Tutorials in Introductory Physics

Indicates a research-demonstrated benefit

Overview

Guided-inquiry worksheets for small groups in recitation section of intro calculus-based physics.
Instructors engage groups in Socratic dialogue.

Type of
Curriculum supplement, Tutorials
Method

Designed for: Intro College Calculus-based

Level
Can be adapted for: Intro College Algebra-based , High School

Designed for: Recitation/Discussion Session , Homework

Setting Can be adapted for: Lecture - Large (30+ students), Lecture - Small (<30 students),
Lab

Coverage Many topics with less depth

Mechanics, Electricity / Magnetism, Waves / Optics, Thermal / Statistical, Modern /

Topics
Quantum

Instructor
Medium
Effort

Resource TAs / LAs, Simple lab equipment, Cost for students, Tables for group work, minimal
Needs equipment for experiments, butcher paper or white boards at each table

Designed for: Conceptual understanding , Using multiple representations

Skills Can be adapted for: Problem-solving skills, Making real-world connections,
Metacognition

Based on research into: theories of how students learn , student ideas about
specific topics
Demonstrated to improve: conceptual understanding , beliefs and attitudes
Research
, attendance , performance in subsequent classes
Validation
Studied using: cycle of research and redevelopment , student interviews ,
classroom observations , analysis of written work , research at multiple
institutions , research by multiple groups , peer-reviewed publication
 Peer Instruction, PhET, JiTT, Ranking Tasks, ILDs, CGPS, Physlets, Context-Rich
Compatible Problems, RealTime Physics, TIPERs, ABP Tutorials, SCALE-UP, OSP, SDI Labs,
Methods OST Tutorials, Thinking Problems, Workbook for Introductory Physics, LA Program,
CAE TPS, MBL, CPU, SCL, TEFA, Tools for Scientific Thinking, Tutorials, Clickers

Similar ABP Tutorials, OST Tutorials, PBI, Lecture-Tutorials, QuILTs, Thermal Tutorials,
Methods Mechanics Tutorials, Tutorials

Developer(s) Lillian C. McDermott, Peter S. Shaffer and the Physics Education Group at UW

Website https://depts.washington.edu/uwpeg/tutorial

Intro Article 2692

Oersted Medal Lecture 2001: "Physics Education Research-The Key to Student

Intro Article
Learning"

Essential features

Minimum Implementation:

Students should work through one tutorial per week, during 50-60 minute class session,
after the relevant topic has been covered in lecture
Students should work on tutorials in small groups of 3-4Saul and Beichner 2001

Each group should be given a large sheet of paper to write on and equipment
Students should take pre-tests before each tutorial
Pre-tests should not be graded for correctness
Answers to pre-tests should not be posted and students should not be allowed to take
them home.
A copy of the pre-test should be posted in the tutorial classroom
Exams should include qualitative conceptual questions
Students should complete tutorial homework after tutorial
Tutorials should not be graded but tutorial homework should be
Tutorials should be staffed with TAs with an instructor/student ratio of 1/12
TAs should respond to student questions with Socratic questioning, not with answers
TAs should attend a weekly 60 minute prep session in which they take the pretest, work
through the tutorial as if they were students, and review student responses to the pretest

Ideal Implementation:
TAs should explain the theory behind tutorials to students, discussing why they work in
groups and why the TAs answer with questions rather than answers
TAs should actively encourage students to work together, and should intervene when a
group is not interacting productively
TAs should call out individual students who are not involved in group discussion, and make
sure all members of the group understand what's going on, not just the most talkative
TAs should check for agreement between group members and ask students to discuss a
question further if they don't agree on the answer
TAs should encourage students to use the large sheet of paper as a shared space for
group problem-solving
TAs should be instructed in how to effectively engage in Socratic dialog
TAs should be instructed in how to effectively facilitate group interaction
When students ask why they are required to do something in tutorial, TA responses should
emphasize how the tutorial helps them learn, rather than merely the grading policy
Tutorial sessions should be 90 minutes long
As TAs work through tutorial in prep session, they should discuss places where students
are likely to have difficulties and ways to help students with these difficulties. One way to
do this is to have TAs role-play as students, and get other TAs to "help" them. Another
way is to watch and discuss videos of students working through Tutorials
TAs should be informed of why each tutorial emphasizes certain questions which may
seem repetitive or unnecessary to an expert physicist without training in pedagogy
TAs should be informed of places in each tutorial where students are known to get stuck,
and questions that are known to be effective for helping them get unstuck. TAs should be
encouraged to check in with each group to make sure they have correctly addressed the
difficult spots in each tutorial
TAs should explicitly ask students to reflect on their reasoning process with metacognitive
questions such as, "What about this process helped you to figure out the answer?" or
"What was this tutorial about?"
TAs should tell students to introduce themselves to the other students at their table
TAs should ensure that students do not leave the tutorial session early
TAs should attend an additional weekly session on pedagogy in which they learn about
education research and the theory of why tutorials work
TAs should be told to paraphrase students questions back to them before responding
The "social and environmental context" of the tutorials-including classroom, departmental,
and institutional levels of implementation-should be structured to facilitate TA buy-in
References

J. Saul and R. Beichner, An Activity-based Curriculum for Large Introductory Physics

Classes: The SCALE-UP Project, presented at the Physics Education Research
Conference 2001, Rochester, New York, 2001.

How to implement

Students work together in small groups to get all students actively engaged and
articulating their ideas about the physics concepts. Instructors should encourage student
interaction.
Asking students to predict the results of experiments helps them commit to an idea and
therefore be more likely to remember if the results do not match their expectations.
Instructors guide students to construct their understanding through Socratic questioning,
rather than telling them the answers.
Questions are based on research into student difficulties in physics.
Materials are tested by student interviews and written tests of conceptual understanding,
and revised in an iterative cycle based on research results.
Questions focus on conceptual understanding rather than computation, helping students to
understand the underlying models.

Common challenges

Addressing Common Obstacles to Implementation:

I teach only large lecture classes with no recitation sections.

Ideally tutorials should be implemented in a smaller class setting with an

instructor/student ratio of 12/1 or less. However, in some settings this is not
possible. Some instructors have successfully implemented them in large lecture
classes using clickers and whole-class discussions in place of small-group
checkouts.

I don't have the resources to hire enough instructors.

Ideally tutorials should be implemented in a smaller class setting with an

instructor/student ratio of 12/1 or less. However, many institutions provide support
for only one TA for a recitation section with 24 students or more. While many
institutions have implemented tutorials with an instructor/student ratio of 24/1, this
 does not work as well. Instructors at these institutions report increased student
frustration because they can't get enough help from TAs, and much lower learning
gains on conceptual tests like the FCI and FMCE than at institutions with lower
instructor/student ratios. One successful model for addressing this problem is to
hire advanced undergraduates as instructors in addition to or instead of graduate
TAs. Undergraduates are typically cheaper to hire than graduate students, and
often more motivated to teach. Undergraduates can be hired in an informal
manner, or as part of a formal program like the University of Colorado Learning
Assistant Program. For the tutorial implementation to be sustainable in the long
term, it is best to set up a formal program with a dedicated source of funding.
Another model for addressing a lack of resources to hire instructors is for dedicated
faculty members to volunteer to assist in teaching tutorials. While this works very
well in the short term due to the increased knowledge and buy-in of the instructor,
programs that use this model are not sustainable and tend to fall apart as soon as
the dedicated faculty member leaves or wears out.

Students don't finish the tutorials in the time allotted to them.

While tutorials are typically implemented in 50-minute recitation sections, the

Instructor's Manual suggests that 90 minutes for a tutorial is ideal. It is not
necessarily a problem if not all students finish the entire tutorial in class, as long
most students finish most of it and the rest are able to work through it on their own
at home and complete the tutorial homework. However, if many students are
consistently completing less than half a tutorial in class and are struggling to
complete the tutorial homework, the implementation should be changed. Instructors
have found that non-science majors and students with weaker science
backgrounds typically need more time, so in an algebra-based class it often works
better to do one tutorial over the course of two weeks instead of in one week. Even
if the time frame is longer, it works best to give students a clear time frame for
completing the tutorial, rather than giving them an unlimited amount of time and
only moving on to the next tutorial when everyone is done.

TAs don't like the tutorials and/or don't teach them in the way they should be taught.

Instructor buy-in is an important issue in effective implementation of tutorials. TAs

who don't believe in the teaching method will be much less effective at using it, and
if students sense a lack of buy-in from their TAs, they will be much less likely to
buy in to the method themselves. TA buy-in varies greatly among individual TAs
and institutions, and research suggests that there are many factors that can affect
buy-in.
 buy-in.

Students don't like the tutorials and resist doing them.

Student resistance is an issue in nearly all institutions that use tutorials. This
resistance is typically much worse during the first year of implementation, and it
subsides in subsequent years as they become accepted as a normal part of
instruction, but it never completely goes away. Even at the University of
Washington, many students dislike the tutorials, even when they know that the
tutorials help their learning. Professor Steven Pollock of the University of Colorado
calls this the vegetable model of learning - students view tutorials as being like
vegetables in that they know they are good for them, but don't like them. If you are
thinking about implementing tutorials, you should expect some student resistance.
However, there are things you can do to address and minimize this resistance.
There are three main reasons students give for disliking tutorials:

1. Tutorials are condescending - they ask really basic questions over and
over again. Many students are turned off by the seemingly basic questions
in the tutorials. Ironically, anecdotal reports suggest that honors students
enjoy the tutorials more than other students, and physics graduate
students can argue with each other over a "basic" tutorial question for
hours. The reason for this is that these questions are usually not as basic
as they seem, and these seemingly basic questions are usually getting at
some very deep issue. The best way to address this objection is to talk to
students about it explicitly, giving a few examples of seemingly basic
questions and explaining how they are getting at deeper issues, and
addressing it when it comes up. However, this can be difficult to do if you
don't understand why a tutorial is asking a particular question.
2. Tutorials make them feel stupid (because they keep eliciting the students'
ideas and then showing them that they're wrong). Tutorials use an "Elicit,
Confront, Resolve" method of instruction in which incorrect beliefs about
physics are elicited through carefully constructed questions that tend to
bring out students' nave ideas, confronted by helping students see the
inconsistencies in their beliefs, and resolved by guiding students to find a
new model that addresses the inconsistencies. While this method has
been shown to be very effective at improving students' conceptual
learning, it can have negative side effects in terms of students' attitudes
towards physics. While stronger students may enjoy having their beliefs
challenged, weaker students may be frustrated by the experience of
 challenged, weaker students may be frustrated by the experience of
constantly having their incorrect beliefs exposed. Some students may
"learn" from this experience that their intuition is always wrong and lack
the confidence to work through physics problems. Some other teaching
methods have been designed to address this problem, most notably Open
Source Tutorials, which focus on pointing out the correct aspects of
students' intuition and helping students redirect this intuition when
necessary, and the Investigative Science Learning Environment, which
focuses on helping students build scientific models using the processes
that scientists use. However, research is still inconclusive about whether
these methods are as effective for conceptual learning, or even for
scientific thinking goals. Anecdotally, one thing that seems to help improve
student attitudes within the context of tutorials is to be very explicit with
students about the goals and methods of the tutorials, so that they
understand what the tutorials are doing, as well as how and why.
3. Please just tell me the answer and stop answering questions with
questions. By the time they get to college, most students have had many
years of schooling in which they have been taught that the best way to
learn is by listening to clear lectures from a teacher who is an authority.
Research does not support this view, but we can't blame students for
being more comfortable with more familiar methods of instruction. The
best way to address this objection is for instructors and teaching
assistants to be very explicit with students about why they are using this
method of instruction. Talk to students regularly about the research
showing that students do not learn much from traditional lectures and that
they learn much more from active engagement methods such as tutorials.
A great place to start is to refer students to the Tutorial FAQ page written
by Steve Pollock.
4. I work better individually, not in groups. Many students dislike group work.
There are two responses to this: One is again to point students to the
research on group work. For example, a controlled study in which some
tutorial sections were told to work individually and some were told to work
in groups showed that students in the sections that worked in groups
learned significantly more. The second response is to point out that most
jobs require working in groups and this is a skill that employers value, so if
they're not good at working in groups, they need to learn how.
Students don't like the tutorials because they think the tutorials are condescending
(because they ask so many seemingly basic and repetitive questions).
Students don't like the tutorials because they say the tutorials make them feel stupid
(because they keep eliciting the students' ideas and then showing them that they're wrong).
Students don't like the tutorials because they want someone to just tell them the answer
rather than engaging in Socratic dialog.
My colleagues don't think these will be as effective as traditional recitations.

Many physics faculty are skeptical about curricula that emphasize conceptual
understanding rather than traditional problem-solving, believing that conceptual
understanding is easier and/or less important than traditional problem-solving.
However, research shows that students are often capable of solving traditional
quantitative problems without a basic conceptual understanding of qualitative
problems, and that focusing on conceptual understanding does not harm, and can
improve, traditional problem-solving skills.

My students learn the content of the tutorials better, but don't learn how to ask
themselves the kinds of questions that the tutorials ask, so their thinking skills are not
improving.

While it is a stated goal of the tutorials to help students learn to question their own
thinking, the research involved in their creation is targeted entirely at conceptual
learning and no research has been done on whether they help achieve higher
order thinking goals. Anecdotal evidence from experienced instructors suggests
that tutorials do not help students achieve these goals, but that they do
help instructors, including graduate teaching assistants and undergraduate
learning assistants, achieve these goals.

Some students are demoralized by the tutorials, and seem to have "learned" that their
intuition about physics is always wrong.

Tutorials use an "Elicit, Confront, Resolve" method of instruction in which incorrect

beliefs about physics are elicited through carefully constructed questions that tend
to bring out students' nave ideas, confronted by helping students see the
inconsistencies in their beliefs, and resolved by guiding students to find a new
model that addresses the inconsistencies. While this method has been shown to
be very effective at improving students' conceptual learning, it can have negative
side effects in terms of students' attitudes towards physics. While stronger
students may enjoy having their beliefs challenged, weaker students may be
frustrated by the experience of constantly having their incorrect beliefs exposed.
 Some students may "learn" from this experience that their intuition is always wrong
and lack the confidence to work through physics problems. Some other teaching
methods have been designed to address this problem, most notably Open Source
Tutorials, which focus on pointing out the correct aspects of students' intuition and
helping students redirect this intuition when necessary, and the Investigative
Science Learning Environment, which focuses on helping students build scientific
models using the processes that scientists use. However, research is still
inconclusive about whether these methods are as effective for conceptual learning,
or even for scientific thinking goals. Anecdotally, one thing that seems to help
improve student attitudes within the context of tutorials is to be very explicit with
students about the goals and methods of the tutorials, so that they understand what
the tutorials are doing, as well as how and why.

Teaching materials

Tutorials in Introductory Physics come in a book published by Pearson. You can order them from Pearson
Pearson or from Amazon. You can download a sample tutorial from PhysPort.