home - login - register

Journal Article Detail Page

Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research
written by Adam D. Smith, Jose P. Mestre, and Brian H. Ross
This study explores what introductory physics students actually look at when studying worked-out examples. Our classroom experiences indicate that introductory physics students neither discuss nor refer to the conceptual information contained in the text of worked-out examples. This study is an effort to determine to what extent students incorporate the textual information into the way they study. Student eye-gaze patterns were recorded as they studied the examples to aid them in solving a target problem. Contrary to our expectations from classroom interactions, students spent 40±3% of their gaze time reading the textual information. Their gaze patterns were also characterized by numerous jumps between corresponding mathematical and textual information, implying that they were combining information from both sources. Despite this large fraction of time spent reading the text, student recall of the conceptual information contained therein remained very poor. We also found that having a particular problem in mind had no significant effects on the gaze-patterns or conceptual information retention.
Subjects Levels Resource Types
Education - Applied Research
- Technology
Education - Basic Research
- Behavior
- Problem Solving
- Student Characteristics
- Lower Undergraduate
- Graduate/Professional
- Reference Material
= Research study
PER-Central Type Intended Users Ratings
- PER Literature
- Researchers
  • Currently 0.0/5

Want to rate this material?
Login here!


Formats:
application/pdf
text/html
Access Rights:
Free access
License:
This material is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
Rights Holder:
American Physical Society
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.6.020118
IES Grant:
R305B070085
PACS:
01.40.Fk
Record Creator:
Metadata instance created February 27, 2011 by Lyle Barbato
Record Updated:
May 18, 2012 by Lyle Barbato
Last Update
when Cataloged:
October 7, 2010
Save to my folders

Contribute

Similar Materials