Challenge of engaging all students via self-paced interactive electronic learning tutorials for introductory physics

Abstract

As research-based self-paced e-learning tools become increasingly available, a critical issue educators encounter is implementing strategies to ensure that all students engage with them as intended. Here, we discuss the effectiveness of research-based e-learning tutorials as self-paced learning tools in large enrollment brick and mortar introductory physics courses. These interactive tutorials were developed via research in physics education and were found to be effective for a diverse group of introductory physics students in one-on-one implementation. Instructors encouraged the use of these selfpaced tools in a self-paced learning environment by telling students that they would be helpful for solving the assigned homework problems and that the underlying physics principles in the tutorial problems would be similar to those in the inclass quizzes (which we call paired problems). We find that many students, who struggled in the courses in which these adaptive e-learning tutorials were assigned as a self-study tool, performed poorly on the paired problems. In contrast, a majority of student volunteers in one-on-one implementation greatly benefited from the tutorials and performed well on the paired problems. The significantly lower overall performance on paired problems administered as an in-class quiz compared to the performance of student volunteers who used the research-based tutorials in one-on-one implementation suggests that many students enrolled in introductory physics courses did not effectively engage with the self-paced tutorials outside of class and may have only used them superficially. The findings suggest that many students in need of out-of-class remediation via self-paced learning tools may have difficulty motivating themselves and may lack the self-regulation and time-management skills to engage effectively with tools specially designed to help them learn at their own pace. We conclude by proposing a theoretical framework to help students with diverse prior preparations engage effectively with self-study tools.

Challenge of Helping Introductory Physics Students Transfer Their Learning by Engaging with a Self-Paced Learning Tutorial

“…As described in DeVore et al (2017), similar to other selfpaced introductory physics tutorials, the angular momentum conservation tutorial starts with an overarching problem, which is quantitative in nature. Figure 2 shows the overarching problem for this tutorial.…”

“…The SELF (see Figure 1), is a holistic framework which suggests that, for effective learning from self-paced learning tools, the instructional design and learning tools, their implementation, student characteristics, and social and environmental factors collectively play a role and determine how effectively a majority of students will engage with them (DeVore et al, 2017). The framework consists of four quadrants and posits that all of them must be considered holistically to help students learn effectively.…”

“…The details of the development of the web-based tutorial were reported in a prior study (DeVore et al, 2017). It was guided by the cognitive apprenticeship learning framework (Collins et al, 1989).…”

“…The development of the tutorials, of which the tutorial on angular momentum conservation described here is a subset, went through a cyclic, iterative process detailed elsewhere (DeVore et al, 2017). For the angular momentum conservation tutorial problem, three graduate student researchers and one professor (all physics education researchers) performed a cognitive task analysis (Wieman, 2015) to decompose it into a series of sub-problems dealing with different stages of problem solving.…”

“…We have been investigating how students engage with optional, web-based tutorials outside of class in introductory physics courses when told that engaging with them would help them with their homework and quizzes (DeVore et al, 2017). These investigations suggest that students often do not engage with the research-validated self-paced tutorials in a manner in which the researchers intended.…”