Category: teaching

Sending bottle rockets to new heights (of learning)

My Twitter streams crossed this morning and before I even got to work, a blog post about kids, STEM, learning science, teaching science and rockets was practically spilling out of my head.

It started with a tweet from @physorg_com (h/t to @andrewteacher and @fnoschese) about this column “Don’t show, don’t tell? Trade-off between direct instruction and independent exploration” The researchers gave pre-schoolers a new toy with varying amounts of instruction and then watched what they did with the toy. The kids who were shown how one part of the toy worked could replicate that action, usually, but didn’t find all the other cool stuff the toy did. Kids who didn’t receive explicit instruction figured out much more about the toy. It’s a nice article – have a look if you have minute or two.

The article reminded me of my own experiences with the PhET physics simulations and some research the PhET developers have done (damn, can’t find the ref but I’m sure Wendy would be happy to point you in the right direction). The least effective way to use the sims is to give students a recipe (“Do this. Now click here. Measure this. Now do this. Now this….”) Better but still not terrific is just letting the students play with the sim (“Here’s a cool sim. Play for a while and see what happens.”) The most effective way to use the sims, in their studies anyway, is to give the students a goal or challenge (“Make the light bulb shine the brightest!“)

The other crossing Twitter stream started with @mrsebiology

The ensuing conversation with her and @irasocol reminded me of how I throttled up our UBC Summer Camp bottle rocket activity so it was much more than just something to fill the kids’ time.

Image by richpt on flicker (CC)

Bottle rockets are a popular activity with kids and families. My friends at the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre run Saturn 5 Saturdays where families bring a 2-litre pop bottle and build and launch their rockets. [Update 30 June: the next Saturn 5 Saturday is July 16, 11am – 2 pm. Thx @AskAnAstronomer] The rockets blast into the air, the kids (or leaders!) get soaked. They chase the rockets as they plummet back to the ground. It’s great fun.

But suppose you have the time, manpower and goal to make the activity educational, not just entertaining.  The recipe method (“Build the rocket like this: fins, nose cone, give it a name, now stand back as I launch it. Wheee!”) is fun, yes, quick, yes. Educational, not so much.  There are two ways we turned our rocket activity into a learning experience:

1. A rocket science experiment: What makes the rocket go highest?

How much water do you put in the rocket? More fuel = higher launch, you’d think. And how much pressure is best? Again, bigger is better, right? We made one set of tokens that read “low pressure”, “medium pressure” and “high pressure”. A second set has “empty”, “1/3 full”, “2/3 full”, “full”. One by one, the rocketeers pick one of each, setting the parameters for their launch.

After the launch, the group will decide if it was  a good one. Once, we tried using inclinometers to measure the maximum height of the rocket but that was waaaay too messy and confusing.  Instead, before they start launching, I ask them for 3 adjectives to describe bad, okay and great rocket launches. The group decides on words like “lame!”, “ok”, and “awesome!” Their rockets, their results, their words.

Then it’s onto to sending the rockets skyward on a ribbon of water.  After each one, we record the result in the matching cell in our results table:

low pressure medium pressure high pressure
empty
1/3 full awesome!
2/3 full
full lame!

As the Table gets filled in, we start making predictions and then testing them.  It’s pretty funny to watch the full, low pressure rocket. The rocketeer and the rest of the group know what’s going to happen — when you pull the release on the launcher, you hear a tiny “pop” and the rocket falls over. It’s no surprise that the higher the pressure, the higher the rocket goes. But it is surprising that the 1/3 full rockets go the highest. There’s an interesting compromise being having lots of fuel and getting that fuel off the launch pad. The thrill of discovery is pretty cool.

And none of that occurs in the recipe method where the leader takes the rocket from the rocketeer, fills it 1/3 full (we already know that’s the best volume, you see), and then launches it. Don’t tell them the answer. Perhaps, don’t even shepherd them to the solution. Instead, provide them with tools and feedback so they find their own way. (Oh geez, that was the thread on physlrner this morning in response to this interesting “Socrates = Border collie” post.)

2. Add a parachu–, er, safe return system

After watching that many rocket launches, some kids start to get bored. You’re outside so let them go off and play tag or hide-n-seek for a while. But some rocketeers are aching to launch again. And again. And again. So turn up the challenge.

I usually bring out a box of “stuff”: cardboard, file folders, string, tape, plastic bags, elastics, etc. and tell the kids they can launch again but only after they’ve added a parachute to get their rocket safely back to Earth. They usually form small groups by themselves – two head are better than one. @mrsebiology tweeted back “the parachute option is part of the ‘final exam’ challenge.”

This morning, though, I had a great conversation with @irasocol about this added challenge. Perhaps saying “parachute” gives too much away and directs them too much. Who knows what they might think up — the space shuttle is a glider, right? Ira tweeted

Yes, I--, er, my son, has this amazing Lego space shuttle set.

Which got me thinking, in the real world, we don’t care about the rocket, just the astronauts. The next time I run one of these rocket activities, here’s what I’m going to do: Give each kid a Lego mini-figure and challenge them to get the astronaut safely back to the ground. Capsule with parachute? Sure. Glider strapped to the side of the rocket? You betcha. Another idea I can’t even imagine? Absolutely!

There you have it, some ideas on how to throttle up your bottle rocket activity into an opportunity to engage in science, problem solving, engineering. Oh, it’s still fun. But now, so much more.

Do you have your own ways to send this activity to new heights? Please add a comment and share them with us!

Why should I use peer instruction in my class?

Image: "Lecture Hall," uniinnsbruck, Flickr (CC)

[Update (June 16): Lead author Zdeslav Hrepic pointed me to a follow-up book chapter [PDF] where he and the study co-authors describe using tablet-PCs to counter the problems uncovered in their study. Thanks, Z.]

I’m sure we’ve all heard it from skeptical instructors: Why should I use peer instruction in my class? In response, we often cite Hake’s 6000-student study or the new UBC study by my colleagues Louis, Ellen and Carl. These are still pretty abstract, though: If you use interactive, learner-centered instruction, you can expect your students to better grasp of the concepts.

“Sure, but why?” the instructors ask. “Why does it work?”

I just read a paper that can help answer that question. I ran across it while following a discussion about the Khan Academy videos and whether or not they are good tools for learning. This paper by Hrepic, Zollman and Rebello (2007) asks students in an introductory physics course and physics experts (with M.Sc’s and Ph.D’s) to watch a 15 minute video of a renowned physics educator presenting a topic in physics.

The researchers do a series of pre- and post-tests and interviews with the students and experts to compare their understanding of the concepts covered (or not) in the video. There were some significant differences. A couple that stick in my head. (1) students recalled learning about concepts that were not presented in the video. (2) Only students who knew the correct answers on the pre-test were able to infer the concepts from the video (that is, the questions were not explicitly answered in the video.) The students who did not know the concept before were unable to make the inferences. Like I said, there are significant differences between what the instructor thinks a lecture covers and what the students think is covered.

The paper nicely gives us some suggestions to counter this problem.

And my thoughts about how to use peer instruction to do that.

Making inferences: Experts make more inferences than students. And only students who already know the concepts can infer them from the lecture. Therefore, instructors need to be cautious about relying on students to fill in the blanks.

Some of the best peer instruction questions are the conceptual questions where the answer is not simple recall. No traxoline here, please. Questions that rely on students making inferences are excellent for promoting discussion because it’s likely students will interpret the question differently, make different assumptions and come to different conclusions. <soapbox> All the more reason that students need to first answer clicker questions on their own so they’re prepared to share their inferences. </soapbox>

Prior knowledge: Students’ prior knowledge influences what they perceive and can “distort” their recollection of what the lecturer says. Therefore, it’s essential that the instructor has some idea of what the students already know (particularly their misconceptions) before presenting new material.

A few, introductory clicker questions will reveal the students’ prior knowledge. Sure, maybe these are simple recall questions that won’t generate a lot of discussion. But the students’ responses will inform the agile instructor who can tailor the instruction.

Continuous feedback about students’ understanding: The trail the instructor blazes through the concepts and the path the students follow often diverge during a lecture. The instructor should be continuously gathering and reacting to feedback from the students about their understanding so the instructor can shepherd the students back on track.

Observant instructors can gather critical feedback from the discussions that occur during peer instruction or the students answers on in-class worksheets like the Lecture-Tutorials popular in introductory “Astro 101” classes and other hybrids of the Washington Tutorials. Rather than waiting weeks until after the midterm or final exam to find out students totally missed Concept X, the instructor can discover it within minutes of introducing the topic. Minutes, not weeks! The agile instructor can immediately revisit the difficult concepts. Immediately, not weeks later or never!

I’m much more confident I can answer the skeptical instructor now. “Why should I use clickers in my classroom?” Because they give the students and you to ability to assess the current level of understanding of the concepts. Current, right now, before it’s too late and the house of cards you’re so carefully building come crashing down.

How should I share materials?

[Update (9 September 2011): Finally stopped procrastin–, er, planning and did it. Follow the “Astro Labs” link at the top of the page. I’m continually adding new activities so check back periodically. Or watch for announcements on my twitter feed, @polarisdotca .]

The goal of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) is to improve undergraduate science education. The chosen method for doing that is based on 3 “pillars”:

In my position as a CWSEI Science and Teaching Learning Fellow in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, I get to spend time working on each of these pillars. Sometimes,  I flit from pillar to pillar to pillar in a single sitting, like when I’m making up a nice think-pair-share clicker question. Other times, I can spend an hour, a day, a month working on one pillar. For instance, I spent the good part of a summer working with our introductory astronomy (“Astro 101”) instructors on a set of learning goals, statements directed at the students like

[By the end of this course, you will be able to] use the geometry of the Earth, Moon and Sun to illustrate the phases of the Moon and predict the Moon’s rise and set times.

For the last couple of terms, I’ve been working closely with the Astro 101 instructors on instructional approaches to help them become more effective instructors.

But it’s hard to be an effective instructor if you don’t have good materials to work with. (No, I’m not saying good materials make you a good instructor — I’m a math grad, I know all that necessary and/or sufficient stuff.)  So I have spent considerable time in the last few years creating activities for our Astro 101 labs. These aren’t traditional, 3-hour labs. Rather, they’re 1-hour, hands-on activities run in groups of less than 40 students. Following our American friends, we call them “tutorials” even though the rest of UBC uses “tutorial” for that hour you spend with a teaching assistant going over problems on the board.

Once we’d drafted the set of learning goals for Astro 101, we selected the learning goals that would be best tackled with a hands-on activity. The Moon phases goal mentioned above, for example. Or “describe experiments or observations that would detect if space is flat, has positive or negative curvature.” Then I set about creating the activity, cycling from CWSEI pillar to pillar.

It got pretty hectic, at times. We have some large classes with the students split into 5 or 6 tutorial sections each week. I’d get the activity ready and create a set of worksheets that we’d use in the Monday section. Then I’d sit in as the teaching assistants led the activity, observing the students, talking to them about how they answered the questions and talking to the teaching assistants about what worked and what didn’t. That afternoon (or night!) I’d make some changes and try version 2 on Tuesday. And repeat. Throughout the week. And then assess on the final exam. Eventually, we ended up with some, quite frankly, excellent activities. The most “mature” activities consist of

  • worksheets to guide the students through the activity
  • question sheet to assess their knowledge at the end of the activity
  • equipment
  • detailed guide for the teaching assistants, including how to set up the equipment, how to facilitate the activity, suggestions for prompts and Socratic-style questions to guide the students, solutions to the assessment
  • in some cases, materials for adapting the activity for use in the classroom
  • exam questions that assess the selected learning goal(s)

It’s taken several years to get here. And it’s time to visit the fourth CWSEI pillar:

disseminate what works

Yes, it’s time to share the activities. A couple of them are already out there, like the human orrery activity [with video] or a concept-mapping activity that will appear in the proceedings of Cosmos in the Classroom 2010. But what about the rest? How do I share them with the community of astronomy educators which includes, I believe

  • post-secondary Astro 101 instructors
  • teaching assistants
  • lab instructors
  • K-12 teachers
  • museum/science center presenters sharing astronomy with school children and the general public
  • astronomy education researchers

I feel there are 2 major decisions to make:

1. Are they free?

I’ve got a pretty good relationship with a certain textbook publisher and I could certainly talk to them about finding a way to bundle the activities up into a workbook. But honestly, I don’t want to go that route. The CWSEI and my Department have been paying me to create these materials – and in some sense, they’re already paid for. In the spirit of standing on the shoulders of giants, I’d like to make them available to anyone who wants them. Does it mean anything if I add ” © 2011 Peter Newbury” in the footer. Or is that “© 2011 UBC”? No, the intellectual property policies at UBC are pretty clear it belongs to me:

Copyright and other intellectual property rights to scholarly and literary works—including books, lecture notes, laboratory manuals [my emphasis], artifacts, visual art and music—produced by those connected with the University belong to the individuals involved.

Or maybe I tag them with a Creative Commons license to use, adapt but give credit where credit is due.

2. What format?

Full disclosure, right here, right now: These materials are written in LaTeX and I will not, I repeat not, Not, NOT re-write them in MS-frickin-Word. One more auto-format because apparently I’m stupid and it knows what I want and I’m going to tear out my hard-drive. And sorry, I don’t know iPages or whatever that Apple iProgram is iCalled.  Plus, I get such a geek thrill out turning this

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Jupiter orbit
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
pscircle(0,0){5.2}
parametricplot[plotpoints=721,linestyle=dashed]{0}{360}{%
t cos 5.2 mul t 9 mul cos 1.5 mul add
t sin 5.2 mul t 9 mul sin 1.5 mul add}

into this [update 7 June 2011: here’s the full .tex file]

Jupiter's spirograph orbit comes from one line of sweet, LaTeX PSTricks code.

So here’s what I’m thinking: for each activity, I’ll make available the .tex files, .eps figures, other graphics and PDFs which are ready-to-use but can’t (easily) be edited. I could add a new page to this WP blog and distribute them there.

What would work for you?

Like the heading asks, what would work for you? Something I suggested above? Or maybe something entirely different? Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts, suggestions, recommendations, requests,…

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