Learning Contexts -Does Multimedia Affect Physics Learning?

Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2000

Learning contexts Does multimedia affect physics learning? Yvonne Wærn*, Patric Dahlqvist# & Robert Ramberg# *Department of Communication Studies, Linköping University [email protected] # Department of Computer and Systems Sciences Stockholm University/KTH {patricd,robban}@dsv.su.se Abstract This paper proposes that several contexts influence students' learning: the institutional, the learning material as well as personal experiences evoked by the tasks. We made a study of the effect of abstract, static and dynamic illustrations coupled to a text concerning the principle of equivalence. Students in a university physics course explained their reasoning in tasks that might be answered from common sense reasoning, memory of the learning material, textbook knowledge or a combination of these. We found that students in all groups used textbook language in their explanations, which is an evidence of the context of the physics class. Common sense explanations were more common in the group given concrete illustrations. This indicates that the particular learning experience has some effect. Contradictory everyday experience was often introduced in the explanations and seemed to inhibit the understanding of the principle taught.

1. Theoretical distinctions related to learning from multimedia When designers of multimedia systems for education search advice from educational researchers, they currently get stuck in a morass of conflicting ideas. We have first the conflict between different schools recommending different units of analysis. One proposes that individual mental models should be studied, another that communication practices have to be considered [16]. Other conflicts relate to conceptions of learning, which might vary between situated versus principle learning (Brown, Collins and Duguid, [2] vs Anderson, Reder and Simon, [1]) or constructionist (Kafai, and Resnick, [10]) vs constructivist learning principles (Duffy and Jonassen, [6], Fosnot, [8], Jonassen, [9]). We propose that learning is such a complex topic that we have to proceed with great caution and not

get stuck in contemplating too long the various underlying assumptions. The scientific practice of divide and conquer will here be proposed. Although many current educational researchers may find this unfeasible with respect to the complexity of the learning and educational system, we hold that it is quite possible to find some subsystem which is quasi decomposable from the total complexity. Our subsystem will concern the interactions between external presentations and internal reflections. We will investigate how various students take what is demonstrated and what is asked for as possible inputs to a reasoning which at best builds a bridge between the two, at worst just leaves the student nowhere.

1.1. Current controversies in learning and education But first, we shall present our own relationship to current reasoning in learning in general and support of learning via computers in particular. Ideas of learning and education can be regarded to vary with respect to at least two dimensions. One dimension is related to regarding learning as reception versus construction, the other dimension is related to looking at the individual versus the social aspect of learning. Although we ourselves belong to the school of constructive and social learning, this does not mean that we propose that all environments for learning have to be designed in a constructive and social way. Instead, we hold that even a straightforward instruction without any constructive aspects will need a constructive approach by a learner. The interpretation of any message is always in the mind of the reader. It might be hold that students will be more motivated when they have to search for knowledge themselves than when only being told. However, this is a truth with many modifications. Certainly, students who would be asked to reveal the general law of relativity quite by themselves would be at a

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loss and lose motivation. Somewhere, the students will have to be shown something. It is the question of showing which concerns us - how do various means of showing impact reasoning? However, showing is not enough, as is shown by a study by Säljö and Bergqvist [17]. Here it was found that to understand the behavior of light, students have to have access to elements of a theory of light that highlights significant aspects of the phenomena according to a particular perspective. The conclusion is that ”seeing in the sense of identifying something that is culturally and contextually significant is a socio-cultural process that relies on discursive resources” [17, p. 385]. What further factors/processes have to be considered? The second issue relates to individual versus social learning. We firmly believe that all learning takes place in a social context and that learners are sometimes quite aware of what this context demands. At the same time, learners are individuals, and they ”appropriate" their experiences in different ways (cf [20]). This means that when students are given access to a theory they will also use their own contexts in order to reach understanding. Theories are of course created and sustained in a social context [18], however, the individual aspect of learning and understanding cannot be put aside. We want to investigate the interaction between individual appropriation and social context.

1.2. Our approach to research in learning and education We want to point to distinctions such as showing versus seeing, proposing versus reflecting and indirect versus direct evidence. Multimedia is about showing, proposing and giving indirect evidence. The learner sees, interprets, reflects and seeks for direct evidence and links the resulting experiences to prior knowledge as well as the material presented. If the link is constructed according to institutionally (scholarly) established norms the result will be called school learning. It should be noted that the institution almost always is regarding some interpretations as more valid than others. If the interpretations are not valid according to the institutional norms, the result will be a failure. We hold that the learner will always learn something, although we cannot always detect what they learn. In this particular study we want to investigate what learners experience from various attempts at affecting a conceptual change. Many investigations have been performed on this particular topic, and various theories have been put forward as to the difficulty of conceptual change (cf [3, 19]). Interestingly enough, these theories work with conceptual change as an internal, individual conceptual process. No reference is given to the effect of external

support, such as perceptual support in terms of images, sensory support in terms of concrete objects or kinetic support in terms of moving environments. The role of the external environment has mostly been related to images, and we’ll stick there for this paper. Although most education is replete with images, it seems to be difficult to show the value of images in human learning in general [13, 21], or in conceptual change in particular. However, early studies with an anecdotal or biographical approach support the idea that images are indeed crucial for conceptual change, i.e. such related to creativity. Many ideas which have run counter to prior established conceptions, such as Einstein’s ideas about relativity, Woodward´s idea about growth and reproduction and Kekule´s conception of the benzine ring have been reported as being related to images [5]. Several educational researchers have suggested that education should be based on concrete experiences, where images form a part. Currently, there is no question of whether or not to use images any longer. Instead we should ask ourselves: ”which" images, ”when”, "how" and, of course, "why". These types of questions have of course been asked before, for instance by [16]. He pointed out that it is not self-evident that providing an expert mental model would be the best way of getting students to understand concepts from mechanics. Although he did not approach the issue of the nature of an image given, he presents some discussion as to what kind of representation would be beneficial for understanding the acknowledged difficult concept of speed and acceleration. Most studies that have had difficulties showing positive results of learning from or with images have used a quantitative approach. The same is true of studies that have shown no or little transfer from one environment (notably the school) to another (notably the world outside of the school) as was pointed out by Lave, [12]. However, quantitative studies require an idea of ”measurement” and ”measurement error”. They also require that we can control the independent variables. As to education, however, we can only control the presentation but not the reception, we can only show how things work, but we should not expect that students conceptions at once match our demonstrations. Further, we have very few measurements of understanding or conceptual change that we agree upon. The best ideas of design or revising design are based upon case studies or ”lessons”, not quantitative data. Thus, we’ll here mainly work with qualitative data in our analysis of what students tell about their own ideas.

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1.3. Our focus

2. Method

We propose that any study of learning has to consider the learning environment, such as expectations "in the walls" as well as the experimenter's expectations and the learning material to be studied. This is particularly the case if we want to study the effect of various computer supports. Our focus will be on looking at relationships between the social environment in which students are placed, their own prior knowledge as well as a particular learning experience when it comes to their own explaining of answers to "school" questions. The idea of "learning" and "making sense" has to be considered carefully. In most studies, tests consist of questions made up by the teacher. It is not always made clear how the test relates to the material to be learnt, to the students' prior knowledge etc. We know that tests make a big difference in terms of how students learn. Therefore, we chose a systematic approach to test construction. We chose the following categories, where the construction of the test per se of course is intuitive: The questions do not require more than a relating of the material presented ("memory" questions). The questions require some minor transformation of the material presented ("interpretation" questions). The questions require an advanced reasoning from the material learnt to a new situation ("reasoning" questions). The students we investigate are first year university students, and the learning concerns a particular physics concept, called "the principle of equivalence", belonging to the domain of mechanics in Newtonian Physics. Our interest lies in investigating if different illustrations affect students' interpretations of this concept. In particular, we want to see how students make sense of abstract graphs (related to textbook terminology), static illustrations and dynamic illustrations (related to everyday concepts). To catch students' interpretations in the particular situation they are placed, we asked them not only to answer questions but also to explain their answers in written form. Thus, our method tried to catch some of students' self reflections on their process of answering a question related to something they had learnt. It is not taken for granted that the explanations reflect what students actually know about the domain. We may only say that the explanations reflect what the students wish to tell us in the particular situation. Thus, explanations reflect their expectations on us as researchers as well as their ideas about the issues talked about. They will also of course show their motivation to write anything at all.

2.1. Subjects As subjects served 55 university students in physics. They were all familiar with the use of computers. Their age varied between 19 and 47 years, and there were 38 males and 17 females. All volunteered and were given a sandwich for their participation, after the study. The principle of equivalence was part of the curriculum for the course they attended during the period of the study. The study was conducted before the course agenda started to cover the principle of equivalence.

2.2. Design of the study The students were randomly allotted to one of three conditions: one abstract, one static, and one dynamic. These conditions correspond to the type of material given to the subjects (see below). There were 19 subjects in the abstract condition, 18 subjects in the static condition and 18 subjects in the dynamic condition.

2.3. Material. Four different kinds of computer based learning material were prepared: 1. One general description/explanation was given to all students. This was textual and the subjects were allowed to read through as much of the text as they wanted to and as long as they wanted. The language used was both related to traditional physics and more everyday situations. This text was accompanied by an illustration corresponding to each condition. (The full text is given in the appendix). 2. The abstract condition. One abstract illustration was based upon a common notion in physics, i.e. a vector diagram for illustrating forces. (One graph is given in the appendix) 3. The static condition. Static illustrations showed how a helium balloon would relate to a railway cart in acceleration (positive and negative respectively). (One picture is given in the appendix) 4. The dynamic condition. Dynamic illustrations showed a helium balloon as it moved with the railway cart during acceleration (positive and negative respectively). (A sequence of the same pictures as in the static conditions, however, the movements of the balloon and the steel ball respectively are clearly shown while the car is accelerating and slowing down). For the test, seven different items were prepared. Since the sequence of questions might matter for the answers, we made half of the subjects answer the questions in the

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numerical order 1 to 7 (see below for the actual questions) and the other half got the questions in the order 1,2,5,6,7,3,4. All items were accompanied by pictures, and the answers were multiple-choice (also including pictures). It should be noted that an award-winning university teacher in physics prepared the learning materials as well as the test materials. His passion is to try to make students understand by linking physics concepts to the everyday world.

The following were the questions used: 1.

2.

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Imagine a disc on which grass is sown. In what direction will the grass slant if it grows when the disc rotates (with constant angle speed). (pictures with grass directed towards the middle, outwards or straight up, the correct answer is given in the appendix). Imagine a disc on which grass is sown. In what direction will the grass slant if it grows when the disc is fix.(The same pictures as for question 1 were used) A particle with the mass m is in a co-ordinate system that accelerates to the right (-->) with constant acceleration A. Which of the representations below describes the conditions between the forces involved best? (Pictures similar to the learning material were used, see the abstract illustration in appendix) A particle with the mass m is in a co-ordinate system that accelerates to the left (