Achieving Core Values in Higher Education : A Design Experiment

Achieving Core Values in Higher Education : A Design Experiment

University News, 51 (14) (2013)

    A. K. Mody.

Associate Professor

V. E.S. College of Arts, Science and Commerce, Sindhi Society

Chembur, Mumbai – 400 071

Tel: (022) 25227470

e-mail: atulmody@gmail.com

H. C. Pradhan

Centre Director (Retd.)

HBCSE, TIFR, V. N. Purav Marg, Mankhurd

Mumbai – 400 088

Tel:  9867050422

e-mail: pradhan46@gmail.com

As noted by joint Science education panel of IASc, INSA and NASI (Resonance Dec 2008), ‘most students who join the science stream as undergraduates are neither willing to nor capable of finally taking up an academic career (R&D and/or teaching). For a large number of students, the Bachelor’s degree would be the terminal degree and therefore, it should prepare them to earn their livelihood respectable, through jobs (private or public), business, etc’.

Core Values that should be achieved in higher education as per NAAC are :

1. Contribution to National Development
2. Foster Global Competencies amongst students
3. Inculcating Value System in Students
4. Promoting Use of Technology
5. Quest for Excellence

There is a genuine need for building up motivation and confidence of undergraduate students in science subjects in the whole country. The way to do this is through capacity building efforts. This course will serve as a model for such efforts. Further, it will provide a practical model, as it is a supplementary course, supplementing the regular studies in the college and is conducted without disturbing the regular schedule.

We have conducted a supplementary capacity building course for students of affiliated colleges of Mumbai University studying physics in first year and second year B.Sc. This course was conducted with a constructivistic (Pradhan & Mody 2009^a) approach and is expected to serve as a model for such efforts. Further, it will provide a practical model, as it is a supplementary course, supplementing the regular studies in the college and is conducted during vacation without disturbing the regular schedule.

The mode of building capacity that we have adopted is problem solving as that is what is possible in an affiliated set up. We followed the strategy of Schoenfeld (1985) main problems that we called touch stone problems and auxiliary problems. The results we got were very encouraging (Pradhan & Mody 2009^b). 

We covered basic physics as the area as that is main source of all the weaknesses students exhibit. We took into consideration inputs that we received from physics education research (Aron 1982 and Redish 1994).

The students we were dealing with lacked capacity to do problems. They had extreme fears that the word problem would scare them so much that they refused even to read any problem. We dealt with incoherent group of students such that they all came with variety of misconceptions and weaknesses that were difficult to classify and address simultaneously. No fixed formula ever worked to address their difficulties except rote memorization that served them to clear standard university examinations.

We wanted to test the method we used but standard experimental group and control group kind of experiment were out of question as that were not possible in the kind of problem solving that wee were taking up as tool to build the capacity of students.

Although we used selected problems, that became central to our activity, we wanted students to solve the problems by overcoming their weaknesses which were different for different students. For this we had to use auxiliary problems, counter questions, cognitive conflicts and at times spontaneously create activity for individual students that would use method mentioned as well as drawing appropriate diagrams too. For this we could not have standard time frame or pattern for conducting our course. We had to be ready to change our course of action and plan as per the need of the students. This required lot of spontaneity to the course. The design was to see how you arrive at something that leads to benefit the students. The course had to be evaluated continuously by objective based formative evaluation. We did measure students’ progress using pre-post-retention tests.

For this the research methodology that we adopted keeping in mind the above mentioned model is termed as design experiment.

Why Design Experiments:

In 1990s there was a movement to develop new methodology for carrying out studies of educational interventions under the labels “design experiment” or “design research”. Ann Brown (1992) who was a leader of this movement felt that amongst various valuable methodologies to study learning, design experiments fill a niche these methodologies do not address.

As noted by Collins(2004), design experiments are developed as a way to carry out formative research to test and refine educational design based on theoretical principles derived from previous research.

Design research was developed to address several issues central to the study of learning, including:

·         the need to address theoretical questions about the nature of learning in context,

·         the need for approach to the study of learning phenomena in the real world rather than the laboratory,

·         the need to go beyond narrow measures of learning, and

·         the need to derive research findings from formative evaluation.

Shavelson (2003) has noted that design experiments…attempt to carry experimentation into real life settings in order to find out what works in practice. This means giving up the notion of controlling variables and necessitates the development of new methodology to carry out research.

Joanne Lobato (2003) has asked that traditional transfer experiments… can become an unnatural laboratory game in which the task becomes to get the subject to match the experimenter’s expectations, rather than an investigation of  “the process employed on the people naturally bring their knowledge to fear on novel problems”.

Amongst diverse range of settings in which design experiment is conducted, as described by Cobb (2003) … ours is …one-on-one (teacher-experimenter and student) design experiment in which a research team (in our case researcher himself) conducts a series of teaching sessions with a small number of students. The aim is to create a small-scale version of learning ecology so that it can be studied in depth and detail.

Our experiment is to provide a supplementary capacity building training to a group of students. These students are invited on the basis of their interest only. We have not chosen them using any other criterion. In fact student group included students from various colleges from FYBSc and SYBSc classes who wanted to pursue physics and some who wanted to pursue biotechnology. Since the course is a supplementary, it has no official relevance or effect on students’ career. Thus seriousness with which students participate is a variable on which experimenter has no control. Even after the course is completed, students return to the same traditional education and institutional setup and hence it is difficult to see lasting effect of the methodology with which they are trained. Yet this model has to be tested for its effectiveness. If found effective, will be repeated in similar set up. Thus it qualifies to be a design experiment or design research.

Collins has also noted the challenges involved in this methodology in spite of being powerful enough to address the need, which includes:

• difficulty arising from complexity of real-world situation and their resistance to experimental control,
• large amount of data arising from a need to combine ethnographic and quantitative analysis, and
• comparing across designs.

Characteristics of Design Research: (Collins 2004)

     Design experiments were developed as a way to carry out formative research to test and refine educational designs based on theoretical principles derived from prior research…Then, the design is constantly revised based on experience, until all the bugs are worked out.

1.      Design experiments are set in the messy situations that characterize real life learning, in order to avoid the distortions of laboratory experiments.

2.      In design experiments there are many dependent variables that matter, though the researchers may not pay attention to them all.

3.      In design experiments, there is no attempt to hold variables constant, but instead the goal is to identify all the variables, or characteristics of the situation, that affect any dependent variables of interest.

4.      Design experiments, start with planned procedures and materials, which are not completely defined, and which are revised depending on their success in practice.

5.      Design experiments unlike psychological experiments are set in a complex social situation, such as a classroom.

6.       In design experiments the goal is to look at many different aspects of the design and develop a qualitative and quantitative profile that characterizes the design in practice.

7.      In design experiments, there is an effort to involve different participants in the design, in order to bring their different expertise into producing and analyzing the design.

In our experiment as described above we had no control over the participating group and as we did not have means, we had to ignore those data which could be of interest but were not necessary for our experiment. We also were dealing with around 30 students and a teacher who was researcher himself. This also made task of monitoring more difficult and all observations had to be noted down at the end of the day by teacher himself.

Physics being a subject with its structure based on logical and analytical reasoning and language of mathematics, it is difficult to decouple different aspects of learning. As many realistic situations deal with many different concepts simultaneously, if overall capacity of students in the subject has to be built, then design experiment fits best for the purpose.

As mentioned above we continuously tested our design through formative assessment and students’ progress through pre-post-retention test. We found our results very encouraging (Pradhan and Mody 2009^{a & b}). We have since then monitored students’ progress over the years and feel we have reasonably succeeded in designing a supplementary course to build capacity of undergraduate physics students and achieving core values of higher education as stated by NAAC. As this motivated students with capacity fortified will be better man power to the nation and that may help them compete globally. Once these students have learned true method of pursuing the subject they would and have inculcated values and strive for excellence in their subject, work and their life.

References:

1.      Ann L. Brown, “Design Experiments: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Creating Complex Interventions in Classroom Settings,” The Journal of Learning Sciences, 2 (2) , 141-178 (1992)

2.      Allan Collins, Diana Joseph and Katerine Bielaczye, “Design Research : Theoritical and Methodological Issues,”   Journal of the Learning Sciences 13 (1) 15 – 42 (2004)

3.      A. B. Arons, “Phenomenology and logical reasoning in introductory physics course,” Am. J. Phys. 50 (1), 13 - 20 (1982)

4.      Paul Cobb, Jere Confrey, Andrea diSessa, Richard Lehrer and Leona Schauble, “Design Experiments in Education Research,”  Educational researcher, 32 (1)  9 – 13 (2003)

5.      Joint Science Education Panel (IASc, INSA, NASI), “A position paper”, Resonance 13 (12) 1177 – 1190 (Dec 2008)

6.      Joanne Lobato, “How Design Experiment can inform a Rethinking of Transfer and Vice-Versa,” Educational Researcher 32 (1),  17 – 20 (2003)

7.      Edward F. Redish, “Implications of cognitive studies for teaching Physics,” Am. J. Phys. 62 (9), 796 - 803 (1994)

8.      Alan H. Schoenfeld : Mathematical Problem Solving, Academic Press INC (1985)

9.      Pradhan H.C. & Mody A. K., ‘Constructivism applied to physics teaching for capacity building of undergraduate students’, University News, 47 (21) 4-10, (2009a)

10.  Pradhan H.C. & Mody A. K., ‘Supplementary Programme for Capacity Building of  Physics Undergraduate Students’, Physics Education, 26 (2) 93-98, (2009b)