Science Education Research Laboratory

While augmented reality (AR) technology is being considered by educators for its potential to help students visualize abstract concepts, currently there are barriers from the high cost of developing complex AR applications. In this study we investigate how the complexity of AR content impacts student learning in remote 1-1 tutoring scenarios, where an instructor uses an AR headset while teaching physics concepts to a remote student. This approach brings the benefits of augmented reality into the already-existing educational practices of 1-1 remote instruction, without requiring AR devices for every student. We present a system for AR-based physics instruction and perform a between-subjects study, measuring how student learning and inquiry behaviors differ between two experimental conditions that vary in the complexity of AR content. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, our results show that students who are tutored with more complex AR content learn better and show a wider variety of inquiry styles. Furthermore, AR visual representations appear to stimulate students to think about a wide range of scientific ideas, to make deeper connections between scientific concepts, and encourage students to have a more active learning style with increased transitions between inquiry activities. We discuss possible reasons and wider implications for these findings.

Two-stage collaborative exams are an increasingly popular form of formative assessment which have shown promising results in promoting student learning. While the benefit of two-stage collaborative exams is well researched, there is no clear consensus on the best way of implementing them—specifically with respect to forming student groups. In some studies students self-select their groups, and in others they are assigned by the instructor (either randomly or with a specific grouping algorithm). Research has shown that performance and satisfaction in group learning situations improves when faculty, not students, select the groups. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that students’ learning benefits from working in groups with diverse learning styles, abilities, gender, and race. In this study, we report on a controlled experiment conducted during a two-stage collaborative exam in an introductory physics course at Harvard University. For the group stage of the exam, half of the groups were formed by the instructor (based on balancing gender and performance on previous exams) and the other half were student selected. We compared performance on both the individual and group stage of the exam for the instructor-formed versus student-formed groups. We also surveyed students on their experiences during the group exam. We found that female students perform better on two-part collaborative exams when they are in student-formed groups. We also found that in the student-formed groups students (especially female students) felt more comfortable speaking up and felt that their groups were both “more effective and productive” and “more receptive to their ideas” than in the instructor-formed groups. This study provides important insights into best practice implementation of two-stage collaborative exams.

The prevalence of online instruction highlights the importance of videos in education. Pedagogies that include elements that actively engage students are accepted as an improvement over more passive modes of instruction. How can we transfer the advantages of active engagement to instruction via video? Previous research on instructional videos has shown that there are a number of principles, the adherence to which benefit student learning by maximizing productive cognitive processing. To understand the impact of combining such principles we designed and produced four different versions of the same physics demonstration video, varying levels of “visual enhancement” designed around these principles and the amount of active engagement across the different versions. Using pre-post video testing, we compared how much viewers learned across the four different versions. We found that actively engaging students by embedding questions throughout the video increases student learning. We also found that physics videos are most effective when they include enhanced visuals and embedded questions. Notably, it is the combination that matters most; the learning effect from embedding questions is increased when the video also includes enhanced visuals. This study represents an important step towards understanding how instructors can design and refine their videos to maximize student learning.

The typical introductory physics lecture requires students to consolidate and assimilate a large quantity of complex information that is often novel to them. This can leave students overwhelmed, slow the pace of their learning, and lower their motivation. We find that carefully designed multimedia summaries in the form of one-minute videos and short text summaries can significantly increase students’ understanding of the material as well as their ability to organize information into a useful mental framework, as measured by their performances on a concept mapping exercise and a conceptual test of learning. Notably, we show that these improvements can be achieved with negligible increase in overall time students spend on the course material each week. We discuss reasons why these short postlecture summaries helped students learn more, namely, that (i) they likely increased students’ ability to chunk and organize information while minimizing the extraneous cognitive load imposed by the materials, and (ii) they likely improved students’ ability to consolidate and transfer knowledge through the use of contrasting cases. We provide a set of detailed recommendations that instructors can use to develop effective postlecture multimedia summaries. We suggest that one of the most important and impactful recommendations is incorporating student thinking in the design of these types of summaries informed by the input of qualified former students or teaching assistants with significant experience interacting with students in the course.