Challenges from Alfred Bork: What has happened to computers in physics education?

In his 1978 Millikan lecture on Interactive Learning, Alfred Bork discussed eleven different modes of computer use in physics education. This paper converts Bork’s modes into challenges to the computers in physics education community and evaluates our progress since 1978. It concludes with a brief discussion of future challenges. Alfred Bork, professor of physics at the University of California Irvine, was the early guru of computers in physics education. Before many of us even had computer access on our campuses, Alfred was leading computer workshops at AAPT meetings. He connected a computer in a hotel room to his main frame back on the Univ. of California Irvine campus and led discussions about how computers might change the content of our physics courses. Professor Bork received the AAPT Millikan Award in the summer of 1978 – thirty years ago. Therefore, it seems appropriate to take stock of what has happened to computers in physics education since then and what challenges are before us. QuickTimeTM and a TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor are needed to see this picture. Dr. Alfred Bork, Millikan Award winner and lecturer, summer, 1978 In Professor Bork’s Millikan lecture he laid out for us several different ways that computers could be used as a learning device. Bork presents these different modes as aspects of computer use in physics for discussion during his presentation. I am going to take the liberty to transform his modes into challenges for the physics education community of 2008. Furthermore, not all of the different ways to use computers in physics education seem to warrant the same level of discussion, so I have invented by own arbitrary grouping of Bork’s modes of use. I will examine each of these groups and discuss what I think has happened since 1978 in the use of computers in physics education and extend Bork’s work to challenge us for the future of computers in physics education. I want to do this for three reasons: • Challenges can awaken us to new areas of work that need our attention. • I learned about computers in physics at the feet of Alfred Bork and can bring more than 35 years of experience to this analysis. • We need to be reminded of the pioneering work done and insights of Alfred Bork. Sadly, there will be people reading this article who have never heard of or read anything by Alfred Bork. At a national conference on computers in education in 2006 I met a faculty member from the University of California Irvine who did not even recognize the name Alfred Bork. Just as the NSTA created a Robert Karplus prize, perhaps the AAPT should create an Alfred Bork prize for the innovative use of computers in physics education. Submitted to the American Journal of Physics Sept., 2007 2 Modes in which computers can be used as a learning device as described by Alfred Bork in 1978: I have decided to group them into four categories: Learner controlled, teacher controlled, communication and personal factors, and in true professor tradition I am going to assign a grade for each category. Learner Controlled: • Student control of pacing – computers make individual pacing convenient and commercially practical. • Student control over content – computers enable us to provide a great variety of interactive learning experiences and allow students flexibility in choosing them. The flexible use of time that is permitted by computer use has not really been used much on a macroscale in physics education. In the 1970s there was a strong interest in self-paced instruction pioneered at MIT called the Keller Plan or PSI. This style of instruction demonstrated improved student learning in a wide variety of courses, but has almost completely disappeared in college level physics courses now. The intensive use of computers would make this type of physics course much less labor intensive than it was more than 20 years ago, but any attraction of selfpacing for student learning has not been evident to university faculty except at webbased or distance education universities. Of course, on the mircoscale, i.e. when to do my web-based homework, control can be given completely over to the student, although most teachers do impose some kind of time limit. For most courses it is not possible to do the homework for the first week of class during the last week of the term of instruction. Student control over content has been even less influenced by computers than control over pacing. I think physics course content is more rigid now that it was in the heyday of the Keller Plan courses. • Intellectual tool – students can use computers as learning tools to master concepts. This is a mode of computer use in which we have excelled since 1978. Consider the power of the computer algebra systems such as Maple and Mathematica that are now available to our students. In physics laboratories we have Vernier and PASCO data collecting and analysis software that is superb. The power of these software packages and the new computers make the use of interactive digital video in our physics classrooms inexpensive and feasible. In addition our students have ready access to word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. The intellectual tools available to our students today are fabulous. The challenge to us as teachers is to find a way to blend all of these tools into a coherent learning experience of physics concepts for our students. Category Grade: When we consider the tremendous opportunities that computers give us to increase student learning and student motivation when we turn over more of the control of pacing and content to the learners we realize that we have only begun to stratch the surface of the category of using computers in physics education. On the other hand, the development of powerful computer tools for student learning is very impressive, so on balance I have to give us a grade of B in this category.