Walsh SoTLGrant 2012-13: Jeff Phillips
Jeff Phillips, Physics
Training Self-Assessment and Task Selection Skills in General Physics
In this project I will investigate the relationship between students’ self-assessments of their proficiency, selection of practice problems and their performance on physics content pre- and postinstruction measures. There has been prior research on students who were subjected to learner-controlled instruction that showed that most students did a poor job of correctly assessing their progress and selecting appropriate practice tasks. However, students who do receive instruction on these skills,including in the form of examples or models, do show improvement. In my Fall 2012 Physics 253 course, I will introduce instruction on how to self-assess ones progress and how to code problems for content and complexity. Students will be asked to then perform this self-assessment throughout the semester. I am interested in looking for improvements in the students’ self-assessment as well as correlations with their performance on physics content measures (research-based content inventories and in-class tests.) If successful in assessing their own progress and selecting appropriate practice problems, students will have demonstrated that they are capable of self-regulated or independent learning.