Original scientific paper
THE FIRST RESULTS OF AN IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ACTIVE LEARNING PARADIGM IN UNIVERSITY PHYSICS
Josip Sliško
Rebeca Medina Hernández
Abstract
Putting students in the center of the educational process and using the results of educational research are basic characteristics of an important movement whose objective is learning improvement in many university courses. For mechanics courses there is experimental evidence that pedagogy with “active students” gives better results than pedagogy with “active professor and passive students”. In this article we present the first results of an implementation of a pedagogy which promotes active student learning in one physics course at the Jesuit University of Guadalajara (ITESO).
We decided to use an implementation format in which there are no lectures and in which cognitive and meta-cognitive aspects of learning are stressed. Students gain knowledge necessary for classroom work through reading assignments. Suggestions that it is important to identify difficult to understand passages, to elaborate underdeveloped parts and to construct conceptual maps were used to promote comprehension of the text. The quality of comprehensive reading products and the results of short reading quizzes give students an opportunity to make 20% of the maximum note.
In the classroom the students answer conceptual questions (in verbal format, with or without video illustrations) and solve physics problems helped by an expert-like strategy (visualization of problem situations, conceptual analysis, mathematical modeling, verbal planning of the solution path, mathematical realization of the plan, analysis of the solution, and conclusion about the role the solved problem has in gained knowledge).
Laboratory practices are based on the POE sequence (Predict – Observe – Explain), in which students first make a prediction with justification, observe the behavior of the phenomenon and later explain any observed differences between the prediction and the observation.
The main obstacles for the implementation of this pedagogy are the resistance students shown toward comprehensive reading and their (erroneous) belief that teacher’s lecture is a necessary precondition of their learning.
Keywords
Active learning; group learning; learning by reading; problem solving; conceptual maps; video as learning tool; predict – observe – explain sequence; traditional teaching
Hrčak ID:
2339
URI
Publication date:
9.1.2006.
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