UPPSALA UNIVERSITY
PER
PATTERNS IN STUDENTS’ SELFDIRECTED USE OF THE DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT ALGODOO
E VEN WHEN STUDENTS ARE USING A LGODOO FOR THE FIRST TIME , THEIR ACTIVITY WILL LIKELY BE A
NEAR - NEIGHBOUR TO A WORTHWHILE PHYSICS DISCUSSION .
T EACHERS CAN CHOOSE WHEN AND HOW TO INVOLVE THEMSELVES DURING STUDENTS ’ CREATIVE
EXPLORATION BASED ON THE TYPES OF THINGS THEY WANT STUDENTS TO LEARN .
Elias Euler (elias.euler@physics.uu.se), Christopher Prytz, Bor Gregorcic Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University
Engineering Testing and contrasting
Students investigating the tools and functions of Algodoo Tends to be (outwardly) chaotic
Tends to be the first activity type students engage in while using Algodoo (and is returned to frequently throughout)
A screenshot of Algodoo’s drop-down menu, show- ing the many options provided by the software
In one example of this activity type from our data, a pair of students saw the slider for ‘Damping’ in the drop-down menu and subsequently (with some guidance from the researchers in the room) went on to determine what this parameter means through the construction of an oscillator in Algodoo.
Algodoo allows for the editing of many physical properties through its various controls. ‘Exploration of the software fundamentals’ entails students getting used to these many controls and features.
Students can naturally uncover new physics parameters with which they are unfamiliar.
Teachers can encourage students to explore these parame- ters and to build things in Algodoo that allow the students to experience what the parameters mean in physics
A teacher can leverage these activities as a springboard for a discussion on modeling in physics or for discussions around the role of computer simulations in science
Students are spontaneously engaging in desirable sci- entific/engineering practices by executing these itera- tive loops with their constructions
The teacher can encourage discussions of these scientific practices themselves, or the teacher can utilize students’
creations as the focus for further inquiry.
When implementing digital learning environments such as Algodoo in the physics classroom, a physics teacher can choose to take a more student-directed approach , allowing students to explore the software for themselves and responding to the students’ exploration at opportune points. Such an approach may intuitively seem too unfocused to be worthwhile for the teaching and learning of physics. However, we have found that students’ self-directed exploration within Algodoo has sever- al unique, if unanticipated, affordances for physics education.
Algodoo is a digital learning environment which is not focused on a specific physics phenomenon or set of phenomena . Users draw 2D shapes and objects that, once the play-button is pressed, will fall down, bouce, slide, roll, and generally inter- act with one another according to Newtonian mechanics.
We analyzed video recordings of seven pairs of university physics students as they freely-explored Algodoo for the first time.
We used a grounded-theory-type method of analysis and found THREE TYPES OF ACTIVITY in which each of the groups engaged. Thus, we are able to provide a preliminary answer to the question:
What does it look like?
How can this be productive for a physics teacher?
What does it look like? What does it look like?
How can this be productive for a physics teacher?
Euler E et al. (2020). Never far from shore: Productive patterns in physics students’ use of the digital learning environment Algodoo, Phys. Ed. 55 045015.
Euler E et al. (2020). Variation theory as a lends for guiding and interpreting physics students use of digital learning environments, Eur. J. Phys. 41 045705.
Hestenes D (1992) Modeling games in the Newtonian World. Am. J. Phys. 60 732–48.
Euler E & Gregorcic B (2018) Exploring how physics students use a sandbox software to move between the physical and the formal 2017 Physics Education Research Conf. Proc. (College Park, MD: American Association of Physics Teachers) pp 128–31.
Greca I M et al. (2014) Epistemological issues concerning computer simulations in science and their implications for science education Sci. Educ. 23 897–921.
THE THREE ACTIVITY TYPES:
WHAT WE DID: 1 THE DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT ALGODOO:
HOW DO WE ENSURE STUDENTS EXPLORE THINGS WHICH ARE PERTINENT TO THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF PHYSICS WHILE EXPLORING WITHIN SOFTWARE SUCH AS ALGODOO?
TAKEAWAYS:
Students exploring how well the physics engine of Algo- doo matches the physics of the real world:
(1) they construct classic physics situations (e.g., dropping two objects to see if they hit the ground at the same time) (2) create simple tests to see if Algodoo allows for certain complexities
An example of ‘Testing and contrasting’ from our data where students found out that Algodoo does not allow glass to break (the lighter-blue rectangle positioned as the ‘tabletop’) when the gold square was dropped.
An explicit discussion of the role of modeling in physics, such as taken up by Hestenes (1992) can be useful for physics stu- dents. Furhtermore, Algodoo and other DLEs may play an in- teresting role as a semi-formalism in this modeling process.
‘Testing and contrasting’ activities are essentially where students are testing out the workable ‘boundaries’ of the Algodoo software to see where it stops holding up.
Students prototyping machines in pursuit of self-deter- mined goals
Tends to involve the students undertaking iterative loops of designing, testing, and challenging their constructions
A typical ‘Engineering’ activity where students make a model car and give the car an obstacle to drive over.
In an example of this activity type from our data, the students manipulated a ‘spongified’ object in Algodoo as part of an it- erative cycle to meet a self-set goal. After the students had met their goal, the researchers in the room encouraged them to re- flect on what ‘density’ really meant for a sponge in this soft- ware and this lead to a discussion of non-ridig bodies.
Like the other two activity types we have observed, ‘Engi- neering’ activities are naturally undertaken by students without explicit instruction to do so.
Exploration of the software fundamentals
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PHYSICAL PHENOMENA
(Real objects and processes)
Representation Interpretation
FORMALISMS
(Models)
NEWTONIAN WORLD
PHYSICAL WORLD
SEMI-FORMALISM
(Digital learning environment)
How can this be productive for a physics teacher?
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4
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