Learning Electromagnetism with Visualizations and Active Learning

This chapter describes learning electromagnetism with visualizations and focuses on the value of concrete and visual representations in teaching abstract concepts. We start with a theoretical background consisting of three subsections: visualization in science, simulations and microcomputer-based laboratory, and studies that investigated the effectiveness of simulations and real-time graphing in physics. We then present the TEAL (Technology Enabled Active Learning) project for MIT's introductory electromagnetism course as a case in point. We demonstrate the various types of visualizations and how they are used in the TEAL classroom. A description of a large-scale study at MIT follows. In this study, we investigated the effects of introducing 2D and 3D visualizations into an active learning setting on learning outcomes in both the cognitive and affective domains. We conclude by describing an example of TEAL classroom discourse, which demonstrates the effects and benefits of the TEAL project in general, and the active learning and visualizations in particular.