Introduction to ISLE-based labs
ISLE-based labs place an important role in the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach to learning physics [http://www.islephysics.net]. They can be used if you implement the ISLE approach in large lecture courses with an integrated lab or in studio-based courses that use ISLE-based materials (Active Learning Guide by Etkina, Brookes, Planinsic and Van Heuelen and the textbook College Physics: Explore and Apply by Etkina, Planinsic, and Van Heuvelen). They can also be used as stand-alone labs in any algebra-based or calculus-based course that uses a different textbook in the lecture part of the course (while it is possible, the results are less than in a fully ISLEized course).
If you have a fully ISLEized course taught in a “traditional” setting where the course is broken up into lectures and/or recitations, and labs, you need to plan whether that initial observational experiment starts in the lecture or in the lab. We suggest to work with your department chair to make sure all weekly lab sections are scheduled between “lecture” meetings so that everyone in the class has had the same lab experiences coming into the next large room meeting. Synchronizing labs and lessons takes a time and effort. When the ISLE approach is implemented in a studio format, the issue of coordinating lectures and labs disappears.
One of the major goals of ISLE-based labs is to engage students in experimental design. The main differences between ISLE-based labs and other lab approaches in which students design their own experiments is that the goals of the labs are not only to engage students in authentic experimentation and to help them develop scientific abilities, but ALSO and very importantly, to construct and test normative concepts of physics often BEFORE the students meet them in lectures or read about in the textbook. As the ISLE approach groups all experimental activities into three big groups —observational, testing, or application experiments, the ISLE-based labs classify student activities as such and provide guiding questions for experimental design that are informed by our work on scientific abilities. Students design Observational experiments before they learn anything about the concept with the goal of finding patterns in the data and coming up with the explanation or mathematical models. Students design testing experiments when the students need to test their explanations or models or the models provided to them by the instructor. Students design applications experiments when the students are comfortable with several models and can combine them to solve complex experimental problems. There are no verification experiments in our labs and most of them require the students to solve a problem for which the answer cannot be found in “theory”. The students use the rubrics to self-assess their work while making lab reports and the instructors use the same rubrics for assessment. We encourage the instructors to allow the students to resubmit their reports after the initial assessment for improvement and to assign grades based on the improved report, not the original submission. This approach provides opportunities for the students to develop perseverance and growth mindset.
The students perform experiments in groups and then have a whole class discussion of their findings (when real experiments cannot be done, they are substituted with recorded data, video, photos, simulations, etc.). The instructor summarizes the findings of different groups and provides an overview, if necessary, after the students share their ideas (‘time for telling’). The role of experiments in helping students construct knowledge means that the labs are integrated into the course and in a way ‘drive it’. The role of the instructor is to help the students make sense of their experimental findings and introduce them to productive representations. After the development and testing of ideas comes the application part, where students use multiple representations to solve paper-and-pencil and experimental problems.
To learn more about ISLE-based labs, use the following references and join the Facebook group “Exploring and Applying Physics”.
Etkina, E., Murthy, S., & Zou, X. (2006). Using introductory labs to engage students in experimental design. American Journal of Physics, 74, 979-986.
Etkina, E., Van Heuvelen, A., White-Brahmia, S., Brookes, D.T., Gentile, M., Murthy, S. Rosengrant, D., & Warren, A. (2006). Developing and assessing student scientific abilities. Physical Review, Special Topics, Physics Education Research, 2, 020103.
Etkina, E., Karelina, A., & Ruibal-Villasenor, M. (2008). How long does it take? A study of student acquisition of scientific abilities. Physical Review, Special Topics, Physics Education Research, 4,020108.
Etkina, E., Karelina, A., Murthy, S., & Ruibal-Villasenor, M. (2009). Using action research to improve learning and formative assessment to conduct research. Physical Review. Special Topics, Physics Education Research, 5, 010109.
Etkina, E., Karelina, A., Ruibal-Villasenor, M., Jordan, R., Rosengrant, D., & Hmelo-Silver, C. (2010). Design and reflection help students develop scientific abilities: Learning in introductory physics laboratories. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 19(1), 54-98.
Brookes, D. T., Etkina, E., and Planinsic, G. (2020) Implementing an epistemologically authentic approach to student-centered inquiry learning, PhysREV PER, 16, 020148.