A 1917 photo of the Electricity & Magnetism (E&M) Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Selen also put in a beverage station with coffee, tea, and hot cocoa, to warm up the comparatively empty space and promote the social interactions that good collaborative work requires. ![]() To accommodate the introduction of IOLab experiments, the room that hosts the Physics 101 labs was stripped of its traditional student-lab benches and stools and set up with group tables, chairs, and a cabinet full of supplies that students use for their experiments. “Not incidentally, these same behaviors are precisely what makes good physicists,” Selen points out, “yet for a variety of reasons, some practical and some historical, these are often not the behaviors that we encourage in our introductory physics labs.” They’re collaborating, coming up with an idea, and designing a test to see if the idea might be right then revising the idea and trying again when the results lead someplace unexpected. Students are learning to tackle a question without fear. Selen, a particle physicist who is also a noted expert in physics education research (PER) explains, “This new approach is allowing us to shift the focus of our introductory labs toward creativity, design, sense-making, and communication. It is also capable of wireless data sharing, so students can monitor the results of their experiments in real time. The IOLab can measure rotation rates, forces, temperature, pressure, and voltages. The device was invented by Associate Head for Undergraduate Programs and Professor Mats Selen and is manufactured and distributed by MacMillan Learning.Īt a price point of about $100, students gain access to a magnetometer, microphone, buzzer, light intensity meter, accelerometer, gyroscope, temperature gauge, atmospheric pressure gauge, force probe, and expansion headers, plus a wheel encoder that measures position, velocity, and acceleration-all in a single device. IOLab is a small but powerful data-acquisition tool that supports hands-on design-based learning. It’s luck that it’s turned out to be useful-the right tool for the job.”Īssociate Head for Undergraduate Programs and Professor Mats Selen, Illinois Physics “It turns out for practical reasons, to implement an investigative-learning pedagogy with open-ended exercises in our labs, we needed this tool. But this semester, about 350 students enrolled in 11 lab sections of Physics 101 were asked to do exactly that, using a remarkable new hand-held device called IOLab. Having students design their own sound, replicable scientific experiments that uniquely deliver a sought-after answer is not generally done in traditional introductory physics labs. ![]() Students are more invested in the lab exercises and are taking away greater satisfaction and confidence in their new ‘expert-like’ scientific research skills. ![]() A new hands-on investigative learning approach has students designing their own experiments in introductory physics labs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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