Abstract
The widely held constructivist view of learning advocates student engagement via interactivity. Within the physics education research community, several specific interactive strategies have been developed to enhance conceptual understanding. One such strategy, the Interactive Lecture Demonstration (ILD) is designed for large lecture classes and, if measured using specific conceptual surveys, is purported to provide learning gains of up to 80%. This paper reports on learning gains for two different Projects over ten years. In Project 1, the ILDs were implemented from 1999 to 2001 with students who had successfully completed senior high school physics. The learning gains for students not exposed to the ILDs were in the range 13% to 16% while those for students exposed to the ILDs was 31% to 50%. In Project 2, the ILDs were implemented from 2007 to 2009 with students who had not studied senior high school physics. Since the use of ILDs in Project 1 had produced positive results, ethical considerations dictated that all students be exposed to ILDs. The learning gains were from 28% to 42%. On the one hand it is pleasing to note that there is an increase in learning gains, yet on the other, we note that the gains are nowhere near the claimed 80%. This paper also reports on teacher experiences of using the ILDs, in Project 2.
Highlights
A great deal of the physics education research of the past 30 or so years has been driven by the belief, supported by a substantial body of evidence, that traditional lecturing is not an effective way of producing learning or understanding in students1͔
The Interactive Lecture DemonstrationILDis designed for large lecture classes and, if measured using specific conceptual surveys, is purported to provide learning gains of up to 80%
This paper reports on learning gains for two different Projects over ten years
Summary
A great deal of the physics education research of the past 30 or so years has been driven by the belief, supported by a substantial body of evidence, that traditional lecturing is not an effective way of producing learning or understanding in students1͔. The bottomline conclusion drawn from this comparison was that, in nearly every group of students studied, interactive strategies produce considerably more gain in conceptual understanding than traditional teaching If these results are taken at face value, the questions can be asked: Why do not moreall?͒ physics courses use interactive engagement strategies? After any reallocation of teaching duties, must be willing to change their teaching, and ethical considerations would demand that changes be consistent across parallel streams To justify such an upheaval, there would have to be some kind of guarantee that the new teaching strategy would produce sufficiently large, on-going increases in conceptual understanding, under the conditions that apply in ordinary universities. ͑2͒ How does the average gain in conceptual understanding measured for introductory physics classes at the University of Sydney using ILDs compare with results quoted for other universities?
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