Implementation of an active instructional design for teaching the concepts of current, voltage and resistance

Abstract

In the present work we show the implementation of a learning sequence based on an active learning methodology for teaching Physics, this proposal tends to promote a better learning in high school students with the use of a comic book and it combines the use of different low­cost experimental activities for teaching the electrical concepts of Current, Resistance and Voltage. We consider that this kind of strategy can be easily extrapolated to higher­education levels like Engineering­college/university level and other disciplines of Science. To evaluate this proposal, we used some conceptual questions from the Electric Circuits Concept Evaluation survey developed by Sokoloff and the results from this survey was analysed with the Normalized Conceptual Gain proposed by Hake and the Concentration Factor that was proposed by Bao and Redish, to identify the effectiveness of the methodology and the models that the students presented after and before the instruction, respectively. We found that this methodology was more effective than only the implementation of traditional lectures, we consider that these results cannot be generalized but gave us the opportunity to view many important approaches in Physics Education; finally, we will continue to apply the same experiment with more students, in the same and upper levels of education, to confirm and validate the effectiveness of this methodology proposal. 1. Introduction The innovation and implementation of new educational practices require a constant reflection on the elements and actors involved in the learning process [1]; on the first hand, at least, three elements can be identified clearly, one element is all the group of learning activities and materials that students can use during their instruction to facilitate the comprehension and understanding, of a part or a whole concept or procedure in a specific topic boarded; a second element is the group of methodologies and learning sequences that can be implemented to our students and how these will impact in their learning process taking the use of the first element guided by a teacher, and finally a third element is the evaluation process which considers the measure of the progress during the learning process not only at the end of the instruction but during all the learning process. All these three elements in execution generate the learning process by itself, based on how the students are guided by a well­oriented methodology that includes materials and activities with its corresponding evaluation evidence.