Joseph Amato (Colgate University) said that the following elements
are vital in undergrad physics student research projects: experimental
design, data acquisition, analysis, and heavy emphasis on oral and written
presentation. Dr. Amato wrote, "For most of our students, this research
exposure is the most memorable, satisfying, and demanding experience of
their undergraduate education". (AAPT ANNOUNCER, Dec. 1997, p. 132.)
Dr. Amato wrote me and answered a question that I had: Do their
students who are doing research collaborate in groups? He said yes,
students work in groups of 3 or 4 and "there is often a strong sense of
shared responsibility and shared knowledge within a group. Still, each
student within the group has a distinct assignment and the sole
responsibility (aside from the faculty member) for carrying out that
assignment." About 1/3 of their physics students are women, he said.
Colgate University and Carleton College are in the top group of
non-PhD granting institutions in terms of the number of B.S. degrees in
physics.
The Modeling Method employs all elements listed by Joseph Amato,
including collaborative groups. The paper by Malcolm Wells, David Hestenes,
and Gregg Swackhamer in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS, July 1995,
describes how collaboration occurs in the classroom. (It can be downloaded
at modeling.asu.edu.) Modeling Instruction is highly effective; student
normalized gains on the Force Concept Inventory are typically double to
triple those under traditional instruction. Eugenia Etkina's and Alan Van
Heuvelen's ISLE method of instruction is similar. (Visit http://www-rci.rutgers.edu/~etkina/)
Collaborative groups are an important way that we physics teachers
can assist our students in developing intellectually. Read on, for
underlying mental dynamics.
cheers,
Jane Jackson
----------------------------------------------------------
Synopsis: WOMEN'S WAYS OF KNOWING: COLLABORATION IN CONNECTED-KNOWING
GROUPS
(stage 3: Procedural knowers - continued)
"It is helpful for both separate and connected knowers to meet in
groups of two or more people. Separate knowers bring to their group
propositions that they have developed as fully as possible and that they
hope to sell in the free marketplace of ideas. Members must know the
rules, but they need not know each other. In connected-knowing groups,
people utter half-baked half-truths and ask others to nurture them. Since
no one would entrust one's fragile infant to a stranger, members of the
group must learn to know and trust each other. In such an atmosphere
members do engage in criticism, but the criticism is 'connected'. ...
People can criticize each other's work in such a class "and accept each
other's criticisms because members of the group shared a similar
experience. This is the only sort of expertise connected knowers recognize,
the only sort of criticism they easily accept. Authority in connected
knowing rests not on power or status or certification but on commonality of
experience."
"Separate knowers try to subtract the personality of the perceiver
from the perception, because they see personality as slanting the
perception or adding 'noise' that must be filtered out. Connected knowers
see personality as adding to the perception, and so the personality of each
member of the group enriches the group's understanding. Each individual
must stretch her own vision in order to share another's vision. Through
mutual stretching and sharing the group achieves a vision richer than any
individual could achieve alone.
Connected knowing works best when members of the group meet over a
long period of time and get to know each other well. One of the women we
interviewed spent two years in a very small college where most of the
classes were conducted as seminars. She then transferred to a large
college, where she enrolled in a seminar on modern British poetry, one of
her favorite topics. 'It was awful. The people didn't know how to talk
about anything. They didn't know how to share ideas. It was always an
argument; it wasn't an idea to be developed, to be explored.' ... [At her
small college] 'it was like a family group trying to work out a family
problem, except it was an idea.'"
"Judging from the stories [the connected knowers] told, the kind of
self-analysis required for complex connected knowing has been largely
excluded from the traditional liberal arts curriculum and relegated to
'counseling'."
[next time: Stage 4: constructed knowledge. The final excerpt.]
-------------------------------------
Jane Jackson, Co-Director, Modeling Instruction Program
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics & Astronomy,ASU,Tempe,AZ 85287
480-965-8438/fax:965-7331 <http://modeling.asu.edu>
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is
our inability to understand the exponential function."
- Al Bartlett, Prof of Physics, Univ of Colorado