Two key problems motivated the Joliet science faculty members to begin using what Curt calls "the second generation" of computer technology:

• student learning was low (that is, they were not developing a conceptual understanding of course topics and materials); and
• student engagement was weak.

Of foremost concern to Curt and his colleagues was the problem that students were not developing a real understanding of the material being taught; in other words, they just weren't "getting it." The JJC bricoleurs^a suggested different reasons for this.

Curt pointed out, for example, a general dissatisfaction with the lecture method of teaching: "Lecture doesn't necessarily transmit any information. For a long time I've been somewhat aware of students' difficulty in understanding physics, and I became convinced that no matter how much I told them the right answer, they still didn't pick it up--that becoming a better lecturer does not have a better impact on them."

Geoff White, a computer lab technician who works with Curt, observed how students come in with mental habits, perhaps learned in previous courses and other life experiences, that prevent them from understanding what science really is.² For example, the students often "don't want to predict," Geoff said. "For me, making predictions and coming back to verify them is the crux of science. If they're not catching that, then they're missing a lot of what science is."

Geoff White is the Physical Science Lab Supervisor for the JJC Department of Natural Resources. He is responsible for maintaining the lab equipment for chemistry and physics courses.

Marie Wolff, Curt's chemistry colleague, noted that before she implemented such teaching techniques as guided inquiry or group work, students had difficulty comprehending basic reading assignments. "The students didn't read with a purpose," she commented, and consequently "they would feel swamped by this reading and would complain about the book being hard to read and not understandable."

Even the students expressed similar concerns about not "getting it." One explained, "[In typical courses, the lectures] and books tell us how to do physics problems, but they don't tell us what we're doing. We don't have a clue what we're doing."

So what did Curt do about this concern that students were not really understanding physics? First, he looked around, nationally, and found that his students' failure to learn in the way that he and his colleagues--and for that matter, his students themselves--want is far from unique to JJC.^b This insight led Curt to get engaged with a growing national network of physics educators who are experimenting--with significant successes--with new ways of achieving their goals for introductory physics students.

The faculty and the students interviewed at JJC also expressed concern about low-level student engagement. Marie articulated the idea that students these days are different--an idea that we've all heard faculty express in conversations recently. ³ She believes that the media really are changing students' attention span and that this affects the way they respond in their academic courses.^c

The students we interviewed gave us different reasons why student engagement might be a problem. One of the students in Curt's Engineering Physics course explained, in so many words, that students are very strategic and will do just what they have to, and only at a pace that works for them, in order to get a degree. "A lot of people need Physics 1... to complete a degree," this student noted, "[but] aren't really interested in the class."

The students in the Basic Physics course further explained that students lose their will to get deeply engaged in courses when they experience an intimidation barrier. "The class is two hours long and we do a lot of labs," noted one student, "so people were just intimidated by long sessions that meet only twice a week. People get turned off by that."⁴

Fortunately, Marie and her JJC colleagues are not folks who merely observe these changes in students' values and behaviors. They thought through their goals and began using active learning strategies--whether enabled by computers or not--to achieve these goals. And like so many other science faculty across the nation who have begun using these methods, they found that these new strategies are energizing not only their students, but themselves as well.

B. Learning Goals the JJC Faculty Seek to Achieve.

The specific learning strategies employed by the JJC bricoleurs were strongly influenced by their goals for student learning. In particular, they wanted students to:

1. develop real conceptual understanding of the material presented;
2. develop insight into how scientists "know what they know;"
3. develop analytical and problem-solving skills;
4. develop greater awareness of technical terms.

Bill Hogan, Curt's physics colleague, stepped back from the particulars and gave us a "big picture" answer to our question about goals for student learning. He wants to develop in students a lasting interest in physics:

My big goal is to contribute to a person's education in a way that makes a difference. In other words, if my contribution is a significant one, it goes way beyond this semester. It is going to last, it is going to inspire the students, give them a foundation or basis for being interested and for understanding these topics.

Like educators everywhere, the bricoleurs at JJC want to foster deep learning and life-long learning skills in their students.⁵ They want to challenge students to think about science analytically, to develop thought processes that enable them to connect the classroom world to the real world, and to build a "foundation" that will endure "far beyond one semester."

For an in-depth discussion of teaching goals, see Getting Students to Make the Connection: A Discussion of Curt's Teaching Goals.

c. Marie: I think it is getting more difficult to hold the students' interest, because they are so used to a lot of action in the videos that they watch and in the movies that they see. Nowadays things are always happening, and I could be wrong, but I really think that their attention span is not quite as long now as when I first started. So if you don't get something that grabs their interest during the course of the class, they get bored and lose interest.