2008 National CASTL Institute Blogging in the Physics Classroom Gintaras K. Duda & Katherine Garrett

2008 National CASTL Institute The “Hidden Curriculum” We’d like our students to leave “liking” physics. But it goes beyond this! To use a JITT phrase, we want students to see what physics is “good-for”

2008 National CASTL Institute What do Students Learn in Introductory Physics? What students do well: – Memorize formulae – Learn problem solving techniques which they regurgitate on exams – Solve simple problems which have limited applicability in the real world What they don’t get: – A richer understanding of physics.

2008 National CASTL Institute From the MPEX Survey MPEX 1 survey probes “student attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions about physics” ``In all cases, the result of instruction on the overall survey was an increase in unfavorable responses and a decrease in favorable responses... Thus instruction produced an average deterioration rather than an improvement of student expectations." 1 E. Redish, J. Saul, and R. Steinberg, “Student expectations in introductory physics," Am. J. Phys. 66, (1998).

2008 National CASTL Institute Attitude II Survey Zeilik et al.: devised an active-learning approach to introductory astronomy at University of New Mexico Found “little change over each semester in students’ mildly positive incoming attitudes about astronomy and science.”

2008 National CASTL Institute The CLASS 1 Survey A relatively new instrument designed to measure student attitudes in introductory physics courses over a wide range of categories such as personal interest, real world connections and sense making They found: “… most teaching practices cause substantial drops in student scores” 1 W. Adams et al., ``New instrument for measuring student beliefs about physics and learning physics: The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey," Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 2, (2006).

2008 National CASTL Institute Is Physics Unique? Other disciplines have begun worrying about student attitudes CLASS instrument was modified and used in an intro chemistry course: – ``results indicated that shifts after instruction were similar to, if not worse than, in physics in moving in the unfavorable direction“ UNIVERSAL PROBLEM!

2008 National CASTL Institute The Problem Students come out of introductory physics courses less interested in the subject than when they started. Students see physics as a random assortment of facts and equations. Students have only a vague idea how the physics they learn relates to the world around them. Students don’t come away understanding how physics is used in the real world or how it’s practiced as a science.

2008 National CASTL Institute Why Worry about Attitude? Educational research has shown learning is intrinsically linked with student attitude and expectations. See for example: – A. Schoenfeld – T. Koballa and F. Crawley

2008 National CASTL Institute The Solution? A course blog for introductory physics at Creighton University. The blog would: – Give real world examples of physics – Relate the classroom to the outside world – Show how physics principles relate to other disciplines – Show what’s interesting about physics

2008 National CASTL Institute Why a Blog? New technology which appeals to students Ferdig and Trammel have some good stuff to say Using blogs in a different educational setting, Brownstein and Klein report Blogs appear to be a powerful tool to help begin addressing the “hidden curriculum”

2008 National CASTL Institute Our Question Can a course blog in a general physics class in which real world examples of physics are provided to students stop or at least ameliorate the deterioration in attitude after instruction as measured by the MPEX, CLASS, and Attitude II instruments?

2008 National CASTL Institute The Blog: CU General Physics I

2008 National CASTL Institute Why Blogger? It’s free and easy to use. No campus support issues.

2008 National CASTL Institute Posts are compiled and can be edited or deleted as wished.

2008 National CASTL Institute Student comments were collected by using haloscan. Free and superior to blogger’s comments.

2008 National CASTL Institute Blog Posts by Subject Area

2008 National CASTL Institute Students learn about how friction works in the real- world by reading about how Geckos scale walls. Microscopic attraction! A typical Blog Post

2008 National CASTL Institute Did the Blog Work? 26 question Likert-scale attitudinal survey – Modified version of Zeilik’s Attitude II survey – Pre and post testing Examines: – Attitude toward physics – Cognitive competence and confidence – Perception of difficulty – Value of physics to students’ lives (referred to as “reality link” questions)

2008 National CASTL Institute “Reality Link” questions Some examples: – Physics is irrelevant to my life – What I learn in physics this semester will not be useful in my career – Physics is not useful in my everyday life – I will (or do) look at the world differently after taking this class

2008 National CASTL Institute Breakdown of Semesters Semester SectionNumber of Students Participated in Blog Study Fall 2005 A31yes B27yes C32no (control group) D24no (control group) Spring 2006 A36yes B35yes C33yes D25yes Fall 2006 A33yes B34yes C30yes D28yes Spring 2007 A33yes

2008 National CASTL Institute Fall 2005

2008 National CASTL Institute

Spring 2006 Results Results from ``reality-link" questions for the attitudinal survey. Based on a samples- dependent t-test. The difference between the blog and non-blog reading groups was not-statistically significant for the pre-test but statistically significant with p < for the post-test. Scores have been normalized so that 50% represents a neutral response on the Likert-style attitudinal survey.

2008 National CASTL Institute

Conclusions A blog seemed to be a powerful way to reach students and address the “hidden curriculum” Students responded positively – Learned how physics applies in the real-world – For many their favorite component of the course Students who read and posted to the blog maintained their initially positive attitudes – Paper to AJP!

2008 National CASTL Institute What’s Next Blogging can affect attitude Need to show the effect on student learning This is where we need help!

2008 National CASTL Institute Ideas Standard assessment exams are given in general physics – weak correlation with attitude – gain may correlate better Link blog to exam questions? New assessment instrument for “reality link” concepts?

2008 National CASTL Institute Slides for Questions

2008 National CASTL Institute Sample Student Comments “I am a very big fan of baseball. So, I went to the website about the physics of baseballs, and the line “why do bats break” caught my attention. I found out that the force that can act on a bat are in the range of 6,000-10,000lbs and happened in the time span of 1/1000 of a second. Because of this great force, lots of vibrations are produced, and some bats break. Also, this is the reason why in a major league baseball game a ball is only used for 4-5 pitches! I knew that they changed balls a lot, but I never knew why. It’s amazing that so many things have to due with physics!” – General Physics Student #1 | :20 pm

2008 National CASTL Institute “With the rise of technological advancements, I guess that I just assumed that functions by a shower head and gas nozzle were simply based in some sort of computerized mechanisms. I never really stopped to actually think about it- I guess I simply took these simple pleasures for granted. Once again, the weekly posted blog has made me examine the functions of everyday life more closely and ask "why?" For me, these blogs have provided concrete examples of the physics that surrounds me...instead of it just being a subject represented by some abstract equations.” – General Physics Student #2 | :14 am

2008 National CASTL Institute Data Analysis Because of the difficulty in interpreting 5-pt Likert scale data we performed two analyses: 1) group the value or “reality-link” questions and perform a dependent samples t-test (as interval data) 2) use an agree-disagree binomial analysis (treating our data as ordinal data)

2008 National CASTL Institute Agree-Disagree Plots Introduced by Redish et al. in their MPEX paper - called “Redish” plots Change from pre to post must be > 2σ to be considered significant (at 5% probability level)