Physical science laboratories provide a real
opportunity to integrate a broad range of skills into a single
activity. In taking over the course, I hoped to integrate writing,
mathematics, and technology along with the concepts of physical science
into the laboratories.
As I have noted to some, the typical physical science laboratory looks
something like a recipe. The student is asked to do something or
measure something, they fill in the blank in the book for that step,
and go on to the next step. Occasionally the lab book includes a
"critical thinking" moment or other "special blank" in a paean to
whatever the science education rage of the moment might be.
In my design, the labs consist of a weekly paper produced by the
student using spreadsheet and word processing software. Production
calls on all the skills they have learned in courses such as CA 100
Computer Literacy. Already I am noting that students are confusing line
charts with xy scattergraphs. Either students have forgotten the
distinction or the later were not covered in any prior course. This did
cause me to move the class into the computer laboratory to cover this
distinction.
The conclusion should be a brief essay, possibly only a paragraph, on
the results of their work. These paragraph is rated using a rubric that
considers content, grammar, vocabulary, and cohesion. To date many of
the students have struggled with producing a coherent paragraph. The
conclusion both pushes their writing skills and provides me with a
surprisingly effective tool for gaging their comprehension of what they
have done.
A sample student laboratory from an above average
student still has a number of problems but provides an idea of what is coming in at this point in the term. The text in blue is part of the original laboratory description, I provide a
framework on which the students can "hang" their sections. This is
necessary as the students have had so little background in science. For
some students this is their first contact with experimental laboratory
physical science.
The students in the course do not possess any sort of consistent
background. I have students who have completed EN 120b, others that are
still in ESL 099. Mathematically I have students who have finished
statistics while others are in MS 100. I may have students who are in
MS 099. The result is a challengingly broad range of skill sets. The
laboratories are due at the next laboratory period - a typed document
with tables and charts per week. I accept laboratories as a hard copy
or via email.
At a laboratory a week, there is no
time in the current structure for drafts and revisions. Some students
could benefit from the writing center, and I may recommend that to
those who have more fundamental grammar problems. There is some good
news in that no student has produced a completely unintelligible
conclusion. There are four students, however, who are not turning in
laboratories, underneath may be an inability to put these complex
laboratories together. I will have to meet these four. The class is
presently 31 students, and marking 31 writing papers a week appears to
be the functional upper limit on the course from the instructor's point
of view.
To date, each lab has been changed in some way by the Thursday 8:00
section. The changes are implemented in the Thursday 11:00 laboratory
section, which in turn often makes further modifications. I also alter
the laboratories both as a result of field testing and once I see the
laboratories. The laboratories will further evolve next term. This
process is likely to take a few iterations to settle on a working set
of laboratories.
Each laboratory is designed around a fairly simply system, using local
materials to the extent that I can. For minimal costs they could
conceivably delivered on any island which has a hardware store. To
date, only chronographs have proven problematic.
At present the lecture section is fairly traditional, although the
complexity of the laboratories means that servicing and supporting the
students in their laboratory effort has required lecture section time
to address common needs. One of the surprises for me is that our
students are almost a tabula rasa in terms of science theories.
One student concluded a motion laboratory by talking about how all
objects slow down as the starting force "wore off" as the ball rolls
farther. He had perfectly captured Aristotle's theory of motion - a
theory that really does "make common sense." Yet most students have no
idea how to theorize, how to think about systems and make conjectures.
Ideas such as mathematical relationships between measures, or that
shapes on graphs imply mathematical equations, are all either new or
almost incomprehensible.
In talking with a former student who took SC 130 in the 1990s, the
student noted that they remembered nothing of the course nor of what
they did. I suspect that is true of most students a dozen years after a
course. Certainly the memorized but never used content is lost. My hope
is that the students learn a process of investigation, a way to look at
their world, and some of the concepts of science, that transcends
specific content. In the process, however, a good deal of specific
content is necessarily lost.