EDUC 6470 Final Project-Discarded Topics

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For EDUC 6470, a project to examine innovative teaching, to search the literature, and to develop ideas. These are projects that I discarded as less feasible. See EDUC 6470 Final Project for the final choice of topic.

Possible projects

What is important about the sequence of classes in a unit?

This semester I've been teaching electronics. I taught an 8 week class that included lessons normally put off until after "the basics" of electronic components were "presented." For the next 8 weeks I'm offering a components class that might be more recognizable as an introduction to the basics of electronics. Many students are taking both. Unstudied first arguments might be either of these opposites:

  1. Students who build circuits first before reviewing the basics of each component will be more motivated to learn the basics of each component.
  2. Students who build circuits first won't understand enough about each component to understand the circuit as a system of components.

I will examine these concerns as I teach the second course, and see if there's any literature on this subject of sequencing within a unit. I will build a concept map to examine my own "pedagogical content knowledge" and count chunks per meeting.

Assessment

I've created a survey using Student Assessment of Learning Gains (s:14911,p:diode). I can use concept maps to assess students' development of concepts.

Parallels

I like to draw parallels to teaching in non-science subjects. In this case, I can draw a parallel between the dichotomies of basics to contextualized understandings in both subjects. For example, in english, specifically poetry, we could call iambs, troches, and rhymes the basics, and creative writing and literary analysis of an epic poem the contextualized understandings.

Related questions
  • Should engineering be a part of K-12 science education, or treated separately, as in Massachusetts?
  • Can we avoid mistakenly separating "applied science" from "pure science"? <bibref>Rowland:1883</bibref>
  • Is the literature on sequencing only for long-term sequencing of concepts, as in Atlas of Science Literacy?
  • Will this work have any translation to long-term sequencing, such as the sequencing of introductory undergraduate science?
Why I'm not doing this project yet
I don't think the SALGS and concept maps are enough, without some comparisons. So, a longer term than 10 weeks is needed for this study.

Meta-study of PHYSLRNR

PHYSLRNR is an e-mail list for the education research group of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Questions
  • What interests people on PHYSLRNR?
    • Are my interests in curriculum change ever addressed on PHYSLRNR, any more or less than in other PER venues?
  • How many people post on PHYSLRNR, how often?
    • Are PHYSLRNR posts representative of the diversity of physics education research?
  • Do new ideas appear on PHYSLRNR?
  • Are readers affected by what is posted on PHYSLRNR, or is it merely a soapbox?
Methods
  • Count posts.
  • Find and count keywords.
    • Reiterate as we discover patterns.
  • Measure impact by replies
  • Survey readers
Why I'm not doing this project yet
There is too much risk that nothing relevant to what we've been discussing in this course will pop out of such a study, and whether I have the statistical tools and time to read enough to glean meaningful results from this set. The risk is high, but the rewards may be of interest to many.
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