Physics Tasks

A framework for designing experimental tasks in contemporary physics lab courses

“…Finally, one can also apply general criteria for high-quality physics tasks to the design of experimental tasks, e.g., linguistic simplicity, brevity, conciseness, correctness, etc. [18].…”

“…To characterize the target group, it contains the categories year of study and field of study as well as expected prior knowledge and expected prior experimental skills addressing the preconditions of the target group that need to be considered to design an addressee-specific experimental task (based on Refs. [14,18]). For the same reason, it is e.g., also relevant to be aware of the students' interests (based on Ref.…”

“…Another category is the degree of openness referring to the underlying learning theory approach of experimental tasks and the opportunities to vary the degrees of guidance and openness (based on Refs. [8,12,18,20,22,26,28,29,31,32]). Related to that, there is also the category level of difficulty (based on Refs.…”

“…Related to that, there is also the category level of difficulty (based on Refs. [18,28,33]) as one can vary the difficulty of the experimental task considering the target group, learning objectives, and openness of the task. Additionally, this design principle contains a list of focused experimental activities that can be stimulated among the students with the experimental task (based on Refs.…”

“…In other words: while the above outlined findings and developments have a significant impact on the conception and design of experimental tasks, these tasks are (together with the instructor's guidance) still the main learning opportunity to reach the learning objectives of lab courses. They remain the focal point of contemporary and effective lab courses, so these innovative concepts still follow the approach of task-based learning [18] which considers tasks as the centrum of a constructivist learning process.…”