IOLab gets intro-physics students thinking more like physicists

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. And surveys show, they like it. Students are more invested in the lab exercises and are taking away greater satisfaction and confidence in their new ‘expert-like’ scientific research skills.

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. 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.

IOLab is a small but powerful data-acquisition tool that supports hands-on design-based learning. The device was invented by Associate Head for Undergraduate Programs and Professor Mats Selen and is manufactured and distributed by MacMillan Learning. 

At 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. The IOLab can measure rotation rates, forces, temperature, pressure, and voltages. It is also capable of wireless data sharing, so students can monitor the results of their experiments in real time.

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. Students are learning to tackle a question without fear. 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. 

“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.”

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. 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.

Students complete a pre-lab homework assignment before each lab, involving data collection of real-world physics using their IOLabs in their dormitory rooms. A cloud-shaped button in the app allows students to share their pre-lab data with lab partners and instructors via an integrated cloud-based repository. That way, students arrive at the lab knowing how to work the particular IOLab sensors they’ll need and what the software-generated graphs look like.

Selen stresses that, he invented the IOLab device, but not the pedagogy it’s supporting.

“You still need a good curriculum,” he asserts. “There is an important study done by Carl Wieman of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and Natasha Holmes of Cornell’s Department of Physics. They measured the impact of traditional instructional labs on the learning of introductory physics and found it didn’t contribute to students’ mastery of the course curriculum or performance on exams.

“Our own physics education research was pointing to the same truth—and student surveys showed labs were not only not contributing to mastery, they were the least valued part of our introductory curriculum.

“Eugenia Etkina of Rutgers Graduate School of Education works on physics education research—she gave a colloquium here [at Illinois Physics] several years ago and talked about what she called an investigative science learning environment, or ISLE. The pedagogy we implemented is based on her work.”

Ansell adds, “Comparing students in our new labs to those who took the old lab format, we have seen that our IOLab students are much more likely to choose to use their new skills, and that those skills have helped them become more discerning about experimental procedures and results, as well as more sophisticated in their conception of what physics experiments can be used for.

“At this point, we’re working toward a sustainable teaching model and a stable course curriculum. We’ve put together a TA-training program, and we’ve started using learning assistants, students who previously took an IOLab section who come back and facilitate.”

IOLab is already in use at many other institutions, where educators are developing their own PER studies and their own IOLab curricula. Given the open-source software package, free software upgrades, and the low cost of the device itself, there are few limits on the ways IOLab can be incorporated into laboratory classes or even into pre-lecture activities.

Remarkably, it was only after Selen invented the IOLab in his garage and, as he puts it, had fun tinkering with it that he recognized its potential to help students develop their intuition for physics research. In fact, the original idea behind IOLab’s invention was to develop a wireless, portable electrocardiogram transmission device—for the fun of it.

That goal was achieved. The IOLab was successfully tested by U of I College of Medicine cardiologist Abrahim Kocheril in studies screening young athletes for prevention of sudden cardiac arrest—with members of the Fighting Illini football team as the studies’ cohorts.

Once Selen knew he wanted to use the device as an educational laboratory tool, he reached out to MacMillan Learning and the company was willing to invest in Selen’s further developing the IOLab device.

“It turns out for practical reasons, to implement an investigative-learning pedagogy with open-ended exercises in our labs, we needed this tool. I invented IOLab because it was fun. It’s luck that it’s turned out to be useful—the right tool for the job.”

Funding for curriculum development and assessment studies came from the National Science Foundation.

Selen sums up, “What happens when you present students with a problem and give them the tools to design their own experiments, they all come up with different ways to get at the answer. Each group approaches experimentation differently, and sometimes their ingenuity, for example, in using more than one sensor at the same time, has surprised us.

“Students also learn that experimentation is messy. Data aren’t always easy to interpret, and there is a method to refining results. They develop critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving, and sense-making skills—which really are very useful! What we are seeing being developed in our intro students using this new approach are really expert-like behaviors.”

This research was conducted with support from the National Science Foundation. The conclusions presented are those of the researchers and not necessarily those of the funding agency.