EDTECH504-College Physics Lesson Plan Activity Displacement, Speed, Velocity, and Acceleration: It's How the World Moves

Jeff Toorongian_SU2010 For this lesson plan activity assignment I am assuming the role of an online instructor in a college physics course. An early lesson in the course introduces the concepts of position, displacement, velocity, and acceleration. These concepts will serve as vital building blocks for subsequent material. As such it is very important that students fully comprehend their meaning and the terminology that describes them. I will review the lesson for the online course as originally designed, and then discuss the modifications I have made to improve it. Original Lesson: Topic: What are position, displacement, velocity, and acceleration? Define the terms, their units, and their relationship to each other. Lesson Chronology: 1- Begin a discussion of how we describe the motion of objects. Introduce distance (d). Distance is a scalar quantity, it has no direction. It has a dimension of length (meters, feet, miles, etc.). 2- Introduce displacement as the change in position of an object (final-initial). Displacement is a vector quantity and must be defined with a direction. 3- Discuss an example comparing distance and displacement. Use example of a short car trip to Marquette and back. The distance traveled is how far you drove there and back (assume 200 miles for this example-100 miles there and 100 miles back). The displacement for the trip however, is zero, because the final position is the same as the initial position. 4- Introduce speed as the total distance divided by the total time. Speed is a scalar quantity. It has no direction. You must specify speed over a specific time interval. Speed has units of miles per hour or kilometers per hour, or on smaller scales, meters per second or feet per second. 5- Introduce velocity as the change in displacement over a specified time. Velocity is a vector quantity. Velocity is not the same as speed. It is expressed in units of meters per second. In the car trip example the displacement was zero, so the velocity was zero. 6-Introduce acceleration as the change in velocity over a specified time. Acceleration is a vector quantity. Expressed in units of meters per second, per second. 7- Assign homework problems on displacement, speed, velocity, and acceleration.

Learning Theory Discussion: This original lesson is delivered to an online student in a steaming video based rich media presentation. The instructor is viewed in a video window and the associated visuals (PowerPoint slides, document camera notes, computer desktop display) are seen in a secondary image window that updates regularly with new content.

In its original form, this lesson typically runs from fifteen to twenty minutes if the student watches it straight through with no stopping. For much of the early portion of the lesson a direct instruction, behaviorist approach is used to introduce the concepts of distance, displacement, speed, and velocity in rapid succession. There is one break from this transmission of concepts that occurs after displacement is introduced. A short example is provided, discussing an automobile trip between two locations. This serves to better differentiate the concepts of distance and displacement. This example is built into the lesson and serves as a bridge to the next concepts (velocity and acceleration). Providing a real world application of these concepts allows for cognitive reasoning. Once the student understands the concepts of distance and displacement they then use them (prior knowledge) to develop an understanding of speed as the change in distance per unit of time, and of velocity as a change in the displacement over a given time. The concept of velocity as a vector quantity is important. Velocity must be described with a direction. It is this vector quantity concept of velocity (and later acceleration) that can be confusing to students. This concept needs further development in the lesson to provide full comprehension to the student. After the velocity discussion we introduce acceleration as the final concept in the lesson. As earlier in the lesson, acceleration is defined as the change in velocity over time. Students are told that like velocity, acceleration is also a vector quantity that is specified with a direction. Acceleration is expressed in units of meters per second, per second. This is often a point where students become confused. If they have not fully processed the idea of velocity they struggle mightily in comprehending acceleration, which builds on the concept of velocity. Once defined, an example of a vehicle traveling is developed to establish the velocity and acceleration ideas further. Because these concepts are the elementary building blocks to the study of motion in physics, they require full comprehension by the student. Although examples in the original lesson do demonstrate these concepts, I believe mastery can be improved with a modified lesson plan utilizing multimedia activities that apply additional cognitive and constructivist learning principles that allow the student to make the connections necessary. Modified Lesson: Topic: What are position, displacement, velocity, and acceleration? Define the terms, their units, and their relationship to each other. Lesson Chronology: 1- Begin a discussion of how we describe the motion of objects. Introduce distance (d). Distance is a scalar quantity, it has no direction. It has a dimension of length (meters, feet, miles, etc.). 2- Introduce displacement as the change in position of an object (final-initial). Displacement is a vector quantity and must be defined with a direction. 3- Discuss an example comparing distance and displacement. Use example of a short car trip to Marquette and back. The distance traveled is how far you drove there and back (assume 200 miles for this example, 100 miles there and 100 miles back). The displacement for the trip however, is zero, because the final position is the same as the initial position. 4- (modified lesson content)- To further establish and differentiate the concepts of distance and displacement we supplement the lesson with a live (recorded for online

delivery) demonstration. The instructor bounces a rubber ball off of the floor several times. They stress the importance of defining the position of the ball before starting the demo. They can define the position as zero where they release the ball from, or zero at the floor. The key is to define the position in advance and stick with that position. The distance the ball traveled is the sum of the distances the ball moved for each down and up cycle. The displacement is zero because the ball ended at the same point it began from. This multimedia demonstration provides additional visual clues of distance and displacement. It allows the learner to use their cognitive skills to make meaning using the new visual clues, the verbal information, and their prior knowledge from the earlier introduction of the concept (Mayer, 2002). Although online students are physically removed from the instructor in time and place, there are elements of situative cognition in play as well (Wilson & Myers, 2000). The student can participate virtually in the social arrangements similar to local students who are present in the live demonstration. They see the action of the ball, they hear the description of the action from the instructor and then construct meaning with the added visual and verbal information. 5- Introduce speed as the total distance divided by the total time. Speed is a scalar quantity. It has no direction. Must specify speed over a specific time interval. Speed often has units of miles per hour or kilometers per hour, or on smaller scales, meters per second. 6- (modified lesson content)- To further establish the concept of speed, we take a break from the transmission of terms (behaviorist learning) and look at an example. The students are presented a PowerPoint slide of a position vs. time graph of a moving vehicle. There are four labeled segments of the graph representing the position of the vehicle at different times. The instructor then asks the student to study the graph and identify the segment where the vehicle had the greatest speed. The student can pause the video and study the slide for as long as they need. Once they develop an answer they resume the video. The instructor reveals that the highest speed is found in the segment with the steepest slope. Since speed is a scalar quantity it doesn't matter whether the slope is positive or negative. The graph provides the student with helpful visual information regarding position and time and how plotting these on a graph displays speed with the slope steepest at the highest speed. This break from transmissive teaching provides the student with time to transfer the knowledge through practice (studying the graph). The student uses prior knowledge (distance, displacement, etc.) and the addition of visual information to make meaning and identify the solution through cognitive processing (Mayer, 2002). 7- Introduce velocity as the change in displacement over a specified time. Velocity is a vector quantity. Velocity is not the same as speed. It is expressed in units of meters per second. In the car trip example the displacement was zero, so the velocity was zero. 8-Introduce acceleration as the change in velocity over a specified time. Acceleration is a vector quantity. Expressed in units of meters per second, per second. 9- (modified lesson content)- To assist with further comprehension of the velocity and acceleration terms we add a live (recorded for online delivery) demonstration. The instructor uses a small car riding on an inclined ramp. They push the car slightly up the ramp. The car moves up the ramp, eventually stops, and then goes back down the ramp in the opposite direction. A PowerPoint graph of this motion plotting velocity versus time is shown. The students are asked to study the graph and then select the best answer from multiple choices describing the nature of the acceleration of the car. The constant slope of the graph indicates constant acceleration of the car, regardless of the direction of the cars motion. This concept can be very difficult to process. This another example of incorporating multimedia-learning theory into the lesson.

10- (modified lesson content)- Additional support for learning comprehension of these crucial concepts is provided with a short demonstration of a computer simulation. The simulation is called "The Moving Man", and is provided free to teachers and students from the Physics Educational Technology (PhET) project at the University of Colorado at Boulder (Perkins et al., 2006). The java-based simulation is briefly demonstrated and includes a link to this simulation so the student can download and run it on thier own computer as often as they want. 11- Assign homework problems on displacement, speed, velocity, and acceleration. Encourage additional experimentation with the PhET Moving Man simulation to further solidify concepts studied in this lesson. Learning Theory Discussion: This modified lesson provides students with increased opportunities to reinforce the concepts introduced through instructor-led demonstrations and to apply their new knowledge in a simulated environment for deeper comprehension. The original lesson did not offer enough examples or applications of the concepts to help students solidify them in their minds. The rubber ball demonstration on distance and displacement differentiates the terms with visual and verbal information. Segmentation of the lesson in part six helps to diminish chances for cognitive overload. The position/time slide helps students make the visual connection between the slope of the graph and the speed of the vehicle, and reinforces the scalar nature of speed. The additional visual and verbal information presented helps empower students to process the information and cement in their minds the proper meaning. The additional recorded demonstration in part nine helps put words into action in the discussion of velocity and acceleration. The car ramp demo with video and graphical representations further solidifies the concept for the student. Using "The Moving Man" computer simulation takes the lesson to a deeper level. Similar to the class demonstrations, the simulation provides a way for students to fully immerse themselves in the motion concepts discussed. They can manipulate the animated man, adjusting their speed, direction, velocity, etc. Real-time graphs are displayed, reflecting the user inputs. This simulation involves aspects of discovery learning . Cognitive learning design is used to provide for dual channel input (visual and verbal) that allows for improved cognitive processing and meaning making. References Mayer, R. E. (2002). Cognitive Theory and the Design of Multimedia Instruction: An Example of the Two-Way Street Between Cognition and Instruction. (Electronic version). New Directions For Teaching And Learning, 89(Spring 2002), 55-71. Wilson, B. G., & Myers, K. M. (2000). Situated Cognition in Theoretical and Practical Context. In Jonassen, D. H. & Land, S. M. (Eds.), Theoretical foundations of learning environments (pp. 57-88). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbarum Associates, Publishers. Perkins, K., Adams, W., Dubson, M., Finkelstein, N., Reid, S., Wieman, C., et al. (2006). PhET: Interactive simulations for teaching and learning physics. The Physics Teacher, 44(1), 18-23. doi:10.1119/1.2150754