Physics Commons^™

Qualitative, Tiered, Iclicker Recitation Introductions, David Blasing, Andrew Hirsch, Rebecca Lindell

IMPACT Symposium

Interactively engaging students can significantly help them understand key concepts [Hake 1998]. Additionally, students are most likely to recall the first five minutes of a presentation [Burns 1985]. Capitalizing on both of these, we altered the beginning of PHYS 272 (ELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC INTERACTIONS) recitation to include a series of qualitative, “tiered,” iClicker questions that interactively engage students and socratically teach fundamental principals in electricity and magnetism.

The series begin with a question that most students comfortably and correctly answer. Successive questions increase in difficultly and the series stops with most students struggling to identify the correct answer. Along the …