Simon’s Physics Education Blog

Two new projects for PER type SH projects. Other three are in an email in
DoT folder

1. Attutudinal variation of shifts in student views of learning.

Course 1A : 2006-07
Duration is S1, S2 for student interviews

Aim: to evaluate students attitudes towards learning, possibly contextualised
towards Physics at the start adn end of the course

Use clickers to capture responses to questions, perhaps also using confidence
levels as well.

Makes use of Perry’s developmental model classifying students as a (A) spoonfed,
(B) better, but uncomfortable and (C) progressing to autonomous independent learning.

Matrix of their views of various roles (themselves, their lecturers, their beliefs
about knowledge and exams) and example questions are in the HEA Phys Sci Centre
practice guide called “Evaluation fo Teaching” by Alex Johnstone.

Has implications for vanguard courses as it attempts some ind of measure of student
attitude at the start and at the end of the course.

1A is seem as one of the most successful courses that the College has to offer.
Yet tracking shows that there is still this enormous peak of activity just before the
exams, suggesting that there is a lot of what Johnstone / Perry would classify
as “type A” behaviour. Is this just the timing of the exams or are we really frustrating
the students from being more autonomous. Could 1A still exhibit “spoon-feeding”
characteristics? Will it change as Sec A of the exam changes??

2. Resits

Investigate online behaviours of resitting students during course and suring resit period
via tracking data collected from WebCT. Interviews to assess
(i) why they failed first time; what they didi differently for the resit (recall
that this period involves no formal face to face teaching).
(ii) any attitudinal shits they can identify as having taken place during the course
(appliation of Perry’s questionnaire “twice” – imagine if you could go back – how
would you have answered it.