Faculty Development Stand-Alone Report 1 (Progress)

Dickinson Summer Seminars on Teaching Physics Using Interactive Teaching Methods on Computers

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VIII. Recommendations

Overall, alumni of Dickinson’s ITMC seminars who returned surveys are quite optimistic about the ITMC approach to teaching high school and college physics courses of all descriptions. It appears that one of the most significant problems with implementing ITMC involves the difficulty instructors have finding time to reorganize and reequip their teaching spaces and implement changes to their approach to teaching (20 participants mentioned this). It appears that issues related to student attitudes, the lack of internal and external support for change, and difficulties with student assessment are also concerns that should be addressed more specifically in future seminars.

1. Adaptability of Materials: Quite a few participants (8) indicated that they needed more time with the activities covered in the seminar in order to feel adequately trained to use the equipment after returning to their home institutions. Several more suggested that materials should be made more flexible; five saw this a problem with ITMC, and four followed up by suggesting that the seminar should address this problem. In related commentary, three respondents indicated that it took too much time to become skilled at using the hardware and software required to implement ITMC. Two others suggested that the available materials were not entirely appropriate to their purposes, and were in need of revisions.

The common denominators for all these comments is time and the time restraints that must be dealt with when attempting to implement ITMC in the field. Preparation time increases any time one changes course materials and teaching approaches, and ITMC is no exception; time is the cost of change and innovation. Still, part of ITMC teaching is driven by the availability of sophisticated interfacing equipment, software packages, and hardware platforms while the quality and quantity of the equipment and facilities available at the home institutions are variable. Some may have well-designed classroom spaces that are fully equipped with computers, video equipment, interfaces, and other related equipment. But other former seminar participants are forced to use only what they already have, off the shelf, and have little if any access to the kind of computer hardware and software that ITMC implementation often calls for.

Even if the equipment is available, it takes time to be able to use it effectively. And it appears that, at least in some cases, the time it takes to adapt ITMC methods to the equipment on hand exceeds the time available.

2. Student Attitudes: It seems clear that ITMC is a natural way to learn for many students, and that many are very positive about the general approach. Participants reported that nearly two out of every three students enjoyed ITMC (62%), and that less than one in ten (9%) found the approach frustrating (Chart 17). Judging by some of the responses to open-ended questions, though, this 9% can be problematic.

Fourteen respondents identified student recalcitrance and student frustration as primary problems when attempting to implement ITMC. Five more identified this same problem as one that future seminars should address specifically. One professor at a private undergraduate college gave voice to a theme that was repeated several times among other respondents. According to this respondent:

There is a great deal of inertia in the students. They don’t want to work. They don’t want to think. "Just tell me the answer."

Frustrated, just-tell-me-the-answer students can be, and often are quite boisterous about their anxieties, and this can have a negative effect on the overall learning environment of the ITMC classroom (or any classroom, for that matter). Some who would otherwise enjoy ITMC may become ambivalent, and those who are ambivalent may find themselves slipping into the frustrated category if this problem is not adequately addressed.

Many students at the college level have options with regard to which physics classes they will take, if they take any at all. Where this is the case, it may be advisable to increase efforts to forewarn students about the innovative approach used in ITMC courses so they can self select out of the course if they anticipate this being a problem for them. Of course this means that some students who would benefit from ITMC might be scared off by clear and explicit "warnings," so a balanced approach will be important to optimizing the situation.

At the same time, most high school students and many students in small college settings may not enjoy the degree of freedom they would need to "select out" of ITMC courses if they would prefer to. Over half of the survey respondents (53%) came from institutions with three faculty or less. In 17% of the cases, the respondent was the ONLY physics faculty member at the home institution, and 22% of the respondents came from institutions where there was only one other colleague in the department (see Chart 4 for the general distribution).

In situations like these, where students may be "forced" to take an ITMC course to complete degree requirements, forewarning may still be in order. If the innovative nature of the pedagogy is addressed early on, and explicitly -- that is, if students know what to expect -- the degree to which frustration emerges might be minimized. Again, this is not only a problem for students who find ITMC frustrating, for whatever reason. Rather, this problem has the potential, if left unattended, to degrade the learning environment for the entire class. In the end, for various reasons, interactive teaching methods may not be the "best fit" for all students.

3. Administrative and Financial Support: Lack of administrative support seemed to be one major problem, with a variety of subthemes. Ten respondents identified the lack of support from administrators for staff and student assistance as a primary concern. Eight more respondents thought that equipment and facilities inadequacies were problematic and two more simply cited funding inadequacies (both traceable, to a degree, to the lack of support from administrators). Colleague recalcitrance was listed as a problem by six respondents. And two respondents specifically recommended that more time be spent in the seminar on the issue of "selling administrators" on the value of ITMC.

4. Student Assessment: Some participants expressed a desire to have more specific instruction on how to assess gains or losses in student conceptual understanding as a result of changes in instruction. Responses to the question Compare your students' conceptual understanding after being exposed to ITMC methods with what you have experienced using a more traditional approach to teaching (Charts 19 and 20) along with responses to several open-ended questions (Tables 7 and 8) make this point clear. In the aggregate, participants reported that they were unsure about the level of conceptual understanding achieved in 19% of the students taught. Ten of 78 participants responding to this question (13%) claimed to know nothing about the level of conceptual understanding their students achieved using ITMC. The remaining 68 respondents reported that, on average, they were unable to determine the levels of conceptual understanding in 7% of their students. In addition, three participants mentioned the problems of student assessment specifically when critiquing the ITMC approach, and three respondents also mentioned student assessment when asked about how the seminar could be improved.

The lack of support and the difficulty in assessing student outcomes are related. Assessing student outcomes might be thought of as the core problem, with lack of support being the symptom. Making student outcomes more clear might be the most effective way to address the support problem among colleagues and administrators.

It seems reasonable to postulate that effective implementation of ITMC requires converting not just one group, those who do the teaching, but three other groups: (1) teachers and instructors, who have to learn to teach using a different philosophy, using, perhaps, new and more sophisticated equipment; (2) students, who need to be prepared to learn a new way; and (3) administrators, who are responsible for evaluating faculty and providing financial support and scheduling flexibility. Looking at the attitudes of respondents in Chart 10, it seems clear that seminar participants become convinced of the value of ITMC by taking the seminar (if they were not already "sold" on its value beforehand). The problem is with those groups who have not had the valuable experience of going through the seminar.

One of the most effective ways to convert colleagues and administrators, short of running seminars for them, is to demonstrate bottom-line gains in conceptual understanding when ITMC approaches are used. To be sure, student assessment is one of the most important, and one of the most difficult areas of teaching any subject, at any level. But to make further inroads with key constituencies, it seems imperative that teachers and instructors improve their skills when it comes to evaluating student performance. Making the case that the ITMC approach is worth the extra time, effort, and expenditure of resources that it calls for will become much easier if positive results are more clearly manifest.

Conclusions: The recommendations offered above should not cloud the fact that the ITMC seminars are viewed in a very positive light by an overwhelming majority of the seminar alumni who took part in this study. Ninety-three percent of the respondents reported being either mildly optimistic or very optimistic about ITMC immediately after the seminar, and 80% of the respondents continue to share this sense of optimism about ITMC today (see Chart 10). Although some participants were unsure about the exact degree to which their students improved, participants were particularly enthusiastic about the improvements in the depth of conceptual understanding of physical phenomenon they are seeing in their students. Even though some respondents reported having trouble assessing student outcomes (see 4. Student Assessment), those who were surveyed felt that 50% of the approximately 84,000 students who have been instructed using ITMC methods were doing better with ITMC than they were with traditional methods, and only 5% seemed to be doing worse (see Chart 19). Student attitude was mentioned as a problem among a very small but vocal minority of students (see Chart 17).

Equipment constraints are evident, but they do not appear to be so overwhelming as to undermine the basic utility of the ITMC approach. In fact, when asked what problems participants had with ITMC, a number of respondents took the time to indicate they had no problems at all. And when asked how to improve the seminar, 24 respondents took the time to indicate that it was a very good and worthwhile experience: The comment "don’t change a thing" came up several times.

Ultimately, the recommendations made above should be considered in the context of a study that revealed overwhelmingly positive feedback regarding the ITMC method and the ITMC seminar. Rather than suggesting fundamental change, these recommendations represent minor adjustments in what is, by all accounts, a superior program for teaching teachers how to share their knowledge and deep appreciation for physics using interactive teaching methods and computers.

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