physlets are a relatively recent phe nomenon but their use in the classroom has also been documented Christian and Belloni 2001 have drawn on years of experience both to present new Physlets and to offer effective tech niques by which to use them in the classroom including having physics majors code the programs themselves Particularly insightful research was conducted by Lee Nicoll and Brooks 2004 suggesting that students using Physlets in learning activities gained a better understanding of physics partic ularly if the cognitive load was not set urirealistically high Using Physlet Based Peer Instruction for Regents hysics Review Patrick H Sears SUNY Buffalo State College Department of Physics Buffalo NY Abstract I describe instructional experiments helping my Regents Physics students review for their NYSED Regents Physics exams My forty three students were divided into groups and assigned sets of NYS Regents content standards Each group of students was required to find a web based computer simulation that demonstrated the principles of the assigned content standards Students then used their simula tion as the center of a peer teaching session Justification for the project is given based on references from the literature that support both peer t aching and the use of web based computer simulations in the classroom The observed positive results of the project were both affective and motivational Introduction Computer simulation is a powerful tool at the disposal of education and science technology Years ago programs like Interactive PhysicsTM gave teachers the ability to demonstrate interactions that would have been otherwise diffi cult to create in the classroom With the advance of the Internet and the widespread use of applets small appli cation or appl ette that run within the control of a web browser www merriam webster com 2008 many authors have written and shared simulations across the physics educa tion community Christia and Belloni have dubbed these applet based physics simulations Physlets 2001 In an effort to use these resources effectively I have developed a project that asks students to use Physlets as a peer instruction tool 22 Justification Peer instruction techniques have been well documented within pedagogical literature and many of these studies suggest that peer instruction is an effec tive technique in he classroom Supporting examples include the corre lation of peer instruction with social and academic gains for high achieving students in science classes Johnson Johnson and Taylor 1994 and correla tions with overall achievement gains in Biology Tessier 2004 and Physics classrooms Crouch and Mazur 2001 A wealth of support for the practice can be found as early as the 1970 s when Menall 1975 noted that peer instruc tion has been deemed effective in dozens of studies that have focused on different subject matter and methods Because they are a product of the file sharing potential of the Internet STANYS The Science Teachers Bulletin Fall 2009 My Project In a classroom where Physlets are used in lectures and demonstrations stu dents can see computer simulations used as effective instructional tools This project drew upon the teacher s example to require that students create a short review lesson on one concept that was presented using a Physlet as the center of the lesson The project was divided into six steps each with well defined parameters stated in a grading rubric Step 1 Grouping and Assignment The students were divided into groups Each group was assigned a set of con tent standards that could all be repre sented in the context of a single Physlet The sets included the verbatim text of both the Process Skills and Major Understandings from the New York State Physical Setting Physics Core Curriculum NYSED 2008 Some examples of the content sets appear in AppendL A and the entire list of content sets can be accessed at http physicsed buffalostate edu pubs PHY690 Sears2007PeerTchgPhyslets At this time the students also received a project description Appendix B and a correlated grading rubric Appendix C The rubric emphasized connecting the content set to a physical context which could then be demonstrated with the physlet and explained effectively Step 2 Connecting Physics to a Physical Context The students were asked to consider a specific contextual event wherein the physical rules expressed in their Content Set could be seen to act Each group produced a clear well labeled diagram of the contextual event All relative quantities vectors or not were to be represented on the diagram For extra credit at this point I required that the diagrams include physically reason able numbers for each quantity Step 3 Finding a Physlet The students had to find one or more Physlets that matched their Content Set and contextual diagrams Before J approved their choices they wrote a description of the Physlet that focused on its relevance to the content stan dards they had to explain I prompted for specific detail on quantitative and qualitative statements in the grading rubic Step 4 The Lesson Plan The students worked together to create a written lesson plan for their peer instruction The rubric suggested that STANYS The Science Teachers Bulletin Fall 2009 23 the lesson plan include four parts Part one included a statement of the content standards the students had been assigned and class questioning to solic it prior knowledge followed by direct explanation to make clear to the audi ence the vocabulary required to effec tively discuss the relationships involved in those standards Part two of the lesson involved using the Physlet to show the relationships called out by the standards both qualitatively and quantitatively by soliciting predictions and then running the Physlet Part three was the presentation of an actual Regents question and an explicit expla nation of how the information given in the problem was connected to the stan dards Finally in part four of the pres entation the class solved the problem on small whiteboards after which the presenting group was to explain the solution using the whiteboards created by the class Step 5 The Presentation The students presented their lessons to the class Groups were encouraged to use PowerPoint 1 M so that the Physlet was smoothly integrated into the lesson and to use good public speiling meth ods as indicated on the rubric Step 6 Reflection Each participant rote a si rnple reflec tion on his or ber experience Although they were
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