Research-Based Strategies for Teaching

The Takeaway: This study highlights that an important challenge for instructors is finding the right balance between limiting support to allow deep-level engagement and providing support to allow students to connect what they are learning with their prior knowledge. A self-diagnosis activity that makes students struggle appropriately and gets them primed to learn is most effective.

Research background

Previous research has found different characteristics between experienced physicists and novice students, particularly when it comes to viewing problem solving as a learning opportunity. For instance, experienced physicists are shown to spend more time than novices in monitoring their work, reflecting upon their potentially deficient approach to problem solving, reconsidering their choices as necessary, and refining their knowledge structure. Therefore, teaching novice students to think like physicists is crucial as many professors have expressed their students' lack of reflection when it comes to their mistakes on their assessments.

This study investigates how well introductory physics students are able to self-diagnose their mistakes in their quiz solutions through quiz correction and self diagnosis activities, which are tasks that explicitly prompt to diagnose their mistakes. In doing so, the researchers investigate the effects these practices have on subsequent problem solving in different interventions with implications on finding a balance between allowing students to struggle and providing them with support.

Methodology

• Study focused on algebra-based introductory physics class with 200 students at a state university in the U.S.
• A majority of the students in this course were bioscience majors and premedical students, for whom introductory algebra-based physics is mandatory.
• Students were divided into two control groups and three intervention groups. Students were also randomly assigned to one of five recitation courses facilitated by teaching assistants in which post-quiz discussion differed. The quizzes consisted of multi-part problems that could not be solved using an algorithmic approach; most of the class failed to provide a completely correct solution.

• Control group: in great detail, the instructor and students discussed the solutions of previous quiz problems, but instructors did not ask students to diagnose their mistakes.
• Structured (S) group: TA presented an outline of quiz solutions. Students self-diagnosed their solutions by circling where mistakes occurred, explaining their mistakes, and sorting their mistakes in a self-diagnosis rubric.
• Comprehensive (C) group: TA provided a written worked-out example. Students self-diagnosed their solution by circling where mistakes occurred and explaining their mistakes.
• Open-ended (O) group: Students were allowed to use their notes and textbooks. Students wrote         their self-diagnosis.

• On the midterm exam, students were given a “transfer” problem with the same underlying physics principles as the quiz problems that they were assigned to self-diagnose.

Results

• Students with low prior knowledge benefit the most from self-diagnosis activities, and the gap between high and low performers on the initial quiz shrunk on the transfer problem after the self-diagnosis in all groups; however, the gap remained if students did not perform a self-diagnosis.
• In the context of the typical problem situation, the authors find that the self-diagnosis score was correlated with subsequent performance on the transfer problem only for group O, for whom textbooks and notes were the sole means of guidance available to the students to help them with self-diagnosis.
• Students in O Group struggled the most but were still able to do an acceptable self-diagnosis. The research also suggests that struggling during self-diagnosis may be beneficial for successful future learning

Conclusion

• Instructors can ask students to do self-diagnosis of mistakes on homework, quiz, and exam problems. Students would get the most out of these activities if instructors ask them to do self-diagnosis throughout the semester.

How can you integrate self-diagnosis activities into your courses? Based on the assessments you assign, which style of self-diagnoses might be the most effective to help your students grasp the material better?