Image Formation Interactive Lecture Demonstrations

Using Personal Response Systems

David R. Sokoloff

Department of Physics
1274 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1274 USA
sokoloff@uoregon.edu
Abstract: The results of physics education research and the availability of microcomputer-based tools have led to the
development over a number of years of the activity-based Physics Suite. Most of the Suite materials are designed for
hands-on learning, for example student-oriented laboratory curricula like RealTime Physics. One reason for the success
of these materials is that they encourage students to take an active role in their learning. More recently, personal
response systems (clickers) have become available at many schools and universities around the world, and are used by
many educators. This paper describes Suite materials designed to promote active learning in lecture—Interactive Lecture
Demonstrations (ILDs)—that have been adapted for implementation with clickers. Image formation ILDs will be
presented. Results of studies on the effectiveness of this approach will also be presented.
Keywords: Introductory physics, lecture demonstrations, personal response system, clicker, image formation
PACS: 01.40.gb, 01.50.My, 01.50.Lc

INTRODUCTION • Encouragement of collaboration and shared

There is considerable evidence that traditional
approaches are ineffective in teaching physics
concepts, including light and optics concepts.3,4 A
major focus of the work at the University of Oregon
and at the Center for Science and Mathematics
Teaching (CSMT) at Tufts University has been on the
development of active, discovery-based curricula like
RealTime Physics labs4,5,6 and Interactive Lecture
Demonstrations.1,2 Among the characteristics of these
curricula are:
• Use of a learning cycle in which students are
challenged to compare predictions—discussed
with their peers in small groups—to observations
of real experiments.
• Construction of students’ knowledge from their
own hands-on observations. Real observations of
the physical world are the authority of knowledge.
• Confronting students with the differences between
their observations and their beliefs.
• Observation of results from real experiments in
understandable ways—often in real time with the
support of microcomputer-based tools.
learning with peers.
• Laboratory work often used to learn basic
concepts.
With the use of the learning cycle and the
microcomputer-based tools it has been possible to
bring about significant changes in the lecture and
laboratory learning environments at a large number of
universities, colleges and high schools without
changing the lecture/laboratory structure of the
introductory physics course. RealTime Physics and
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations are described
briefly below.
REALTIME PHYSICS ACTIVE
LEARNING LABORATORIES (RTP)
RealTime Physics is a series of lab modules for
the introductory physics course that often use
computer data acquisition tools to help students
develop important physics concepts while acquiring
vital laboratory skills. Besides data acquisition,
computers are used for basic mathematical modeling,
data analysis and some simulations. RTP labs use the
learning cycle of prediction, observation and
comparison. They have been demonstrated to enhance

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student learning of physics concepts.3,4 There are four function of a lens in forming images. The apparatus is
RTP modules, Module 1: Mechanics, Module 2: Heat shown in Figure 1. Flashlight bulbs are placed at the
and Thermodynamics, Module 3: Electric Circuits and top and bottom of an arrow on a white board (or other
Module 4: Light and Optics.5 Each lab includes a pre- smooth white surface), and a large, acrylic cylindrical
lab preparation sheet to help students prepare, and a lens is used to show how all the light from each bulb
homework, designed to reinforce critical concepts and that strikes the lens (infinite number of rays) is focused
skills. A complete teachers’ guide is available online to the same image point. Figure 2 shows the situation
for each module. with the bulbs lighted. The ILD sequence consists of
changes in the situation, e.g., half of the lens is
INTERACTIVE LECTURE covered by a card, half of the object is covered by a
DEMONSTRATIONS (ILDS) card, the lens is removed, etc. Figure 3 shows what
happens when half of the lens is blocked by a card.
ILDs are designed to enhance conceptual learning (Most students predict that half of the image will
in large (and small) lectures. An eight-step procedure disappear.)
is used to enhance learning with simple, single-concept
lecture demonstrations. Real physics demonstrations
are shown to students, who then make predictions
about the outcomes on a prediction sheet, and
collaborate with fellow students by discussing their
predictions in small groups. The instructor then solicits
predictions from volunteers. Students then observe the
results of the live demonstration (often displayed as
real-time graphs using computer data acquisition
tools), compare these results with their predictions,
and volunteers attempt to explain the observed
phenomena to the class. Besides data acquisition,
computers are used for interactive video analysis. This
eight-step ILD procedure incorporating the learning
cycle is followed for each of the basic demonstrations
in an ILD sequence. ILDs have been demonstrated to Figure 2: Image Formation ILD apparatus showing
enhance student learning of physics concepts.2,3 the formation of a real image.
Complete materials—including student sheets and
teachers’ guides—are available for most introductory
physics topics.1

Figure 3: Image Formation ILD apparatus showing

Figure 1: Image Formation ILD apparatus consisting
of two light bulbs (point sources at the top and bottom
of the object, and an acrylic cylindrical lens.
The Image Formation with Lenses ILD
sequence1,7 is designed to help students understand the
what happens to a real image when the top half of the
lens is blocked by a card.
Do students learn optics concepts from ILDs?
Here we report on assessments of learning gains on the
Light and Optics Conceptual Evaluation (LOCE) for
the Image Formation with Lenses ILD sequence. The

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physics education research-based LOCE has been physical situations with different "surface" features. In
published elsewhere.7 Students in the algebra- general, this procedure worked very well for the Image
trigonometry-based general physics course at the Formation ILDs. Figure 5 shows the second ILD, and
University of Oregon had only a 20% normalized Figure 6 shows a typical display from i-Clicker.
learning gain on the image formation questions after
all traditional instruction. With just one additional
lecture consisting of this ILD sequence, their learning
gain from the pre-test was 80%. In addition, the last
question on the LOCE shows the real image of an
arrow formed by a lens, with two (non-principal) rays
from the bottom of the arrow and two (non-principal)
rays from the top of the arrow incident on the lens.
(See Figure 4). Students are asked to continue these
four rays through the lens to illustrate how the image is
formed by the lens. While after traditional instruction,
only 33% were able to continue these rays correctly,
after experiencing the ILD sequence, 76% completed
this exercise correctly.

lens image on Figure 5: Clicker Image Formation ILD #2 with the

object screen five choices available to students.

focal
point

Figure 4: Diagram from last image formation question

on the Light and Optics Conceptual Evaluation.

ILDS WITH A PERSONAL

RESPONSE SYSTEM
Personal response systems (clickers) have become
available at many schools and universities around the
world, and are used by many educators. Their
availability inspired a project to develop and test ILDs
in which students use clickers to record their
predictions rather than paper and pencil.8 There are
Figure 6: Typical display from i-Clicker showing
many different commercially-available clicker
screen capture of the ILD description, and the
systems. We chose i-Clickers9 because of their ease of
histogram of student predictions.
use. They are limited by only allowing five choices.

We have developed a modified procedure for

CONCLUSIONS
clicker ILDs. The seven steps are (1) describe the
It is not obvious that the procedure followed with
demonstration and do it for the class without results
clicker ILDs is the equivalent of paper and pencil
displayed, (2) ask students to record individual
ILDs. For the latter, students are required to provide
predictions with their clickers, but do not show the
open-ended descriptions of their predictions, while for
histogram of the class’s predictions, (3) have the class
the former, they are asked to choose their predictions
engage in small group discussions, (4) ask students to
from five research-based choices. Therefore, it is not
record individual predictions again with the clickers,
obvious that the learning gains achieved with the
and display the histogram of the class’s predictions,
original ILDs will be duplicated with the clicker ILDs.
(5) carry out the demonstration and display the results,
(6) ask a few students to describe the results and
To test this, students in a large algebra-
discuss them in the context of the demonstration
trigonometry based general physics class at the
(students may make notes on the demonstration in
University of Oregon were tested with the image
their notebooks), (7) if appropriate, discuss analogous

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formation questions from the LOCE after traditional
instruction in image formation with lenses, and then
after experiencing the clicker Image Formation ILDs
during Winter, 2007 and Winter, 2008. The learning
gain was 59% on these questions, and 57% on the ray
diagram short answer question shown in Figure 4 (with
76% of the students sketching the rays correctly on the
post test). While not quite as substantial as the learning
gains with the paper and pencil ILDs, these gains are
still excellent.
6. Thornton, R.K. and Sokoloff, D.R., “RealTime Physics:
Active Learning Laboratory,” in The Changing Role of
the Physics Department in Modern Universities,
Proceedings of the International Conference on
Undergraduate Physics Education, 1101-1118
(American Institute of Physics, 1997).
7. Active Learning in Optics and Photonics Training
Manual, D.R. Sokoloff, ed. (Paris, UNESCO, 2006).
8. This work was supported by NSF CCLI Phase 1 grant
DUE 0633740.
9. For more information see http://www.iclicker.com/.

As part of the clicker ILD project, we have also

experimented with clicker ILDs in mechanics. The
situation here is more complicated since many of these
require coupled graphs for different, related quantities,
e.g., velocity and acceleration. Five choices often do
not allow for all the combinations students normally
predict. We have experimented with a procedure in
which students first sketch graphs on a piece of paper,
and then make choices separately for each quantity.
This procedure has resulted in promising gains.

It appears from our research, that the use of

clickers for students to record their predictions in ILDs
brings about substantial conceptual learning gains.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks Ronald Thornton of the Center

for Science and Math Teaching at Tufts University for
his collaboration in developing the clicker ILD
procedure and the Image Formation ILDs.

REFERENCES
1. David R. Sokoloff and Ronald K. Thornton, Interactive
Lecture Demonstrations (Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley and
Sons, 2004).
2. David R. Sokoloff and Ronald K. Thornton, "Using
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations to Create an Active
Learning Environment,” The Physics Teacher 35: 6,
340 (1997).
3. Ronald K. Thornton and David R. Sokoloff, "Assessing
Student Learning of Newton's Laws: The Force and
Motion Conceptual Evaluation and the Evaluation of
Active Learning Laboratory and Lecture Curricula,"
American Journal of Physics 66, 338-352 (1998).
4. David R. Sokoloff, Ronald K. Thornton and Priscilla
W. Laws, “RealTime Physics: Active Learning Labs
Transforming the Introductory Laboratory,” accepted
for publication, Eur. J. of Phys., 28 (2007), S83-S94.
5. David R. Sokoloff, Ronald K. Thornton and Priscilla
W. Laws, RealTime Physics Module 1: Mechanics,
Module 2: Heat and Thermodynamics, Module 3:
Electric Circuits and Module 4: Light and Optics
(Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley and Sons, 2004).

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