Tutorials in Intro Physics

This forum discussed the book, Tutorials in Introductory Physics by Lillian McDermott et al.

We started by doing a short activity out of the book. The activity involved sticking pieces of tape to the desk and pulling them off to see the attraction and repulsion between the tape and other objects do to electric charge. After doing the activity in small groups the forum was opened up to general discussion.

Book Format

• Most of the book is questions rather than activities but the activities they do have use readily available materials like tape.
• The book is primarily conceptual and is meant as a supplement to a traditional class that already involves considerable quantitative work. Some of the questions in the book could be made quantitative if the instructor desired.
• The book questions are intended to follow a lecture introduction (use the book in a recitation section that follows the lecture).
• Studies have shown that the conceptual problems in this book increase student scores on quantitative exams as well as usual conceptual diagnostics like the Force Concept Inventory.
• Throughout the questions there are stopping points that instruct the students to check their answers with the instructor before preceding. These stopping points are chosen very judiciously.
• Besides the usual conceptual questions the book also contains dialogues between fictional students arguing different points of view as well as thought experiments.
  • Note: It can be a useful exercise to ask students how a thought experiment could be designed as a real experiment in the real world.
• Tutorial questions are meant to elucidate common misconceptions and can fool even seasoned physicists. As an instructor you must do the tutorial yourself before hand so you see what's coming.

Advantages

• The book is very modular and self contained which makes it easy to insert sections of the book into an existing class format where useful.
• The "inquiry" style is laid out in the book which makes the book a useful tool for instructors who are just starting to explore inquiry style teaching methods.
• The tutorials often lead students through all options and all possible configurations which helps train students in this mindset.
• Tutorial questions are general enough and easy enough to build upon that it's easy to push students who finish early with further related inquiries.

Misc

• McDermott et al also have a book of conceptual homework problems.
• McDermott et al also have tutorials for junior/senior level courses although these may not yet be published in book form.
• Jill Marshall has a copy of the tutorials book as does Katie Hinko (Mark Baumann is borrowing her copy). Katie also has a copy of the homework book.