.010120Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasConcepts & principlesScientific reasoning & problem solvingProfessional TopicsLower undergraduate studentsPhysics Education Research
Highlights
Physics education has long relied on problem solving as a mechanism to foster student learning
In relation to the difficulties experienced by novices and experts when addressing physics concepts and procedures and magnitudes and units, we argue that choices about the problem context and wording are more familiar to both novices and experts
The physics education research (PER) community has provided different types of evidence to show the pedagogical benefits of incorporating real-world problems in the physics classroom
Summary
Physics education has long relied on problem solving as a mechanism to foster student learning. While prevalent in physics curriculum, physics education research (PER) scholars have lately found that well-structured physics problems have little effect in students’ conceptual development [1,2] and collaboration opportunities [3,4]. PER scholars have found that using real-world problems in the classroom can potentially create opportunities for students to engage in problem-solving skills, and increase conceptual development and decision making [9,10]. The learning opportunities that real-world problems promote have a great importance for the PER field, which must rapidly adjust to the fast and ever-changing professional responsibilities that their students will encounter after graduation
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