This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. #########. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Teaching and Assessing Teamwork with Simulated Electronic Circuits Paul Horwitz and Cynthia McIntyre, Concord Consortium Al Koon, Tidewater Community College John Chamberlain, CORD Alina von Davier, Deirdre Kerr, Jessica Andrews, ETS
Transcript
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. #########.Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Teaching and Assessing Teamwork with Simulated Electronic Circuits
Paul Horwitz and Cynthia McIntyre, Concord ConsortiumAl Koon, Tidewater Community CollegeJohn Chamberlain, CORDAlina von Davier, Deirdre Kerr, Jessica Andrews, ETS
• The problem:Teamwork is important…
so says employer survey data
… but hard to assess“teamwork” often becomes
“cheating” in school
• The solution:– Create online tasks that run on multiple computers•Task must be complex enough to require teamwork
•team member roles should be similar in complexity
– Use log data to capture student actions•Analyze for collaborative problem-solving skills as well as content knowledge
• Target audience: 2-year college students– Working with technical high school and 4-year colleges also
• Target content: Introductory electronics– First activity deals with Ohm’s Law
• Three variable resistors in series with external DC source and resistor
• Each team member controls one resistor• Challenge: change resistor to match specific goals
1. Voltage known, external resistance zero, all voltage drop goals the same
2. Voltage known, external resistance known and non-zero, goals the same and equal to voltage drop across external resistance
3. Voltage and external resistance known and non-zero, goals different from one another
4. Voltage unknown, external resistance known, goals different
5. Voltage and external resistance both unknown, goals different
Five Levels of difficulty
• Task requires teamwork– Since the resistors are in series, changes in any one of them will change the current through all, and thus the voltage drop across each.
– At the highest level the external voltage and resistance must be calculated from data collected by the team.
• “Local” optimization does not work!
• Local strategy: make my voltage drop as close as possible to my goal– Characterized by resistor changes that minimize |V – Vgoal|
• Global strategy: make my resistor what it needs to be to satisfy all three goals– Characterized by resistor changes that minimize |R – Rgoal|
• Goal resistances must be inferred by the team
Strategies can be inferred from log data
Raw data (sample)
Strategy discrimination
• To do list:– Fix and enhance the current activity
• Reduce ambiguity in data interpretation– Example: at present team members can see each other’s goals without chats
• Add global view
– Design and implement additional activities• AC circuits
