Teaching Inquiry
and the Impact of
Performance Based Assessments
Richard Onyancha, ME PhD candidate, UNH
Kiza Armour, NH HS Teacher
(KArmour@pittsfield.k12.nh.us)
Matthew Endrizzi, NH HS Teacher
2006 New England ASEE Conference
Engineering Education & Practice for the Global Community
Integrating Engineering:
Where We Were
Filtering vs Teaching
Heuristics of Engineering
How does an engineer
tackle problems?
UNH PROBE Project
Partnerships for
Research
Opportunities to
Benefit
Education
http://leitzelcenter.unh.edu/GK12/home.htm
Barbara Hopkins
NSF Grant #0338277
Richard Onyancha & HS Student
Goals
Guiding and encouraging teachers to
experiment with new pedagogical
techniques
Promoting, empowering and engaging
students in science
Including engineering/design skills within
the curriculum
Strengthening and connecting the
mathematics within science classrooms
Pittsfield
Different
Schools
230 students in Grades 9-12
3 Years
10 Graduate Students/yr
9 Schools
1:1 pairing with teachers
700 students in Grades 9-12
Changing Teaching
Example test question following a battery lab:
You have vinegar, water, cups, a DMM & wire leads, and tin snips (for cutting
metal). You also have pieces of copper, silver, aluminum, and nickel.
You want to know if/how the size of a metal electrode affects the voltage of
the cell. Briefly explain your experiment, being clear about what you’ll change
and what you’ll keep the same… Make a data table for your experiment,
labeling the columns/rows. (Clearly, your data table won’t have numbers yet
because you haven’t conducted the experiment!)
Results from college prep sophomore class:
9 students completely missed the point
7 students understood they’d need to change the size, & measure
voltage, but could not create a coherent table
2 students received full credit for response
Feedback is essential
to learning
New Kinds of Entries…
Describe the Problem
Parts Analysis (ways
can/cannot change
each)
Materials
Brainstorm
Design Parameters
Initial Brainstorms
Background
Knowledge
TESTS: Data Table,
procedure, conclusion
Summations
Changing the nature of the
feedback!
Sample Journal Entry:
Struggling Student
See your world in terms of measurable
variables that impact one another in
definable ways.
Inquiry
Variables
Problem
Solving
Which variables are
most relevant?
How can you measure
& change each?
What effect does each
have?
How do you interpret
& present the data?
Changing Kinds of Assignments
Performance Based Assessment
Long Term Projects
Presenting Research of Existing Literature
Toward More Authentic Thinking
“Cookbook” Lab
Student Designed Procedure
Lab Challenge
Outcome-Based
Investigation
Lab Challenge
Students determine what data to measure, and
how to collect it
Follows content instruction & connection is
obvious
Immediate feedback
Example Rotational Equilibrium Lab Challenge (Senior Physics):
•Each student has an individual apparatus consisting of a meter stick, 4 sliding mass
hangers, and a fulcrum. Students are allowed to make any measurements deemed
necessary, and to run trials to verify their understanding of the calculations.
•For the challenge, the teacher specifies three of the four masses, and locations of all
the mass hangers. The student must prepare the fourth mass such that the meter stick
will be in rotational equilibrium.
•This is a pass/fail assessment.
Outcome Based Investigation
Don’t “teach” pulleys first -- Students identify
relevant quantities; use literature; design,
conduct, analyze tests to determine relationships
Jerome Bruner quote
“A curriculum is more for teachers than it is for
pupils. If it cannot change…teachers, it will have
no effect on those whom they teach.
The doctrine that a well-wrought
curriculum is a way of ‘teacherproofing’ a body of knowledge in
order to get it to the student
uncontaminated is nonsense.”
Bruner, Jerome. The Process of Education. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press. 1977. p. xv.