Non-traditional students' conceptual scores and network centrality in SCALE-UP classrooms

Abstract

As classrooms transition from traditional to cooperative learning environments, questions about the details of these environments effectiveness are posed. Does this model equally benefit all students? How do nontraditional (NT) students' gains in conceptual knowledge compare to those of traditional (Trad) students in these classrooms? Do NT students' social differences (i.e. age, employment status, family life, etc.) affect the amount of learning they do in the course or their tendency to form collaborative ties with other students? In three sections of SCALE-UP introductory calculus-based physics, we collected social network survey data about student connections and used the Force Concept Inventory as a pre-and post-course conceptual knowledge diagnostic. Several centrality measures were calculated for the networks and NT and Trad student data were compared to look for significant differences between the two groups' results. We found that NT students are connected to fewer peers but are closer to the inner workings of the network in larger courses.

Networks identify productive forum discussions

“…The forum networks generated by the process described above are much more dense than typical surveybased networks in a physics class of comparable size [45][46][47]. Since they are built from thousands of posts, with content ranging from physics-based conversations to "post count" boosting, it seems reasonable that not all interactions are equally important.…”