Research Presentations (under construction)

• 233rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (06-10 January 2019); Seattle, WA
  • contributed talk 417.02: "The Astrophysical Fluency Project Part I: Unpacking Your Activities" (R.S. French & E. Prather)
    
    To elevate students’ levels of understanding, instructors often actively engage learners with multiple tasks that have been carefully designed and sequenced to build upon their existing knowledge and intuitions. When different intellectual tasks are connected to pedagogically appropriate representations, learners can successfully unpack complex concepts and develop more robust and expert-like understandings. In Part I of the Astrophysical Fluency Project (AFP) we developed a framework to catalog and characterize hundreds of faculty-produced multiple-choice questions. This framework includes coding schemas to characterize the representations and intellectual tasks used, while a Question Complexity Rubric ranks the level of intellectual engagement necessary to unpack and explain the reasoning behind the correct answer to the question. Using this framework, we identified the underutilized variables in hundreds of Think-Pair-Share (TPS) questions on various topics.
    
    By applying this framework to other learning materials (in these and other disciplines) instructors can both “inventory” the information contained within those materials and subsequently design more pedagogically interesting and powerful opportunities that feature a greater variety of representations and tasks for learners to engage with as they work towards discipline fluency. This talk, AFP Part I, covers the development of the framework and its use to describe the information contained within a database of TPS questions while AFP Part II will cover the application of the framework to generate “fluency-inspiring” questions and opportunities.
    PowerPoint show | AAS link (417.02: Thurs, 10 January 2019, 10:10-10:20)
  • contributed talk 417.03: "The Astrophysical Fluency Project Part II: Generating Fluency-Inspiring Opportunities" (E. Prather & R.S. French)
    
    Part I of the Astrophysical Fluency Project (AFP) involved creating a framework to characterize and catalog a database of faculty-generated TPS questions in terms of the representations used, intellectual tasks required, and complexity levels reached. Through this work, we have systematically identified the variables missing from the questions on particular topics.
    
    In this talk I will discuss Part II of the AFP, which involves applying our framework to generate "fluency-inspiring" questions. These questions not only fill the gaps identified in Part I of this work, they also make use of multiple representations and intellectual tasks that require the learner to develop one or more complex lines of reasoning and, if necessary, integrate them together to answer the question. Additionally, the framework developed through the AFP can generate new ways of thinking about how to move learners toward greater discipline fluency and is applicable to a wide variety of instructional materials and disciplines. Classrooms where learners engage with fluency-inspiring questions and activities offer richer opportunities for learners to practice critical discernment, unpack their reasoning, and be more reflective about their learning.
    PowerPoint show | AAS link (417.03: Thurs, 10 January 2019, 10:20-10:30)
• 2018 Fall meeting of the Southern California section of the American Association of Physics Teachers (27 October 2018); Oceanside, CA
  • contributed talk: "The Astrophysical Fluency Project: A Framework for Generating Fluency-Inspiring Opportunities"
    
    Instructors afford learners more robust opportunities to develop discipline fluency by connecting various intellectual tasks to multiple pedagogically appropriate representations in ways that build upon existing knowledge, facilitate unpacking complex concepts, and promote critical discernment. Our framework can be used to catalog and characterize the representations, tasks, and difficulty levels found in faculty-produced multiple-choice questions, generate fluency-inspiring questions, and is easily extended to other materials and disciplines.
    PowerPoint show | SCAAPT link (Sat, 27 Oct 2018, 10:30-10:45)
• 2018 American Association of Physics Teachers summer meeting (28 July - 01 August 2018) + 2018 Physics Education Research Conference (01-02 August 2018); Washington, DC
  • AAPT contributed talk: "Developing Fluency: A Framework for Generating Effective Representations and Tasks"
    
    To elevate students' levels of understanding instructors often actively engage learners with multiple tasks that have been carefully designed and sequenced to build upon their existing knowledge and intuitions. When different intellectual tasks (interpret, visualize, rank, compare, etc.) are connected to pedagogically appropriate representations (words, drawings, graphs, numerical data, vectors, etc.), learners can successfully unpack complex concepts and develop more robust and expert-like understandings. Classrooms that provide a varied and coherent set of tasks and representations afford learners the opportunity for critical discernment and the development of discipline fluency. We present a framework developed to catalog and characterize the representations, tasks, and difficulty levels employed in faculty-produced multiple-choice think-pair-share questions. Additionally we exploit this framework to generate new questions using underutilized components. The framework is easily generalized to many disciplines, instructional materials, and active-learning strategies.
    PowerPoint show | AAPT link (CB12: Mon, 30 July 2018, 18:50-19:00)
  • PERC contributed poster: "Uncovering the Unknown Unknowns of Peer Instruction Questions"
    
    "Wow! I wish I'd written that question..." Many instructors struggle to write Peer Instruction (PI, or Think-Pair-Share, TPS) questions that present the ideas of their discipline using thought-provoking representations that engage learners in a wider variety of intellectual tasks. How much variety exists in your question banks? How would you go about evaluating this and even if you did, how would you know what you’re missing? We present a framework for uncovering the variety in the discipline representations, intellectual tasks, and difficulty levels employed in hundreds of multiple-choice questions produced by faculty in our workshops over the years. We then exploit this framework to generate new questions using underutilized variables. In this way, we create questions that better afford learners an opportunity to develop their discipline fluency.
    PDF (see the actual poster hanging in the west hallway of the 4500 building on the Oceanside campus) | PERC link (Poster Session I, A30: Wed, 01 August 2018, 17:00-17:45)
  • PERC Proceedings contributed paper: "Uncovering the Unknown Unknowns of Peer Instruction Questions"
    
    "Wow! I wish I'd written that question..." Many instructors struggle to write Peer Instruction questions that can drive the intellectually engaging discussions necessary to fully develop learners' discipline fluency. Does your question bank contain the questions you need? How would you go about evaluating this and even if you did, how would you know what you're missing? We present a framework for uncovering the variety in the discipline representations, intellectual tasks, and difficulty levels employed in hundreds of multiple-choice questions produced by faculty in our workshops over the years. We then exploit this framework to generate new questions using underutilized representations and tasks. Through this work, we illustrate a process for creating fluency-inspiring questions. Learning environments that make use of fluency-inspiring questions afford learners more robust opportunities to unpack complex concepts, practice critical discernment, and develop discipline fluency.
    PDF | PERC Proceedings link (2018, forthcoming)