Overview
My project looked at how students reasoned when solving problems on the CoMPASS pulley tests. CoMPASS stands for Concept Map Project-based Activity Scaffolding System and was designed by a group at University of Wisconsin - Madison. The curriculum has been used in middle schools in Wisconsin. Students take a pre-test, perform an activity (either physical or simulation), and then take a post-test identical to the pre-test. Previous studies have shown that there is no statistical difference between post-test scores of students who performed the simulation and those who performed the physical activity.
I took a more in-depth look at how students reason while taking the tests. In order to do this, I designed a set of questions identical in terms of physics concept to those found on the test. These questions were asked in a one-on-one interview environment after the student had completed the pre- and post-tests. Half of the questions were asked in the pre-test interview, and the other half were asked in the post-test interview. The difference between the questions I designed and test questions is that they are asked in a different context and were open-ended while the test questions are primarily multiple choice.
The interview gave me insight into how students reasoned as well as allowed for me to check for the influence of context. I did this by comparing interview responses to the analogous test question to check for consistency. Below I describe my project in more detail.
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Research Questions
The research questions that I investigated were:
1. How do conceptions change from before to after the activity and what elements contribute to the change?
2. How does the context of the question influence the conceptions a student might have?
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Project Design
The participants in my research were general physics I students. The course is an algebra-based introductory course. Since large-class studies have previously shown there was no statistical difference in the physical and simulation groups, I took a more in-depth look at how students reason. My group was small-scale consisting of 12 students. Half performed the simulation activity and the other half performed the physical experiment.
Students participated in a one-on-one setting with the interviewer. The process went as follows:
- Pre-Test
- Individual Semi-Structured Interview in which students were asked six of the twelve questions.
- Activity in which half of the students performed the simulation and the other half did the physical experiment.
- Post-Test which is identical to the Pre-Test.
- Individual Semi-Structured Interview in which students are asked the questions they were not previously asked.
The interview questions were asked the same amount of times in each of the following categories: Simulation Pre-Test, Simulation Post-Test, Physical Pre-Test, Physical Post-Test.
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Anaylsis
I first looked at test scores of the students. While the pre- and post-test grades of the simulation and physical groups was different, the improvement as found by the normalized gain was 33.8% and 33.9%, respectively. In looking at the overall consistency of student responses in the interview with the similar test question, it was found that out of six questions the physical group had 3.8 ± 1.6 consistent responses in the pre-test/interview and 4.8 ± 1.1 consistent responses in the post-test/interview. The simulation group had 4.3 ± 1.1 consistent responses in the pre-test/interview and 4.3 ± 1.4 consistent responses in the post-test/interview. It is good to note that the consistency does not reflect the accuracy of the response. It is used to compare the test answer with the response to the similar interview question.
I also looked at particular questions that showed interesting trends. I have presented these findings in more detail in my final presentations which can be found at the bottom of the Outcomes section.
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Outcomes
As the REU comes to an end, I am writing a proposal paper to submit to the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) conference. Should my proposal be accepted, I will write a full paper to present at the conference in Philadelphia in March 2010. As the reviewing process is double-blind, I am refraining from posting my paper on my website. However, I have made my final presentation available in PowerPoint and PDF formats for you to see.
Final Presentation (PPTX)
Final Presentation (PDF)
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