The role of modeling in troubleshooting: An example from electronics

Abstract

Troubleshooting systems is integral to experimental physics in both research and instructional laboratory settings. The recently adopted AAPT Lab Guidelines identify troubleshooting as an important learning outcome of the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. We investigate students' model-based reasoning on a troubleshooting task using data collected in think-aloud interviews during which pairs of students attempted to diagnose and repair a malfunctioning circuit. Our analysis scheme is informed by the Experimental Modeling Framework (EMF), which describes physicists' use of mathematical and conceptual models when reasoning about experimental systems. We show how students' work on a troubleshooting task can be mapped onto the EMF.

Intertwining evidence- and model-based reasoning in physics sensemaking: An example from electrostatics

“…This representation is consistent with timelines depicting student reasoning during formal experimental troubleshooting presented by both Zwickl and colleagues and Dounas-Frazer and colleagues [39][40][41]. However, they use horizontal blocks of color to represent spans of time when students are engaged in different kinds of reasoning.…”

“…Our analysis here is similar to work by Dounas-Frazer and his colleagues [40,41] who examined how students in an undergraduate physics lab engaged in model-based reasoning while troubleshooting an experimental apparatus and design. Like those researchers, we are interested in understanding how students' use of evidence contributes to their modeling of physical systems and vice versa.…”

“…This definition of evidence is different from that used in other literature [39,40,66] because in this context the students are not engaged in formal experimentation. Instead, they are marshaling their own evidence-instances of specific phenomena in the world-to build their understanding of static electricity.…”

“…In physics, Halloun and Hestenes [35][36][37][38] were among the first to highlight the centrality of modeling for physics learning, and that pedagogical approach has since become increasingly popular in undergraduate physics courses and laboratories [13,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. Within K-12 science education, the Next Generation Science Standards contend that modeling should be a central activity of students in science classrooms, and so researchers have designed multiple instructional supports to support that activity [34,[47][48][49].…”

Effects of reducing scaffolding in an undergraduate electronics lab

“…10,11,16,17 Many examples of such frameworks can be found in the literature. [18][19][20] While these learning cycles tend to focus on designing experiments to answer a particular question (i.e., What is the relationship between the period and length of a pendulum? ), another class of designwhich is perhaps more relevant to this study -is what could be called engineering design.…”