The JJC bricoleurs are able to choose from an array of learning activities to achieve these goals. Their specific choices are, in general, guided by two underlying teaching principles:

The JJC faculty give highest priority to the first teaching principle--shift major responsibility for learning from the faculty to the students. This entails actively engaging students in a set of mental processes that allow the students to restructure and add to what they already know. The JJC bricoleurs effect such processes using curricula based on "predict-observe-explain" or "elicit-confront-resolve" (a variation of predict-observe-explain) models.

That the JJC faculty are very committed to the second teaching principle--enable learning to occur in diverse ways--is evident in their decision to provide various ways of learning in each course. This principle is important to them because it helps "level the playing field" for students who may have a high capacity to learn, but who are not inclined to learn by listening to and reading largely abstract material. As Bill Hogan puts it, these are the students who are "learning because of the things we do."

The JJC bricoleurs have not only chosen a set of introductory principles that they believe are most important for their students to understand (as exhibited by their course syllabi). They have also chosen a set of learning activities that "weave together"--that is, that work synergistically--to achieve their goals for student learning (see Learning Goals the JCC Faculty Seek to Achieve). As with all the case studies appearing in the LT² site, the activities are organized into three categories:

1. Computer-dependent activities that faculty believe simply would not be possible, or at least not feasible, without computers.
2. Computer-improved activities that faculty believe work incrementally better with technology but can still be implemented without it. (The JJC faculty did not give us examples of this type of activity.)
3. Computer-independent activities that can be done without technology.

The hope is that [the computer work we are doing now] will feed nicely into how I am interacting with the students and how the students are interacting with each other, even when we are not in lab... that these parallel activities will feed into each other.... Now, I'm not sure if the technology, in and of itself, is essential to start doing this "elicit, confront, resolve" approach. But it might be essential. It's not the only reason it works, but the technology allows us to do it, and this new way carries over into the rest of our class.
--Curt Hieggelke

Below, we provide information on the synergistic set of learning activities that the JJC bricoleurs use to create their effective learning environments.

A. Computer-Dependent Learning Activities
The JJC faculty employ three learning activities in ways that would not be possible without what Curt calls the "new generation of computer technologies that demand active engagement of the students." These activities are:

• Hands-on experiments (real-time hands-on acquisition and analysis of data using electronic probes, and computer interfaces to provide connections to real-world events). The instructors require the students to undertake hands-on experiments in which they use electronic probes or other electronic input devices, such as video cameras, to gather data. Students then feed this data into computers, where it is converted into digital format. Students then use graphical visualization software to make sense of the data they are analyzing.

• Visualization, graphical representation, and simulation. Once students understand the relationship between the data-gathering and analysis activities, the JJC faculty can provide their students with software-enabled exercises that help them visualize, graphically represent, and simulate the principles at work in physical systems.

• Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILD).⁶ ILD activities depend on both a computer-sensor projection system and the fact that students have begun to develop, through the hands-on experiments, an understanding of the relationship between data-gathering and analysis activities. The computer-sensor projection system allows all the students to observe the graphs being generated while a professor carries out a demonstration. Throughout, the professor engages the class by asking students to predict what's going to happen to the graphs on screen. Students then watch what actually happens and are asked to explain what happened and why.

I read it, and then I see it, and then I know it.
--Joan, Basic Physics Student

Students running an experiment and capturing it on video

View images here

For Joan, and for other students, these computer-dependent activities provide clear illustrations of concepts that might remain murky if the students were to rely solely on "reading the book and answering questions." The students we talked with explained how even the most mundane activities they took part in outside of class reminded them of concepts they'd learned in their physics labs. For years, science teachers have been assigning hands-on experiments--with and without the help of computers--in an effort to "convince students that what we talk about in class is true" and to force them to "predict, observe and explain" the data with which they're presented. As science students and faculty from Joliet explain, however, the effectiveness of such experiments has greatly increased since instructors have begun using computers in a "second generation" way.

(See The labs are incredible, absolutely incredible: Students Discuss Computer-Dependent Learning Activities.)

B. Computer-Independent Learning Activities
The JJC bricoleurs do not rely solely on computer-dependent activities, of course. They also incorporate activities that are computer-independent: primarily, formative assessment^c and group work/guided discussion. Throughout, we pay attention to how the faculty synergistically integrate all their learning activities.

1. Formative Assessment
Curt places great importance on the use of formative assessment tools as learning activities. He believes that these activities are critical in directly fostering learning and in providing faculty the information about student learning that instructors need in order to constantly adjust and improve their teaching strategies. The formative assessment activities Curt uses fall into two general groups: pre-/post-tests that have been developed recently by physics faculty around the nation and a set of activities that he calls "Tasks Inspired by Physics Education Research" (TIPERs).

Pre-/Post-tests
To be sure, Curt uses these pre-/post-tests for both "formative" and "summative" purposes (Glossary). When he uses them formatively, his purposes are to:

• foster learning by forcing students to "really think" and making them "hungry to know;"
• provide instructors with information about student knowledge that they can use to fine-tune their teaching.

Importantly, Curt and other faculty who use these formative assessment activities include them only sparingly in their course grading scheme: the "hungry to know" state of mind requires a low stakes environment, one in which it is safe to make mistakes.

(For specific examples of assessment activities, see Resource D, Pre- and Post-tests Used by Curt for Formative Assessment.)

By contrast, when Curt uses these pre-/post-tests for summative assessment, his purposes are to:

• foster learning;
• obtain performance data on which to assess individual student grades;
• help students achieve "closure" and a sense of confidence on each of the physics topics they are learning.

The first purpose--to foster learning--is shared by formative and summative assessments, but the other two purposes are unique to summative assessments. Summative assessments are "high stakes" for students--they determine grades. They also provide intellectual closure, whereas formative assessments are designed to make students feel uncertain and ready to adjust their view of reality. Curt attempts to achieve his third summative purpose--help students achieve closure and confidence--during the discussion period he holds when he returns students' graded exams. He uses this time to help the students develop their capacity to correctly assess what they do and do not know, and to develop techniques for addressing the weak spots in their knowledge. He also believes that his exam review process is very important because physics is a very sequential discipline, and students need confidence in their understanding of earlier material in order to proceed successfully to the new topics.

Tasks Inspired by Physics Education Research (TIPERs)
Curt also places great importance on the use of a second category of formative assessment activities, which he calls "TIPERs" (Tasks Inspired by Physics Education Research). In his opinion, a number of physics education researchers have asked research questions that provide good insight into students' reasoning processes. Their questions focus on important physical concepts and scientific reasoning skills that students in math-based physics courses need in order to develop a functional understanding of key physics concepts. The intent of this research, Curt explained, is to develop insights that can help faculty more successfully enable students to solve problems with understanding.

These education researchers found that students enter introductory college physics courses with beliefs about the way the physical world behaves that are often only partially consistent, at best, with beliefs substantiated through physics research. The physics education research also has established that it is very difficult to modify some of the typical beliefs that students hold and has ascertained through experimentation that certain methods of teaching are more effective than others in getting students to make the appropriate modifications. In particular, this research provides evidence that instructional approaches that

• compel groups of students to confront inconsistencies between their beliefs about physical phenomena and how physical phenomena actually are, and
• require the students to make predictions, argue with each other, test their ideas, and make coherent explanations

Having learned of this research, it occurred to Curt that many of the learning tasks or formats that these education researchers had designed in order to pursue their research questions could be used effectively as formative evaluation activities in his course. These tasks could do double duty--as classroom "tasks inspired by physics education research" (TIPERs). He uses these tasks to introduce, teach, clarify and review a wide range of concepts and believes this practice builds robust learning.

The different types of TIPERs Curt uses and the sources from which he developed them are listed and described in Resource E. (Some of these use computer technology.) More details about the TIPERs can also be found at http://tycphysics.org.

Curt has found that students adapt quickly to the format of TIPERs. The Ranking Tasks, for example, require students to provide fill-in-the-blank responses, explain the reasoning they used, and rank the level of confidence they have in their answers. Often during class, he asks his students to work on Ranking Tasks or other TIPERs individually on paper and then compare their work with a few others or the class as a whole. Sometimes, instead of asking students to work independently on paper during the first stage, he will present a problem, ask them to think about it, and then poll them or ask for a show-of-hands. He then asks the students to explain why they made these choices, and eventually (with some coaching) they come to the correct consensus. To achieve the "hungry to know" purpose of these activities while also encouraging students to take the TIPERs seriously, Curt sometimes allocates a few points in his grading scheme to these tasks.

Curt calls TIPERs "one of the power tools for learning:" they provide a good means to ask questions in different ways and to ask very similar questions that are interrelated--processes that he considers especially valuable in implementing all his "active" learning activities (whether computer-dependent or independent). He has observed that students like these tasks--they know that they learn a lot from them. Moreover, TIPERs are easy for faculty to use. They do not take a lot of additional time to administer and are easy to analyze because patterns in student responses are easy to spot.

Curt's rationale for using TIPERs is entirely "formative." First, TIPERs force students to make their reasoning evident, thereby providing the instructor with useful information about what the students do and do not understand. He uses this information immediately to decide how to interact with the students that day and in subsequent class sessions. Second, the process of completing the tasks encourages students to engage in the predict-observe-explain learning sequence that is so central to Curt's teaching philosophy.

(See We have to know where students' problems are and not where we think they will be: Curt Discusses Formative Assessment Activities.)

It appears, based on the student testimony, that TIPERs (all of which the students referred to as "Ranking Tasks") involve a "pushing" factor that is critical to the learning process. They get students to think hard about a concept that is genuinely puzzling, which pushes them out of their comfort zone and makes them feel unsettled and confused. Thus, as they begin working on a topic in class, they already have their wheels spinning on the subject and are much more likely to get actively involved.

(See Once you do the task, you learn it: Curt's Students Discuss Formative Assessment Activities.)

2. Group Work/Guided Discussion
Curt, Bill, Marie, and Mike use group work activities both with and without computers. By requiring their students to work together on all their labs, they integrate small group work with their computer-dependent lab activities: hands-on experiments; visualization, graphical representation and simulation; and Interactive Lecture Demonstration. (When we described these activities in the Computer-Dependent Learning Activities section above, we did not highlight the group work elements.) In so doing, they make a virtue out of what might have been viewed as a resource "problem"--that the number of computers in the labs is two to three times smaller than the number of students in the class. Curt has designed the computer-based labs to function synergistically with group work^d.

When the class meets in a regular classroom, Curt uses guided discussion activities that are so interactive, it is difficult to distinguish them from "group work." The activities essentially demand active participation from all the students. (We suspect that it would be very difficult to implement group work and guided discussion at the same time with more than 20 students in the class.) Primarily, the group work/guided discussion activities that Curt uses consist of:

• requiring all the students to provide a response to a pre-test or TIPER question, round-robin fashion;

• asking students to take turns solving and presenting problems at the board in a Socratic mode (an activity that the students dubbed "cooking");

• using a more free-flowing format in which he forces the full group to grapple with hard questions that he won't answer for them. In such a format, students are encouraged to speak freely and to spiritedly disagree with each other.

In addition to the group work/guided discussion initiated and sustained by the JJC faculty, there is group work that the students themselves organize. As the students see it, there are two approaches to group learning, both of which entail students teaching students:

Susan (interviewer): You said before that you "teach it to others." What type of student-to-student teaching is going on?
Steve: Basically two different types. A lot of us get together in the mornings before class and crunch to finish the homework, and then afterwards we turn in what we have done. Then in class, he wants us to go up to the board and present it to other classmates and show them the way we did it. That way, you know that there are variations as to ways you can do it, different concepts you can look at.

The JJC faculty recognize that group work is critical to designing an effective constructivist learning environment for two main reasons: it gets students to teach each other, and it helps them to feel safe enough to participate actively in class. One thing essential to the success of their learning environments is that students must not be too apprehensive about contributing the ideas and explanations that instructors are trying to help them develop. If they are too shy or not very confident, they will be inhibited from participating. Group work, according to the students and staff we interviewed, diminishes these inhibitions. It lowers the intimidation factor because it helps students take charge of their own learning.

a. A learning environment is a place where learners may work together and support each other as they use a variety of tools and information resources in their pursuits of learning goals and problem-solving activities (Wilson 1995).

b. A French term for a person who is adept at finding, or simply recognizing in their environment, resources that can be used to build something she or he believes is important and then putting resources together in a combination to achieve her or his goals.

c. An activity that simultaneously

1. provides instructors with feedback about how and what students are learning, which the instructors can then immediately use to adjust and improve their teaching efforts; and
2. fosters student learning directly because the students learn in the process of performing such an activity.

d. Curt: Generally what you see in the lab when you're using the computers is that students do really focus on the task in front of them, and it gives them something in common to talk about. The level of what they're doing is different than when we set up the labs in the past, where their big question was, "What do the instructions tell us to do next?" They're not trying to follow instructions. As a matter of fact, today the students, who are so used to not following instructions, got in trouble because they tried to skip ahead. But they were able to talk and analyze about what's going right, what's going wrong, and so forth. And I think that's what you see in all the classes. It's a different type of teaching strategy.