What use are practical physics classes ?

Chambers, R G

doi:10.1088/0031-9112/14/7/002

Cited by 17 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…These aims were adopted from the work of Chambers (1963), Chambers (1966) and Lee (1970), and from a pilot study by the present author. This questionnaire was sent, with appropriate covering letters and instructions to all teaching staff and first year students in the physics department, half-way through the term following the end of the course.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The laboratory aims questionnaire?A new method for course improvement?

Boud

1973

High Educ

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A simple method of diagnosing areas for course improvement in university science and engineering laboratory courses is described. A first year physics laboratory course is examined in terms of a set of aims. A questionnaire was used for staff and students to rate the importance of these aims in the cases (i) of each group's conception of what an ideal course in the subjec t should be, and (ii) each group's rating of the "traditional" and "non-traditional" components of the particular course under investigation. One means of identifying specific areas of improvement is outlined. The potentialities of the technique are discussed.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The laboratory aims questionnaire?A new method for course improvement?

Boud

1973

High Educ

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“…It has been pointed out (Chambers, 1963) that whilst pairing has the obvious advantage of saving laboratory equipment and space, it suffers the disadvantage of allowing situations where only one student of the pair does the work. It was felt that pairing with frequent change of partner would overcome this objection and would also help to integrate shy students.…”

Section: Built-in Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The changes which have taken place in the course have resulted from rethinking on laboratory courses in general (Chambers, 1963), research findings (Boud, 1970), and feedback from the course itself as well as changes in the laboratory teaching situation. These innovations, trials and evaluations have occupied a period of five years and have been directed towards producing an effective learning situation in which student time is used efficiently, and in which each student is encouraged to become critically aware of his own learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Rationally Designed Self‐service Laboratory Mini‐Course

O'Connell

Penton

Boud

1977

Programmed Learning and Educational Technology

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This article describes an attempt at the rational development of a laboratory mini-course which involved the application of research findings, consequent innovation, and successive stages of evaluation and improvement. It was necessarily short because of the time slot available, but it does provide an example which might contribute towards more effective developments for laboratory teaching in longer courses. Particular features are the considerable student involvement in the development of the experiments and the way in which each student chooses the experiments that he wishes to perform.

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“…Over several generations, a variety of theoretical [1][2][3][4] and statistical [5][6][7][8][9] analyses have raised doubts about whether traditional physics labs can positively impact students' understanding of physics concepts. By the middle of the 20th century, a variety of colleges were moving toward skills-based (as they are called today [10]) introductory physics labs [11]. Then, following work by physics education research (PER) scholars starting around the 1990s, a new variety of introductory college physics lab started to emerge: the conceptual inquiry-based lab [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the impact of conceptual inquiry-based labs

Doucette¹

2022

2022 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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Conceptual inquiry-based introductory physics labs deploy PER-informed pedagogical strategies in physics labs with the aim of helping to improve students' understanding of physics concepts. Unlike traditional labs (which tend to be highly-structured and focus on verification of scientific relationships via precision measurements) and skills-based labs (which tend to eschew the aim of helping students learn physics concepts in favor of teaching experimental skills), some studies have suggested that conceptual inquiry-based labs may have a positive impact on student conceptual understanding, as measured by concept inventories. This paper reports on a randomized controlled study that compares student conceptual gains in electricity and magnetism between a conceptual inquiry-based lab and a skills-based lab. Following a difference-in-differences analytical strategy and using hierarchical linear modeling, the result from this study is that the conceptual inquiry-based lab provides no additional benefit to students' conceptual learning gains compared with the skills-based lab. Studies such as these may help physics departments make decisions about the goals and scope of transformations to their introductory lab courses.

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What use are practical physics classes ?

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

The laboratory aims questionnaire?A new method for course improvement?

The laboratory aims questionnaire?A new method for course improvement?

A Rationally Designed Self‐service Laboratory Mini‐Course

Measuring the impact of conceptual inquiry-based labs

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