Allowing students to make, and act on, quantitative comparisons between sets of data, helps them evaluate models more effectively, new research indicates.
In an introductory physics laboratory course students were instructed to make and act on comparisons between datasets, and between data and models – an approach common in many areas of science. By the end of the course the students were 12 times more likely to spontaneously propose or make changes to improve the experiment than students in the control group.
Original research paper published in PNAS on August 17, 2015.
Names and affiliations of selected author
N. G. Holmes, Department of Physics, Stanford University, California, U.S.A.
D. A. Bonn, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia
