Welcome back. If you haven't joined us for the last two posts, let me recommend that you first read about determining rolling friction on the coaster and the project overview.
On to the assessment...
Assessment is extremely important. It explicitly informs students what things we value (and thus the things we value). If we assess the wrong things, students will focus on the wrong things. This can turn an otherwise excellent project into a mediocre project. For this post, I'll share two methods of assessment: First, the "old" method I used when I last taught physics (in 2008). Second, my updated assessment scheme that I'd use if I did this project again.
The old assessment strategy
Embedded below is the document I gave to students at the beginning of the pipe insulation roller coaster project. Most noticeably it includes a description of the assessment scheme I used way back in January of 2008.
[scribd id=73149530 key=key-2h4y3du7bm3b9wfvgt2g mode=list]
As you can see, I split the assessment of this project into two equal parts:
An assessment of the finished roller coaster
I wanted students to think carefully about the design, construction, and "marketing" of their coasters. I wanted them to design coasters that not only met the requirements, but coasters that were beautiful and interesting. Individual items being assessed under this rubric were weighted differently. For example, "Appropriate name of the coaster" was only worth 5%, while "Creativity, originality, and aesthetics" was worth 20%. Here's a link to the sheet I used when assessing this aspect of the coaster project.
An assessment of the physics concepts
In the embedded document above, you can see the breakdown of what items were being assessed. In my last post on pipe insulation roller coasters, you can see how students labeled their coasters with information on the marble's energy, velocity, and such along the track. Groups were required to turn in a sheet with the calculations they performed to arrive at these numbers. These sheets were the primary basis for determining whether students understood the physics concepts.
Problems
There are a lot of problems with the assessment scheme as described above. I'm not going to try to address them all, so here are a couple of the biggest issues:
- Assessing coaster design
- I'm a fan of elegant design. For this project I'm a fan of finished coasters that look well designed and exciting. That's why I included the first part of the assessment. I wanted to incentivize students to think about the design and construction of their coasters. In retrospect this is probably unnecessary. Students generally came into this project with plenty of intrinsic motivation to make their coaster the best in the history of the class. While I'd still stress the importance of quality design in the future, I'd completely cut this half of the assessment. Students already cared about the design of their coaster. If anything, awarding points for coaster design had an net negative effect. Especially because it doesn't assess anything related to the understanding of physics.
- Assessing student understanding of physics concepts
- As a normal part of working in a group while attempting to complete a large project in a limited time, students split up the work. Students are generally pretty smart about this in their own way. While I stressed that everyone in the group should contribute equally towards the calculations. Most groups would have the student who had the best understanding of the physics do most of the calculations. Why? Because it was faster. They needed to finish their coaster and just having the fastest person do the calculations meant more time for construction. While I generally knew when students in a group were adding very little to the calculations (and would assess them accordingly), on the whole this method didn't give me a good picture of each individual students' level of understanding. There were certainly students who skated through the project while minimally demonstrating their understanding of the energy and friction concepts involved.
The new assessment strategy
You've probably already picked up on a few of the improvements I'd make for this project.
- Use standards-based assessment. Standards-based assessment is an integral part of the classroom throughout the year- not just for projects. If you're unfamiliar with what this "standards-based" business is all about click the little number at the end of this sentence for plenty of links in the footnotes1. Here are a list of standards that would be assessed through this project:
Content standards assessed
- Energy
- Understand and apply the law of conservation of energy.
- Explain and calculate the kinetic energy and potential energy of an object.
- Explain and calculate the amount of work done on and by an object.
- Solve basic conservation of energy problems involving kinetic energy and potential energy.
- Solve conservation of energy problems involving work and thermal energy.
- Circular Motion
- Solve basic circular motion problems using formulas.
- Habits of Mind
- Collaborate and communicate with others to meet specific goals.
- Handle and overcome hurdles creatively and productively.
The specific standards used can vary based on your specific implementation.
- No points for coaster requirements. As I mentioned earlier, it proved unnecessary to incentivize their coaster designs and meeting the basic requirements of the project. This decision also comes out of standards-based grading, which focuses assessment around, "Do you know physics?" instead of "Can you jump through the right hoops?" That isn't to say we don't talk about what makes a coaster "exciting" or "aesthetically pleasing" or whatever. It just means a student needs to demonstrate their understanding of the physics to earn their grade.
- A focus on informal assessment. Rather than heavily relying on a sheet of calculations turned in at the end of the project (and probably done lopsidedly by one or two group members) to determine if the group understands the physics, I'd assess their understanding as I walked around the classroom discussing the coasters and their designs with the students as they work on them. Starting with questions like, "Why did you make that loop smaller?," or "Where are you having trouble staying within the requirements?" can be used to probe into student thinking and understanding. The final calculations would still be a part of the assessment, but no longer the single key piece of information in the assessment.
On the whole I was very happy with this project as I used it in the past. As I've learned and grown as a teacher I've found several ways I can tweak the old project to keep up with the type of student learning I want to support in my classroom. If you have other suggestions for improvement, I'd be happy to hear them.
As a bonus, here's a student produced video of the roller coaster project made for the daily announcements. The video was made by a student who wasn't in the physics class, so there's a little more emphasis on the destruction of the roller coasters at the end of the project than I'd like. Kids. What can ya do?
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/32422278 w=500]
- Here are posts I've written about my experience implementing standards-based assessment. I'm not an expert, so let me also direct you my bookmarks related to standards-based grading, and some resources written by a couple people who are more expert: Shawn Cornally and Frank Noschese (who offers blog posts, a shared google doc foler, and a collection of bookmarked links). There are certainly other great resources out there, but these are a great starting point. [↩]
Hey Ben! Great project idea! I've been searching for a hands on project that really focuses on content, not just "neat-o" product basically constructed by a student's parent. My classroom may be too small for 7 of these at one time, but we'll see.
I've also spent that last hour+ reading back through your blog. What a great journey! I haven't made it all the way back to the beginning of your posting but I'll probably procrastinate on some grading this weekend to finish. I'm in my second year of teaching and have great desires for excellence in teaching. I'm beginning to see how this first year and a half have been too focused on me. You're posts have really brought about a self-reflection that I need to focus on my students more than myself.
If you've got any tips for this rookie, I'd love to hear them. I think one thing I've picked up from your blog posts is to never stop learning, to seek out information, to explore new ideas, and push the status quo of educational excellence.
Look forward to finishing your blog and following your future posts.
Andrew
I'm not exactly quick on the responses here...sorry about that.
Thanks for the kind words. I've seen via Twitter that you've started the project- I'm glad you found the pipe insulation posts helpful. I've been meaning to write them up for a looong time. Let me know how you managed your space issues- in all likelihood if I run this project in the future I'll have space issues as well.
My advice for you (or any relatively new teachers) is to not be afraid to try new projects and activities. I think often projects get nixed early on by teachers who are afraid they'll take too much time for too little value. On the face of it these roller coasters could fit that category. Try out a new project or two each year. Some will have too little value for their time, but as you progress you'll get better and better and figuring out how to improve projects and you'll find most projects will succeed. After a few years you'll have plenty of great activities and projects to choose from.
Hey Ben,
I`ve been doing a similar project for a few years now. A friend told me about it. They might have gotten the idea from you. I ran into the space issue early on. From the look of your video I have a smaller classroom/lab than you do. I got around it by building wooden bases for the coasters. They are roughly 1.5'X 4' and have two vertical supports. One 5' high and one 3' high. Students can build up from these and out to each side. The bases can be moved around fairly easily and allow the students to work on the coasters during the class and move them out of the way for my other classses.
I have also started having students make predictions about what sort of speeds and energies are expected at certain locations and then comment on why results differ from what they find when measurments are made on the finished project.
The final difference I have is I encourage the filming of the whole project and ask students to put the together a video of the project sharing what they have learned and discussing their understandings of physics.
@Patrick: Yeah, the space thing can get tricky quick. The video was taken in a new school, but in my old school classroom, students had to drag their coasters to a back corner. Luckily for me my Physics class was much smaller at that point. I like providing the platforms. Did you allow students to use boxes or the like to customize their coasters, or did they pretty much just use the two supports?
I also like the prediction and video bits you've added. The last year I did this project I gave each student pictures that I took of their coaster during its development and had the students reflect on their design choices. It didn't go quite as well as I had hoped, but I think it might be better today, simply because enough students have digital cameras with them at all times that I could have students document the process themselves instead of me wandering around taking pictures.
P.S. I'd love to see pictures of some of the coasters. Are any available online?
I started with two main supports but allowed students to add additional ones as they felt they needed them.
Here is one of the videos my students handed in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VJBKvR47CU
My kids are just building these again right now. My room has 9 of these coaster stands sitting on all the counters. It`s not leaving much space for the other classes I teach.
Patrick: Thanks for sharing that video- the coasters look good! Having the pre-built supports definitely makes the coasters more portable and keep them a little smaller than they were in my classroom. Space is a definite issue with the coasters- in fact if I taught 2 sections of Physics instead of only one making the coasters would probably not have been feasible.
Ben, was wondering if you use a rubric when you standard base grade these and if you do would you mind sharing with me. I am a 2nd year teacher and last year I did roller coasters and the students loved it. It's all my students this year talk about they are super excited to do the unit. however, I would like a easier way to grade them and I love your blog!! I will be using these ideas in my lesson with roller coaster this year.
I haven't done this project for many years (mostly due to changing states & schools, etc), so it was before my standard based grading days. However, here's a link to a DropBox folder with all the supporting documents I used for the project, which includes the scoring rubric I used. Hope that helps!
No one likes to hear someone snoring in the room above them, and that’s where home insulation comes in handy. Home insulation helps to absorb the sounds that bounce off of your walls and floors, making your home a quieter place to live and relax.