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Teaching Techniques Used in the TAMU APPEAL Courses

Large Whiteboard Group Activities

Motivation:
  • To give students a sense of how professional physicists must often work to solve problems in collaborative efforts.
  • Working in small groups give students concentrated doses of peer instruction.
  • Exposure to multiple learning styles will likely be gained in small groups.
  • Students must learn how to express and defend their physical and mathematical reasoning as well as judge and debate their peer’s reasoning.
  • Presentation skills are then developed by having each group present their strategy and results at the end of the activity.
  • Splitting students into multiple groups allows the class to look at multiple examples or approaches to the same topic.  Group presentations at the end of the activity exposes the entire class to lessons learned by each group, maximizing deliverability of content.


Methodology:
  • Large Whiteboards are given to groups of (ideally) three students.  The boards provide a common workspace for students to hash out their ideas and approach to the specific activity given.
  • Students are broken into random or assigned groups. Random groups avoid static roles and relationships whereas assigned groups allows pairing of students of varying skills and learning styles.
  • The main goal of the activities is for students to make connections between the material learned in class and to explore physical phenomena right before we cover it in lecture to enhance retention. In experimental based activities it is best to avoid recepie like step description and give minimal instructions instead. Such sparse instructions require student groups to be creative, self motivated and to rely heavily on their prior physical knowledge and problem solving skills. These “MacGyver” activities are among the favourite of the students. Having to work through a concept relying solely on aquiered prior knowledge leaves a greater mark on students.
  • Types of activities:  Paper-based, Computer-based, or Physical-based Activities.
    • An individual activity is not restricted to a single mode of delivery.  For instance, giving groups a paper based activity that requires them to go through mathematical and/or physical argument can be followed with computer simulations in order to further solidify student's discoveries.
    • Paper-based Activities tend to be more detailed in their description and procedures, leaving less to the students to guess at or figure out but give more time to focus on key concepts of the activity.
    • Computer-based Activities can require little on the part of students if they are given “canned” programs that click-and-play. The visualization capabilities gained through computer simulations and modeling help to add to student visualization skills.  Even with click-and-play activities, those students that invest the time into inquiry will benfit from the experience.  Students can also be requried to their own simulations which gives them a needed insight into physical modeling.
    • Physical-based Activities can be of two sorts:  Experimental (using minimal experimental equipment) or Kinesthetic (making use of students themselves)
      • Experimental activities give students the means of actually witnessing the physical phenomena in question and making direct observations and drawing conclusions from them. As mentioned above, the simpler the equipement and the less the instructions the more the students gain through inquire and peer-lead learning.
      • Kinesthetic activities require the students to put themselves in the place of the system in question, e. g. enacting the role of a particle in an ideal gas. Students must then direct their actions based upon the dictates of physical laws and considerations, giving them another approach to thinking about physical phenomena.
Effective Use:
  • While Peer Instruction is an effective tool in developing student learning, students can also convince each other of inappropriate arguments.  In order for the group activities to succeed, instructors should periodically monitor the direction of the discussions.  When groups have gone astray in their reasoning, it is best for the instructor to interject in a manner that will lead them to first understand that there is a flaw in their reasoning and then provoke them to find the solution.
  • The instructor’s role is not simply as an observer or guide, but also as a task manager.  In many cases, it is better to end an activity early, before all groups have reached a conclusion, than to let it run too long.  Class discussions and/or group presentations following each activity ensure that all will still be presented with the material and appropriate conclusions.
  • As an aid in keeping groups on task, it can be helpful to assign groups members roles: a Task Manager keeps the group from straying from the topic, a Recorder keeps detailed and clear notes on their reasoning, and a Cynic questions members’ arguments and make them defend their reasoning.
  • Group sizes of three seem to be most effective—ensuring that each group has enough members to carry out particular tasks, while not getting so large that some students fall to the background.  In groups of two it is more likely that one student will assume the role of leader, diminishing the role of their partner.  Groups of four or more tend to be more difficult to keep on task.
  • Although some activities can run long, incorporating 25 minutes into lectures for activities is a good allotment that still permits time to introduce the activity a the beginning of the class and allows sufficient time for group presentations at the end of class and closing remarks from the instructor. 

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