Investigating how university students collaborate to compose physics problems through structured tasks

Traditionally, scholars in physics education research have focused on students solving well-structured learning activities at the university. However, due to their constrained nature, these problems hinder collaboration and idea generation. In order encourage student decision making demands among undergraduate an introductory course, we utilized a real-world problem where groups were asked compose for younger learners. this study explored how they collaborated composing problems. Data collection consisted of audio recording group discussions while collaborating develop respective solutions. Through interviews, accessed participants’ perceptions task related challenges. Results suggest that is opportunity participants propose ideas make decisions regarding goals problem, concepts procedures, contextual details, magnitudes units introduce activities. Further, valued open-ended nature recognized its benefits utilizing into context, which turn enabled way not experienced by them with traditional These findings shed light courses, assume different role facing activity encourages expertise through physics-related communication writing.Received 7 January 2020Accepted 25 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.010120Published American Physical Society under terms Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution work must maintain attribution author(s) published article’s title, journal citation, DOI.Published SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasConcepts & principlesScientific reasoning solvingProfessional TopicsLower studentsPhysics Education Research