How to Pump Up AP Science Scores

Are you looking for a way to improve the pass rates or increase scores on the College Board Advanced Placement (AP) exams for laboratory science?  Boosting scores isn't easy.

A few years ago, an AP chemistry teacher faced this problem.  He had been working with the prescribed labs from the College Board but had disappointing scores.  His students just weren't learning the material.  You might fault this teacher, but he has great ratings.  Besides, conditions in his school are not very conducive to success here with classes of over 30 students and limited lab budgets.

His first try at fixing the problem was to pay for a virtual lab system that made great claims.  He pared down the lab time but kept with the College Board guidelines and just added in these virtual labs that were the usual animated simulations.  Despite this effort, nothing changed.

Fortunately for him, his district had a contract for another option, online experiential science lessons using real experiments and hands-on data measurements.  They even cost less than his first attempt.  He was desperate and ready to try anything.  So, he signed up his classes.  The difference, he says, was amazing.  His students learned the material.  Their AP exam grades went up.  He has been renewing his subscription ever since.

How can an online service produce better results than either wet labs or the premier virtual lab system?  There's no one-word answer to this question.  It takes a combination of factors to move the needle in education.  Consider a few of the factors involved here that are found in Smart Science® online experiential science lessons.

• Real experiments.  Nearly every virtual lab does not have these.  Only real labs are convincing experiences for students.  They know full well that those animated simulations aren't real.  To some, they may even seem pointless.  Furthermore, real experiments have the systematic and random errors of the real world that help students understand the true nature of science.
• Real experiments, part II.  Wet labs have real experiments too.  However, the range of experiments you can do in a classroom is severely limited by time and cost.  Online real experiments don't have this limitation so that students can explore a given topic more deeply.
• Hands-on data measurement.  Those animated simulations (virtual labs) merely hand the data to students.  Those data come from an algorithm and can be created without limit and with perfect precision. While you can learn a bit about some theory this way, you learn little about science.  Moreover, students have no real data ownership, an important factor in getting them to pay attention to the data analysis part of their labs.
• Hands-on data measurement, part II.  Taking data yourself adds a very important dimension to the science lab experience.  Students have to exercise care and judgment.  The care part is obvious.  Sloppy data collection creates sloppy data.  Judgment may come in when choosing how to categorize data or when deciding whether to include data that is unclear, such as the height of a tide when it's foggy and you can just barely make out the water level.
• Hypothesizing.  Before beginning experiments, students should spend some time thinking about what they're about to do.  A service that includes this step will have better outcomes than one that does not.  It's best if students can write alternative hypotheses if they choose but not edit ones that they already wrote.
• Background information.  Before hypothesizing and during experimentation, students should have access to plenty of background material to help them understand the topic they are addressing.  The Smart Science system has extensive background information available for a mouse click (or screen tap).
• Proven pedagogy.  Many lab systems, both the online type and lab kits, have little pedagogy in them.  Some have been striving to catch up here, but only the Smart Science system had a strong pedagogy built in from the beginning.  It's called the 5+1 pedagogy and consists of the following.
• Think - Provide a short explanation of the experiments with a little background and ask questions that focus on prior knowledge and on the sort of thinking necessary to be successful in this unit.  Provide fully worked-out answers to questions before proceeding.
• Hypothesize - Give a brief summary of what's about to be done, a video explaining the mechanics of data collection, and plenty of background information so that students can formulate hypotheses.
• Explore - Have a reasonable range of experiments for students to work with.  Let them measure their own data using their care and judgment.  Continue to provide support.
• Reflect - Deliver a set of questions that forces students to think about the experiments that they have just investigated.  Allow them to use all resources, including the experimental data, to help in answering the questions. Give them the fully worked-out solutions to all questions before proceeding.
• Explain - Write a lab report in a format that is consistent across the entire set of lessons.  This format depends on the grade level and can be customized for specific institutions.  Students must explain their findings in their own words for the science investigation experience to stick with them.
• + Extend - This is another essay format that asks students to explore beyond the ordinary boundaries of the lesson.
• Customization options.  No two schools or classrooms are exactly alike.  Sometimes, you must have something different from the default.  You can have students write their own hypotheses or pick from a pre-written list.  You can even change this mode in the middle of a course.  You can choose to have curves fit to student data or leave it raw and have students do their analysis offline.
• Review at any time.  Students can review all of their Smart Science work any time during the course.  This ability to log in and review work -- and even do experiments over again -- adds considerably to their ability to pass those pesky AP exams.
• Vocabulary.  The built-in Science Dictionary has over 1,000 terms defined in simple language.  Selected terms are included in each lesson as appropriate to the topic.  Students don't have to go elsewhere to find out what all of those science phrases mean.
• HTML5.  While HTML5 is a technical issue, it opens the door to many things.
• Device agnostic.  Students are able to get to their Smart Science lessons even on a smart phone as well as tablets, Chromebooks, Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.  Only an HTML5-compatible browser is necessary with support for canvas and video tags.
• Language accessibility.  Google translate will turn our lesson pages into just about any language commonly used, around 80 altogether.  Because most of our content is written in simple English, the translation works very well.
• Accessibility.  We not only use HTML5, we also use GWT, which automatically includes many accessibility features.  HTML5 also allows for ready speaking of content by various programs.  Just highlight and click.

Look for more information at http://www.smartscience.net, or just give us a call at the number at the top of the home page.  There's even a link there so that you can try out our technology for yourself.

© 2015 by Smart Science Education Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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California State University to Use Smart Science Labs

I am very proud to announce that Smart Science Education Inc. has a contract to supply our online hands-on science labs to the 23 campuses of the California State University, the largest university system in the United States with over 400,000 students enrolled.

Smart Science® labs are the only virtual labs developed outside of the CSU system to be chosen for use in the program to add virtual labs to science courses at CSU campuses.  This action comes as a result of a mandate by the state's governor to remove system bottlenecks in all state colleges, including the University of California and the California Community College system.  With rising enrollments, available lab seats have held back many students from graduating on time because of the necessity of fulfilling a laboratory science requirement.

The Smart Science approach to online labs differs from all others in that it uses real experiments, video recorded, and has sophisticated software that allows students to take their own data using their care and judgment just as in typical classroom labs.  This approach is patented, and more patents are in process.

The point of science labs should be to do real science, to inquire,  investigate, and discover.  In general education classes, there's no real necessity for learning laboratory technique.  It is, however, crucial to have an understanding of the nature of science, to develop scientific thinking skills, and to appreciate the complexity and ambiguity of empirical data.  In many instances, Smart Science explorations fulfill these goals better than the traditional lab experiences.

© 2013 by Smart Science Education Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Remote Robotic Labs and Smart Science® Explorations

Recently, someone asked about the differences between remote robotic labs and the Smart Science® exploration online hands-on labs. This question may arise in the minds of many.

The various remote robotic labs (RRL), including MIT's iLab, are different in some important aspects. Because our approach is so different, educators often have trouble understanding the differences compared to approaches with which they may be familiar.  This explanation should help to clear up any questions.

A RRL provides data automatically. You set up your parameters, whatever those may be, and push a virtual button. Often, you see nothing transpire at the remote site. After a brief pause, you're handed a sheaf of data electronically. For advanced students, that may be just fine, but for ordinary students, all of the trouble of setting up the RRL has been wasted. You might as well have stored the data from yesterday (or last year) along with any imagery and provided that. In that event, you could have just provided this information locally. The students wouldn't know the difference and probably wouldn't even care.

RRLs have limited range. They cannot do Sordaria crossing over or seed germination experiments. You can imagine doing tides, but the real-time aspect is lost because students are not there in real time the entire time that data are being captured. And so it goes. You cannot base an entire biology or chemistry course on just RRLs.

RRLs have limited access. If you attempt to scale RRLs, you must have more pieces of expensive or unique equipment. Depending on the precise experiment being run, the time that the machine is available controls how many students can use it during a given hour-long period. It's not unlimited. You know that you cannot deliver to a million students per hour and probably not even to a thousand.

Our approach takes the online hands-on lab (OHOL) path. We toss out the pretense of real-time experiments. (I say pretense because there's always a delay between data capture and arrival at the student workstation.) In its place, we open up entire new vistas of learning science.

The OHOL way does not deliver data automatically. Students truly must interact to take their own data. As in the tides example, those data are different for different students doing the same experiment with the same parameters.

With OHOL, you have a visual experience. With tides, you watch the actual tides and then measure them yourself.

An OHOL can be created for any experiment you can record on video and take data from. The data may be quantitative, semi-quantitative, or qualitative. They are your data, not those of a machine. The experiment videos may be from a high-speed camera or from a time-lapse camera. They may even combine multiple cameras as with the shadows lab where one camera follows the Sun with a fish-eye lens and the other tracks the path of a shadow.

What do OHOLs and RRLs have in common? None of the data are invented. They all come from the real world. The various forms of real wet labs also have this feature. However, only manual wet labs and OHOLs are truly hands-on in the sense that you take your own data point by point.

Our technology allows for an unlimited number of scenarios. We're only limited by our imagination and our resources. We have done as many as 100 experiments to create one lab. The number of experiments available is also a function of the pedagogy. Students can be confused by having 30 experiments available. Some will think that they must do every one rather than exercise judgment (actually think) despite our telling them otherwise. It becomes the instructor's task to handle this issue because instructors control grades, and students who do every single experiment available are doing so because they think they'll improve their grades. The instructor must convince them that lack of thought will reduce their grades. Our best efforts cannot do so because we do not hand out grades.

There's much more to this picture. For example, we insist on students making predictions before beginning experiments. We provide introductory (pre-lab or formative) assessments and summary (post-lab or summative) assessments. We provide extensive background resources and an online lab report that can be customized for your classes.

The above is not to say that RRLs have no value. On the contrary they are the go-to labs of the future for college engineering courses. They open up the use of expensive equipment that many schools cannot afford to undergraduate engineering students. They have limited use for college science courses. The limitations are those of the medium that requires complete automation and relatively quick experiment completion. They're of little value in K-12 education. You can find better ways to learn any science concept at that level, with the possible exception of advanced or honors courses and then, as with college science, only with a very few investigations.

© 2013 by Smart Science Education Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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Using Science Labs to Teach Science

If you walk into a typical physics or physical science classroom that's about to have students do a simple pendulum experiment, you're likely to see the formula for the period of a pendulum on the board. What you're unlikely to see is any discussion of experimental error or of how to make scientific observations.

Because it's so crucial to learning science, I'm going to discuss how to teach science using science labs. I'll use the example of a simple pendulum experiment because it's well understood. (By the way, those science teachers who make the extra effort to do experiments correctly deserve our praise and support.)

In a typical class, after explaining exactly what a simple pendulum is, teachers will show the formula for the period of a pendulum. They may have to explain about period and frequency. They will then point out the the formula for the period of a pendulum does not include the mass of the pendulum bob and that the period increases as the square root of the length. The effect of amplitude may not even be mentioned.

The experiment directions have been carefully written so that students make no mistakes. They start the pendulum moving with small swings and time ten swings. The length, mass, and period are recorded in the student notebooks. They then take measurements using other lengths and masses.

For many students, this experience is quite unsatisfactory. They've been asked to obtain a specific result. If they do not obtain the desired result, their grades suffer. Of course, many students appreciate the opportunity to get out of lecture and do something with their hands. Some even enjoy the detailed task of counting and recording. Neither of these rationales has anything to do with learning science. An excellent opportunity to learn science has been wasted.

Now, imagine another scenario that does play out in some of our science classes but in too few. The teacher begins by explaining some vocabulary such as period and frequency and eliciting some answers from the students. Next comes a discussion of what a pendulum is and some history about Galileo watching a chandelier. The teacher guides the discussion into how Galileo timed the period of the swinging chandelier. They didn't have clocks then so he must have used his pulse. What was his precision?

None of this discussion reveals the dependence of the period on pendulum length or mass or even on swing amplitude. Next, the teacher presents the class with the experiments they will do. What are the independent variables? Of course, there's the parameters of length and mass. What about amplitude? The dependent variable will be the period.

How will students measure pendulum length? What is the position at the top from which they will measure? What is the bottom position? Why choose these positions? Student ideas should be heard on all of the significant experimental details.

How will students measure the dependent variable? For the simplest case, students will time a number of swings. The class can discuss how many swings. What are the pros and cons of more or fewer swings? Should you use the lowest point or highest as the trigger? Different students may choose different strategies and discuss the outcome after the lab is over.

For students who also have the Smart Science® Pendulum Investigation lab unit, they can analyze data collected at intervals of 0.10 seconds. With many more points, they'll have greater precision. To get that precision, they must find a way to extract the period from the pendulum bob positions. That could be quite a challenge if they wish to use all of the points to maximize precision.

An advantage of the virtual lab will be in seeing the shape of the curve produced when position is plotted against time. As students take each data point, the graph develops and students see a sine wave appear. Notice that the sine wave comes from the data rather than vice versa as in simulations. Simulations are backwards and should not ever be the object of student scientific investigations.

Teachers can lead discussions about the implications of this wave shape for when the pendulum is moving fastest and when its moving slowest. The relationship with kinetic energy can readily follow. For more advanced classes, the nature of acceleration during the swings can be discussed and can lead to analysis of the changes in force because force is directly related to acceleration.

Students collect their data as they have planned, carefully entering the numbers into their laboratory notebooks for later analysis.

Once the students have their data and have analyzed it to come to specific conclusions, it's time for the class to compare and discuss the results. The teacher acts as moderator while calling on different students to present their data and conclusions. Teachers should guide students carefully to accepted conclusions while emphasizing the nature of scientific investigations. Empirical work is subject to errors and ambiguity. What possible variables were not controlled or measured? How might they have influenced the conclusions?

At the end, the students will remember the subject matter much better for having discovered it this way instead of simply being told the "facts." However, much more importantly, they will gain a better understanding of the nature of science, of how science works, and of what scientists actually do. As a result, we can hope that more of them will choose science or some related area as a career. We can hope that as future citizens, they'll better be able to make the decisions that we expect our informed citizenry to make.

We're facing an uncertain future. We cannot know what tomorrow will bring. We do know that having a good understanding of science will add another tool to everyone's mental tool kit to help them when the unexpected does happen. In the meantime, having Carl Sagan's "baloney detection kit" will help them every day to live better and happier lives.

© 2008 by Smart Science Education Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.netFollow this author on ETC Journal.

Finding Out

Science is really the activity of finding out about the world.

Other disciplines have finding out as their goals. For example, mathematics finds out about numbers and mathematical relationships. Psychology finds out about the way people think. Sociology finds out about human relationships.

Science seeks the find out about the world, and the world doesn't yield readily to inquiries. If it did, anyone might have made Galileo and Newton's discoveries. For that reason, science has developed methods of making these inquiries that involve provable hypotheses and reproducible results.

Scientists employ a different way of thinking than most other people do. Of course, it's not their sole thinking tool. Like others, they use hunches, instinct, and emotion. Unlike many others, they check their thoughts against reality in specific ways. Science requires both creativity and rational thought to explore the world and make new discoveries.

Carl Sagan used the phrase "baloney detection kit" to explain what makes the scientific approach different. Scientists must infer conclusions from uncertain data. They must avoid allowing their own personal bias to influence the results while allowing their imaginations to seek out different and unexpected conclusions.

I'd like to see all science students complete each science class with a step up in their "baloney detection kit" capabilities. This understanding of the nature of science, of scientific thinking, and of the complexity and ambiguity inherent in data from the real world is an important outcome of science courses. In too many courses, it gets lost as students struggle to memorize new vocabulary words, learn new laws with their equations, and manipulate formulas.

The science lab should be the time-out period from the words, laws, and formulas. It should be the time when students confront the complexity of extracting data from the real world and finding explanations for those data. Teachers should prepare students for this experience not by telling the answer that they're expected to find, but by explaining about concepts such as inference. Give them the foundation they require, not the edifice itself.

Online courses cannot lose this aspect of science courses. Of course, many science courses handle labs poorly. That's absolutely no excuse for online science courses to use those poor lab experiences as their standard -- easily exceeded. The standard must be the best science courses.

The best science courses, as indicated in America's Lab Report, routinely have students collect their own real data from the real world, analyze those data, and discuss their conclusions with the rest of their class. They don't collect data from simulations.

Online science courses can have real experiments with interactive, personal data collection. A number of means exist for that purpose among which is the Smart Science® system's integrated instructional lab units (www.smartscience.net). There's no excuse for settling for simulations instead of real labs in online courses. Combining real virtual labs with hands-on, at-home labs works very well to provide a full science learning opportunity to students. Do not substitute fake labs and fake science for the real thing.

© 2008 by Smart Science Education Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.netFollow this author on ETC Journal.

Necessary, Not Sufficient

If you have read a few of my posts, you'll note that I feel very strongly that students should have some real science experiences in their science classes. With more and more hands-on labs being pushed aside by virtual labs, I'm concerned about the nature of those labs. If simulations are used as lab substitutes, students lose an imporant opportunity to learn science.

They may learn about science, the vocabulary, laws, and theories of science, but they won't have the opportunity of understand the nature of science.

Nevertheless, simply using real experiments from the material world will not suffice. This fact is the second important conclusion of America's Lab Report (recommended reading). The first important conclusion is that science lab experiences must use the data, objects, and phenomena of the "material world" in their investigations.

What is required in addition to reality? I see two broad areas where additional requirements lie. The first area is in the presentation of the lab units, and the second area concerns how the lab fits into the course.

When preparing for a science lab experience, instructors should allow students to own, at least in part, the work they're about to do. Put the lab into context as solving a problem. Have students do some "research" on the problem. They might talk, read, or do some simple exploratory experiments. Don't just tell them the answer. Allow them to think about it, to mull it over. Then, they'll have some reason to do the lab other than you telling them to.

After the lab is completed, and students have done some analysis, get them together to talk about it. What conclusions have they made? Did all students come to the same conclusions? If not, why not?

In the post-lab post-mortem, you should ask students to identify what they observed directly and what they inferred. Find out how much they think can be inferred from observations. Talk about the quality of data. If possible, talk about data that did not fit expectations and discuss why. Was it experimental error, experimental design, or something else?

What you do before and after a lab can elevate or depress the value of the lab. It can change the lab from a dull, repetitive experience into an exciting investigation.

The second area for making a lab useful in a course requires that you properly integrate the lab into the course. Labs should not take place before a proper learning foundation has been laid. They also should not occur long after the topic has been introduced. Students should see the lab as a natural part of the course flow.

America's Lab Report focuses on four goals for integration.

Science lab experiences must (1) "be designed with clear learning outcomes in mind," (2) "be thoughtfuly sequenced into the flow of classroom instruction," (3) "integrate learning of science content and process," and (4) "incorporate ongoing student reflection and discussion."

Always realize that one of the clear learning outcomes that, according the the NRC, can only come in real lab experience is "understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work." Inasmuch as possible, this should be a learning outcome of every science lab experience because lab time is limited and precious. This goal may not be realized with only a few opportunities to experience it. Don't squander those opportunities on simulations masquerading as science labs. Reserve use of simulations and other visualizations (interactive or not) for non-lab class time.

© 2008 by Paracomp, Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.netFollow this author on ETC Journal.

The Nature of Science

Mrs. Smith blogs at mrssmithteachersscience.blogspot.com and discusses the nature of science. She takes seven aspects of the nature of science from Lederman, NG and JS Lederman. (2004) Revising Instruction to Teach the Nature of Science. The Science Teacher. 71: 36-39.

These are important enough to repeat here. Here is one great thing about the Internet. You don't have to go read The Science Teacher to get these significant nuggets of information.

1) "Students should be aware of the crucial distinction between observation and inference."2) "Students should understand the difference between scientific laws and theories."3) "All scientific knowledge is, at least partially, based on and/or derived from observations of the natural world."4) "Although scientific knowledge is empirically based, it nevertheless involves human imagination and creativity."5) "Scientific knowledge is at least partially subjective."6) "Science is socially and culturally embedded. [It] affects and is affected by the various elements and contexts of the culture in which it is practiced."7) "Scientific knowledge is subject to change."

She does a nice job of explaining each, so I won't repeat the effort. I'd like, however, to point out that understanding the nature of science is one of the seven America's Lab Report goals for science laboratory experiences and is one that is best satisfied by students performing investigations in the real world, not in simulations.

Three of those goals (mastery, teamwork, interest in science) are well handled outside of a lab setting. Good labs simply add to them.

One goal (practical skills) can mostly be done outside of labs. The single exception is the skill of operating lab equipment. That's not really a part of learning science anyway.

The remaining three goals are best accomplished in a lab setting. They are developing scientific reasoning, understanding the nature of science, and understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work. America's Lab Report explains that the last goal can only be accomplished well within true science lab experiences as it defines them. That definition clearly excludes simulations.

Simulations are great learning tools, if done well and integrated into the curriculum well. They do not work as substitutes for science lab experiences. Student scientific investigations will not be scientific if their object is made up.

Of course, students must prepare for real investigations, and various exercises can help them do so. Among these are simulations and other activities.

You can still do virtual labs that provide access to data from the real world and do some hands-on labs too. But, please don't call a simulation a science lab. Thank you.

© 2015 by Smart Science Education Inc., U.S.A. www.smartscience.net
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