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Assessing Learning
David E. Pritchard Cecil and Ida Greene
Prof. of Physics, MIT Historically, assessment was primarily summative – a test
to determine the level of proficiency of an applicant, student, or a
class. To improve educational outcomes
(and not just for No Child Left Behind) we must determine which activities in
a particular course are responsible for any observed learning. We describe new research that shows how
assessment can measure learning (as opposed to proficiency). In particular we’ll show examples
that address: “Are students learning?” “If so, from which learning
activity?” “What activity
is most detrimental to learning?” and “Which parts of the
tutoring work best?” These studies were based on data collected as
students worked through problems in the online web-based tutorial program, MasteringPhysics.
We will also discuss with the audience, “What should be
teaching?” ___ David E. Pritchard graduated from
Caltech (B.Sc. 1962) and Harvard
(Ph.D. 1968). Employed since then in
the physics department at MIT, he has pursued research in atomic, optical,
and molecular physics and physics education. Pritchard was a pioneer in the
study of the mechanical forces of light on atoms that lead to the Nobel Prize
in physics in 1997 being awarded to Bill Phillips (his former postdoc), Steve Chu (a collaborator), and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji. The 2001 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to
Pritchard’s former postdoc Wolfgang Ketterle who took over Pritchard’s cold atom
research program when he became as assistant professor at MIT. Pritchard has a life-long interest in
teaching problem solving in physics.
In the 1970’s he authored a Mechanics
Workbook, a programmed instruction manual for Newtonian mechanics.. He also has a large collections of puzzles and paradoxes in physics
and has taught a 10-hour course in this many times during MIT’s January
Independent Activities Period. He also
collects “physics for lunch” problems, each one of which typically
puzzles beginning graduate students for a lunch period. His interest in teaching people to solve
problems led to the collaboration with his son, Alex on CyberTutor,
an interactive web-based program which is dramatically superior to written
homework in raising students’ test scores. It has been refined by the company Pritchard and his son
started (masteringphysics.com) and is now owned by Pearson Education and
marketed as Mastering Physics (and more
recently General Chemistry and Astronomy). This past year nearly 100,000 students used
this learning tool in physics d(and another 95,000
in Astronomy and Chemistry). He is the
undergraduate major coordinator for physics undergraduates, and has won the
MIT Dean’s award for teaching and advising. Host:
Janice Gobert
Refreshments will be served. |
