standards vs. authentic performance tasks?

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Ian

In my cogitations about whether and how to implement “standards-based grading” (SBG), I’m (still) wrestling with what appears to be a tension between (1) a focus on the factored, topical, individually assessable “standards” of typical SBG approaches, and (2) a focus on authentic, holistic, contextualized applications/projects/problems typical of things like “project-based learning” (PBL) and “problem-based learning” (also PBL). The former seems to require individual performance and accountability; the latter are often team-based and collaborative, providing yet another tension.

I find myself wondering about the feasibility of some kind of two-tier system, where (1) authentic, multifaceted, ill-structured PBL-type performance tasks are unpacked into (2) component/requisite “learning standards”; the learning standards are individually assessed, re-assessed, and hopefully mastered; and the overarching PBL-type performance task is then completed and assessed in its own way. Somehow, both levels would contribute to feedback and grading.

But, I worry about ending up with some Frakensteinian horror when the two are grafted together. “80% of the credit for ultimate standard mastery, 20% for one-time project grades” seems antithetical to SBG, and inconsistent. Building an additional “level of mastery” onto each granular standard to indicate “successfully used in a project” seems kludgy, and poorly aligned with the holistic nature of PBL.

Thoughts from experienced SBG implementers — or anyone else, for that matter? (Preferably not about SEO, though. Thanks. )

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a first stab at “unit one” standards for Physics I

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Ian

I’ve been thinking extensively about “standards-based grading” (SBG) of late, ever since Andy Rundquist’s provocative dinner talk at the summer’s PERC banquet. (A summary of SBG and my general musings about it are fodder for a later blog post; for a taste, tune in to the #sbar Twitter hashtag, or check out the weblogs of Kelly O’Shea, Jason Buell, or the aforementioned Andy Rudquist.)

Last night I leafed through the first four chapters of Knight’s Physics for Scientists & Engineers — everything up to but not including forces — and scribbled down some potential “standards”, were I to be so bold as to try SBG next semester when I teach General Physics I w/Calculus. It’s definitely not a final set, but here’s the unedited list, presented for discussion.

Note 1: Some of these “standards” span or relate to more than one Knight chapter. I’m listing them here under the first such chapter.

Chapter 1: Concepts of Motion (i.e., “Basics”)

  1. Convert quantities between different units.
  2. Know and (where appropriate) employ SI units for all physical quantities used.
  3. Report and interpret numerical values for calculations or measurements, including appropriate units, unit prefixes, scientific notation, and significant figures.
  4. Determine values of kinematic variables corresponding to described, depicted, or observed motion, and interpret values by describing or depicting the resulting motion (including proper use of algebraic signs for direction).
  5. Produce, interpret, and interrelate graphs and motion diagrams of an object’s motion.
  6. Know and apply the definitions of fundamental kinematics quantities.
  7. Make reasonable order-of-magnitude (Fermi) estimates of physical quantities.
  8. Identify correct and incorrect expressions via dimensional analysis and/or limiting-case arguments.

Chapter 2: Kinematics in One Dimension

  1. Use the particle model and constant-acceleration kinematics formulae to produce a complete description of an object’s motion (numerical or symbolic) from partial information. [1D for chapter 2, 2D or 3D later.]
  2. Use basic calculus (derivatives and integrals) to interrelate functional forms for kinematic quantities.
  3. Use “free-fall” as a model to analyze real physical situations.
  4. Use the “inclined plane” as a model to analyze real physical situations.

Chapter 3: Vectors and Coordinate Systems

  1. Define and use a Cartesian coordinate system to describe an object’s location and motion.
  2. Interrelate the values of kinematic variables in two different coordinate systems (including translations, rotations, and Galilean relative motion), including “relative velocity” problems.
  3. Execute vector algebra (addition, subtraction, components, magnitude and direction) both graphically and algebraically.
  4. Represent, interpret, and interconvert between vector representations (graphical, component n-tuple, component unit-vector, magnitude & direction).
  5. Apply vectors and their properties where relevant when “using physics”. [Ick! But see note 3 below.]

Chapter 4: Kinematics in Two Dimensions

  1. Use “uniform circular motion” as a model to analyze real physical situations.
  2. Use “accelerated circular motion” as a model to analyze real physical situations.
  3. Use “projectile motion” as a model to analyze real physical situations. [See note 4 below.]
  4. Use angular kinematics in direct analogy to linear kinematics.

Note 2: All standards should carry the implicit rider “…and justify the applicability of the tools used, or identify when and why the task is not possible given those tools.”

Note 3: I’m unsure how to work in “applying” a specific thing (e.g., vectors and vector algebra) in addition to “knowing” it. I’m driving at the difference between active and passive vocabulary here: Yeah, so a student can do a vector algebra problem when presented with one, but will she identify the need to do vector algebra within an authentic context and apply it properly there? I could add a specific standard for that, but am afraid of proliferating standards.

Note 4: “Apply XXX as a model to analyze…” should be interpreted to include applying it to a piece or portion of a system or of an object’s motion, and stringing together multiple models or tools as necessary to solve a multi-part problem. (For example, inclined-plane as a model for a skier on a slope, followed by accelerated circular motion for a curved ramp at the bottom, followed by projectile motion for sailing through the air.) Or, should there be a separate standard for “Analyzing situations that require combining multiple ‘models’ or ‘kinds of motion’”?

I spent nine class days on these four chapters last time through the course (including an integrative pre-exam review day), so that comes to a hair more than two standards per day. Reasonable? Excessive? Thoughts about the grain-size of these standards?

Update: Since posting this, I’ve switched from Textile to Markdown for writing on this blog, since the best Textile plugin I could find for WordPress had some ugly bugs. Unfortunately, one of those bugs affected list numbering, with the result that the 21 standards above were numbered 1-21, rather than having the numbering reset for each chapter’s list. (The former may be preferable for this particular post, but the latter is technically correct.) So, numbers in the comments below may not correctly identify the standards they were meant to indicate. Apologies…

Posted in Learning & Teaching | 8 Comments

Is game-style learning fundamentally incompatible with school as we know it?

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Ian

My current scholarly “thing” is thinking about what we can learn about teaching, especially teaching physics, from the phenomenal power of video games to motivate, captivate, and teach. The impetus to ponder this comes from wishing that students would bring the kind of hard work, determination, creativity, resourcefulness, and collaboration to learning physics that they bring to playing, say, World of Warcraft. (For a blockbuster introduction to the topic, read James Paul Gee’s book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.)

At the moment I’m more interested in lessons we can learn from video game design and take into more traditional, classroom-based instruction than I am in creating an actual video game that teaches physics. (The latter, however, is also a fascinating challenge to contemplate.)

In that vein, a definition by Bernard Suits (quoted in Jane McGonigal’s excellent book Reality is Broken) caught my attention:

Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. (p.22)

The key word here is “voluntary”. McGonigal makes a case that if it isn’t voluntary, it isn’t a game, and many of the remarkable phenomena associated with game-playing disappear. The entire psychology changes.

Yes, attending university is in principle a voluntary choice, as is one’s major; but beyond that, we pretty much tell students what courses they must take and what they must do along the way to succeed, and keep them in line with grades and transcripts. Does that doom any attempt to make learning more deeply game-like?

What I’m getting at is that the very structure of our educational system frames learning activity as an externally-motivated, externally-directed, authority-laden series of tasks and assessments. I’m concerned that trying to embed a novel learning micro-environment — say, a gaming-inspired self-paced learning activity — into such a matrix could be doomed to failure, not because of the micro-environment’s worth but because of drastic dissonance with the matrix.

If I’m even more ambitious and try to construct an entire course as something analogous to a game, I still have to assign a grade at the end, and students know it.

Those of us who would like to experiment with gaming-inspired alternative paradigms and challenge some of our fundamental assumptions about what instruction should look like, and who don’t have the luxury of creating an entire parallel educational system to do our testing in, need to worry about such things.

Posted in Educational Research, Learning & Teaching | 2 Comments

playing a game

Posted on July 13, 2011 by Ian

“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” — Bernard Suits, quoted in Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken

Is learning physics a game? Is doing physics a game? Does it depend on how obligated we feel to do any particular task? Is attending university voluntary (or compelled by social and/or economic considerations), and if so, does that make the whole endeavor a game? Taking any particular course may or may not be voluntary; doing homework, lab reports, etc. rarely is.

Why does this matter? Because in general, people like games, and often reach their best performance (think flow state) while playing games. Perhaps we ought to be learning from the game design industry.

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getting out of their way

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Ian

A radical thought: We (educational researchers and instructors) spend great time and energy trying to optimally engineer our students’ learning environments and experiences — pacing, sequencing, balance of examples vs. tasks vs. information, cognitive load, collaborative designs, testing intervals, reward structures — drawing on a great deal of disparate research, collective and personal experience, and intuition.

Perhaps the human organism is well-adapted enough that if we can give learners the freedom to pursue their own learning, with an adequately rich and suitably organized and accessible array of resources, they would naturally find a highly optimal balance of these factors?

In other words, maybe people know how to learn better than we know how to teach, and we just have to figure out how to let them do it. And stop convincing them that learning something like Physics means doing it “the school-like way.”

Afterthought: I suspect we can’t do this because so much of the educational enterprise is designed to get learners to learn things they’re not particularly invested in learning. Maybe we need to revisit that?

Posted in Educational Research, Learning & Teaching, Physics Education Research | 4 Comments