Increasing Conceptual Understanding and Student Motivation in Undergraduate Dynamics Using Inquiry Based Learning Activities

To date, our team has created five hands on inquiry based learning activities (IBLAs) to engage students in conceptual learning in undergraduate dynamics. The activities allow the students to experiment with physical objects similar to those they might see in a homework problem, i.e. weights on a pulley, hollow and solid cylinders rolling down a ramp, gyroscopes spinning, and strings wrapped around spools pulled gently across a surface. The scenarios are designed to produce non intuitive results, resulting in cognitive conflict. In this way, the activities intentionally challenge students to rethink their conceptual frameworks. As part of this research, we identify the concepts used by the students as they piece together their observations in order to understand if meaningful learning is occurring. We also try to pinpoint how they have constructed their understanding and whether it is from observations in the world around them, learned in an introductory course prerequisite to dynamics, or something they have constructed by themselves using the information learned in the dynamics class in which they are currently enrolled. If a misconception is identified, we aim to tailor the activity to address and correct it. The overall goal of this research is to provide students with a coherent framework that pushes them to better conceptual understanding. Assessment has been done in a variety of ways: analysis of video taped think alouds by individual students as they conduct the IBLAs, pre and post scores on the Dynamics Concept Inventory, performance on transfer problems, subjective questionnaires, and performance on their predictions as they walk through multiple cases of the IBLAs.  Although engineering professors are often successful in teaching students how to choose and apply an appropriate equation, we are typically less successful at producing true conceptual understanding in our students. The problem is widespread through STEM disciplines, with nearly 7700 reported studies of student misconceptions in the literature. The importance of conceptual understanding has also been highlighted in the National Research Council's study How People Learn. Two of their three key findings concentrate on conceptual understanding: one is the need to identify and engage student conceptual knowledge (and later challenge misconceptions) and the second is the need for students to organize new facts and knowledge within a unifying conceptual framework. To truly learn, students must master engineering concepts, not simply memorize facts and correctly choose and apply formulas. In order to progress through the engineering curriculum, it is imperative that students have a strong conceptual understanding of the material. This understanding serves as a framework that students can use to organize new information and facts; otherwise, their learning will consist of a loose assortment of new facts and knowledge (which is much more easily forgotten) While these students can often solve problems similar to what they have seen (typically through algorithmic substitution) it is much more difficult for them to transfer their new knowledge to different situations without a strong conceptual framework. It is often disconcerting for instructors to find out how poorly their students perform on conceptual based tests. Many professors assume that students show mastery of the concepts by performing satisfactorily on homework type problems. Performance on the Dynamics Concept Inventory at the end of a dynamics class show students average anywhere from 32.1% to 63.9% Over the last three years, the authors' experiences have shown that students typically average between 50 60% on the DCI after completing a quarter's worth of Dynamics. It is evident that simply learning the correct equations to apply does not mean a student has mastered the conceptual content of a course There is also evidence that simply telling a student about a misconception does not necessarily "repair" that misconception. Traditional lecture methods have been shown to have limited effectiveness on improving student conceptual understanding in basic physics courses One study has shown that traditional instruction may even result in a decrease in conceptual understanding. What Can We Do About It? A group of pedagogical techniques know as Active Learning is gaining wider acceptance in engineering classrooms (see Prince for a review) These types of interactive engagement have been shown to help repair student misconceptions. One type of Active Learning, Inquiry Based Learning Activities (IBLAs) are emerging as effective techniques to increase conceptual understanding in Heat Transfer 13 as well as in Dynamics. The term "inquiry" has been used to describe a number of teaching activities and has been used extensively in science education. The NRC identifies five critical features of inquiry that extend across all K 12 levels: 1. Learners are engaged by scientifically oriented questions. 2. Learners give priority to evidence, which allows them to develop and evaluate explanations that address scientifically oriented questions. 3. Learners formulate explanations from evidence to address scientifically oriented questions. 4. Learners evaluate their explanations in light of alternative explanations, particularly those reflecting scientific understanding. 5. Learners communicate and justify their proposed explanations. Minner et al developed a framework for inquiry instruction that included the presence of science content, the type of student engagement, and the components of instruction. They then used this framework in a meta analysis of 138 studies to examine the impact of inquiry based instruction on K 12 student science conceptual understanding. They found "a clear, positive trend favoring inquiry based instructional practices, particularly instruction that emphasizes student active thinking and drawing conclusions from data." Although inquiry based instruction has been utilized extensively in science education, reports on using inquiry activities in engineering education appear to be quite limited. Prince et al. have had success in implementing IBLAs in Chemical Engineering, particularly to look at heat, energy, and thermodynamics. Their work is based on that of Laws et al. and on Workshop Physics (http:/physics.dickinson.edu which defines the elements of IBLAs as summarized in Table 1. Table 1. Elements of Inquiry Based Learning Activities. (a) Use peer instruction and collaborative work (b) Use activity based guided inquiry curricular materials (c) Use a learning cycle beginning with predictions (d) Emphasize conceptual understanding (e) Let the physical world be the authority (f) Evaluate student understanding (g) Make appropriate use of technology (h) Begin with the specific and move to the general Our IBLAs are typically composed of a series of scenarios. For each scenario, the students are first required to make predictions about the physical phenomena of interest, discuss their predictions with teams of students, observe the system experimentally, and then discuss and explain the experimental results on a team worksheet. When appropriate, direct instruction is incorporated together with these Predict Observe Explain cycles  With IBLAs, the focus is on conceptual understanding through the integration of hands on activities in a cycle of predictions, observations, and explanations. In most of the initial scenarios, we hope to create cognitive conflict challenging the students' current conceptual framework. Doing this with the physical world is much more powerful than just stating the guiding principles to the students. Finally, a homework problem with calculations is usually assigned to the students to further reinforce the primary concepts targeted by the IBLA.  Learning cycle. Follow on Activity