To draw or not to draw? Examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments
© 2017 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution t...
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| Format: | Article |
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American Physical Society (APS)
2018
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117749 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7445-9338 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5697-1496 |
| _version_ | 1826216794806812672 |
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| author | Choi, Youn-Jeng Chen, Zhongzhou Demirci, Neset Pritchard, David E |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Choi, Youn-Jeng Chen, Zhongzhou Demirci, Neset Pritchard, David E |
| author_sort | Choi, Youn-Jeng |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2017 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Previous research on problem diagrams suggested that including a supportive diagram, one that does not provide necessary problem solving information, may bring little, or even negative, benefit to students' problem solving success. We tested the usefulness of problem diagrams on 12 different physics problems (6A/B experiments) in our massive open online course. By analyzing over 8000 student responses in total, we found that including a problem diagram that contains no significant additional information only slightly improves the first attempt correct rate for the few most spatially complex problems, and has little impact on either the final correct percentage or the time spent on solving the problem. On the other hand, in half of the cases, removing the diagram significantly increased the fraction of students' drawing their own diagrams during problem solving. The increase in drawing behavior is largely independent of students' physics abilities. In summary, our results suggest that for many physics problems, the benefit of a diagram is exceedingly small and may not justify the effort of creating one. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:53:14Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/117749 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:53:14Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | American Physical Society (APS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1177492022-10-03T08:57:51Z To draw or not to draw? Examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments Choi, Youn-Jeng Chen, Zhongzhou Demirci, Neset Pritchard, David E Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Chen, Zhongzhou Demirci, Neset Pritchard, David E © 2017 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Previous research on problem diagrams suggested that including a supportive diagram, one that does not provide necessary problem solving information, may bring little, or even negative, benefit to students' problem solving success. We tested the usefulness of problem diagrams on 12 different physics problems (6A/B experiments) in our massive open online course. By analyzing over 8000 student responses in total, we found that including a problem diagram that contains no significant additional information only slightly improves the first attempt correct rate for the few most spatially complex problems, and has little impact on either the final correct percentage or the time spent on solving the problem. On the other hand, in half of the cases, removing the diagram significantly increased the fraction of students' drawing their own diagrams during problem solving. The increase in drawing behavior is largely independent of students' physics abilities. In summary, our results suggest that for many physics problems, the benefit of a diagram is exceedingly small and may not justify the effort of creating one. 2018-09-13T18:53:07Z 2018-09-13T18:53:07Z 2017-02 2016-04 2018-08-29T15:09:53Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 2469-9896 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117749 Chen, Zhongzhou et al. “To Draw or Not to Draw? Examining the Necessity of Problem Diagrams Using Massive Open Online Course Experiments.” Physical Review Physics Education Research 13, 1 (February 2017): 010110 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7445-9338 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5697-1496 http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVPHYSEDUCRES.13.010110 Physical Review Physics Education Research Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf American Physical Society (APS) APS |
| spellingShingle | Choi, Youn-Jeng Chen, Zhongzhou Demirci, Neset Pritchard, David E To draw or not to draw? Examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments |
| title | To draw or not to draw? Examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments |
| title_full | To draw or not to draw? Examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments |
| title_fullStr | To draw or not to draw? Examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments |
| title_full_unstemmed | To draw or not to draw? Examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments |
| title_short | To draw or not to draw? Examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments |
| title_sort | to draw or not to draw examining the necessity of problem diagrams using massive open online course experiments |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/117749 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7445-9338 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5697-1496 |
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