Effects of Reducing Scaffolding in an Undergraduate Electronics Lab

摘要

Design and scientific investigation are recognized as key components ofundergraduate physics laboratory curricula. In light of this, many successfullab programs have been developed to train students to develop these abilities,and students in these programs have been shown to exhibit a higher transferrate of scientific abilities to new situations. In this paper, I use data froman electronics class for physics majors to investigate how giving students theopportunity to design circuits --- by removing steps from traditional cookbooklab guides --- affects the students' ability to determine the function ofcircuits they haven't seen before. I compared post-lab quiz results fromstudents who were given explicit procedures to those of students who were givenincomplete procedures, and I found no statistically significant difference inthe results of the two groups. I explore possible explanations for the nulleffect and recommend future research directions.