Paul Gorsky

Students’ concepts of force as applied to related physical systems: A search for consistency

Abstract Recent attempts to categorize students’ conceptual understanding of physical phenomena into consistent and meaningful frameworks have had limited success. We report here on an analytic technique by means of which we were able to identify what appear to be meaningful conceptual categories of students’ understanding of force. However, we found only very limited support for two often‐quoted alternative frameworks, viz.: (a) if a body is moving, a net force always acts on it in the direction of the motion, and (b) no forces act on objects at rest.

Dialogue: A Theoretical Framework for Distance Education Instructional Systems.

This paper presents a theoretical framework for viewing elements that comprise distance education instructional systems in terms of dialogue. It is assumed that learning is mediated by intrapersonal dialogue and facilitated by interpersonal dialogue. Every resource in a distance education instructional system (eg, instructor availability, asynchronous communication networks, self-instruction texts, etc) is analysed in terms of the dialogue mode it supports. The framework offers three advantages: (1) a unified, simple, and coherent description of the mechanisms at play in distance education systems, (2) clear-cut operational definitions, and (3) hypotheses that may be investigated empirically.

Wikis: what students do and do not do when writing collaboratively

We investigated the collaborative writing actions carried out by 60 Open University of Israel graduate students as they built a wiki glossary of key course concepts. These actions were analysed using a taxonomy of collaborative writing actions (i.e. adding, editing and deleting information) in order to find out what students do and what they do not do when writing collaboratively. Two main findings were reported: in accord with previous research, students most frequently add content to a wiki rather than delete existing text; and contrary to previous research, students modify existing texts to a greater extent than previously reported. These findings may help teachers design collaborative learning activities. Teachers should be aware of the difficulties faced by students when writing collaboratively and should design collaborative learning activities in ways that overcome or circumvent these difficulties.

Dialogue in a Distance Education Physics Course

This study investigated the kinds of dialogues utilized by Open University students while studying an intermediate level physics course. Research objectives were twofold: to document what dialogue types, mediated through which resources, were (1) generally utilized by students as they learned; and (2) were specifically utilized by students to overcome conceptual difficulties. It was found that all students initially chose individual study characterized by intrapersonal dialogue. Only when individual study failed did students opt for interpersonal dialogue. This finding conflicts with the assumed importance often ascribed to interpersonal dialogue by some distance education theorists.

Campus-based university students' use of dialogue

This investigation explores the kinds of study strategies used by campus‐based university students in terms of the dialogues they engaged in while learning physics and chemistry in both large and small classes. Research objectives were threefold: (1) to document what dialogue types, mediated through which resources, were generally utilized by students as they learned, (2) to document what dialogue types, mediated through which resources, were specifically utilized by students to solve problems, and (3) to compare these findings with previous ones obtained from distance education students. It was found that campus‐based students in small classes learned in a highly interactive environment characterized by interpersonal dialogue, especially with the lecturer. It was also found that campus‐based students in large classes learned primarily through individual study, characterized as intrapersonal dialogue. Both college and university students opted for interpersonal dialogue, especially with peers, when faced with insoluble problems. Findings about students in large campus‐based lecture courses replicate earlier findings obtained from distance education students, thereby highlighting similarities between the two seemingly different instructional systems.

Instructional dialogue: distance education students’ dialogic behaviour

Instructional systems, both distance education and campus‐based, may be viewed in terms of intrapersonal and interpersonal instructional dialogues, that mediate and facilitate learning respectively, and instructional resources that enable such dialogues. Resources include self‐instruction texts, tutorials, instructor availability, websites and more. This study investigated the dialogic behaviour of 521 Open University of Israel students as they studied undergraduate courses in Exact and Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities. Research objectives were to document what dialogue types, mediated through which resources, were utilized by students to overcome conceptual difficulty while reading instructional texts and while working on assignments. Two main findings emerged: (1) initially, most students dealt with both kinds of conceptual difficulty individually, on their own; only when such efforts failed did they turn to interpersonal dialogue; and (2) most students turned to peers for help, not to their instructors. These findings conflict with the assumed importance often ascribed to interpersonal, instructor–student dialogue by some distance education theorists.

A Survey of Biology Students' Conceptions of Force in Pre‐service Training for High School Teachers

Abstract Do biology students in pre‐service training to be high school teachers hold correct scientific views which will eventually allow them to plan and implement instructional strategies which, in turn, will lead their future students to achieve a correct scientific concept of force? The results of a study dealing with this issue are discussed in this article. The force conceptions of the biology students were analysed by means of a questionnaire which was presented during the first day of class. The most important findings of this study can be summarised as follows. Biology students in pre‐service training for high school teachers: (1) have less difficulties when dealing with forces in static situations than in dynamic ones. Nevertheless, they were rather ambiguous when referring to the necessity of the forces to be balanced in static objects; (2) have great difficulties when dealing with forces acting on objects in different dynamic situations; (3) mostly recognise weight as a force, but have difficu...

New visualization tools for learning molecular symmetry: a preliminary evaluation

A Website that helps students visualize and locate symmetry elements on three- dimensional molecular structures was developed. It includes textual explanations, an interactive example window and a Microsoft-Excel based symmetry toolkit that enables students to draw symmetry elements in three dimensions. Preliminary qualitative research aimed at exploring how students learned with this tool was performed. It was found that the three-dimensional graphical capabilities of the toolkit (1) helped students overcome difficulties in three-dimensional visualization, (2) enabled students to find symmetry elements of complex molecules generally not accessible from drawings and (3) contributed to a deeper understanding of molecular structure and chemical symmetry. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract., 2007, 8 (1), 61-72]