Vision is a critically important medium of communication. Students are continuously bombarded with images on television, cell phones and during instruction. Although well-designed images can facilitate learning, poorly designed images can hinder learning. This project tests the hypothesis that appropriately designed visual cues provided on physics problems, can improve students physics problem solving skills. This project strengthens an existing partnership between a cognitive psychologist mentor and physics education researcher mentee to test the above hypothesis through a sequence of two studies with a total of 150 participants enrolled in introductory algebra-based physics courses. An expert panel of two cognitive psychologists and a physics education researcher serve as the Advisory Board and external evaluators.
The studies extend ongoing work over the past two years. The first study identifies differences in the eye movements of 20 experts and 50 novices enrolled in introductory algebra-based physics while solving physics problems with diagrams. Each participant solves 20 conceptual problems in introductory physics, each of which includes a diagram whose spatial structure is intimately connected to the problem's solution. The study will measure the total duration of eye-fixations in the areas of the diagram that are relevant to the solution as well as those that are irrelevant to the solution, but salient for other reasons. This tests the hypothesis that the experts will focus on the relevant areas and the novices will tend to focus on the irrelevant areas of the problem. The second study tests the hypothesis that appropriate visual cueing to change the eye movements of novices can improve their problem solving performance. One hundred participants with an appropriate level of physics knowledge are selected from students enrolled in algebra-based physics. Each participant is shown 10 physics problems on which largest expert novice differences are observed in the first study. First, each participant solves the problem, and if unable to do so correctly, she is given a practice problem which is similar to the initial problem. If she solves the practice problem correctly, she is shown a different problem. One half of the participants receive visual cues overlaid on the practice problem, while the other half do not. The study compares the problem solving performance of each group to test the hypothesis. Two graduate students whose dissertation research focuses on visual cueing will work on this project under the guidance of the principal investigators.
This project is one of the first of its kind to explore and exploit the link between cognition and eye movements in the context of physics problem solving. Although this project focuses on problem solving in physics, the results of the research have implications for learning in other STEM disciplines where the use of images is important. Beyond its immediate scope, the project will benefit the field of physics education research by infusing ideas from cognitive psychology regarding visual cueing into physics education research, It will also potentially change the ways visual media are used in physics and other STEM instruction to more effectively facilitate students' learning.
