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Instructions for activities

These activities are designed to encourage inquiry-based learning, or learning that requires students to hypothesize, question, and test their thoughts. While they differ a lot in their specific requirements and topics, they each follow a similar format.

 

  • Introduction: This information is for the instructor to understand the goals for the activity. Some of the introductions also suggest requisite reading or knowledge for the students prior to engaging in the activity.

 

  • Question to pose to students: This section sets up the activity and gives students something to think about and latch onto prior to the rest of the exercise.

 

  • Students form hypothesis: For all activities, students will form a hypothesis related to the question they thought about in the previous section. Most activities will specify whether they should do this process in groups or on their own, though that is just a recommendation.

 

  • Students test their hypothesis: Much like the scientific method, students will be asked to put their hypothesis to the test. Some of the activities actually asked students to collect some form of data, though many involve testing as a thought experiment or discussion of boundary conditions.

 

  • Do the students’ hypotheses hold up: As happens in any good experiment, some post-activity debriefing is good. Where students correct in their hypotheses? If they were wrong, was it systematic? Has the activity changed how students think about something? I would encourage you to adjust this section to your particular classroom and make this discussion meaningful to your students and their perspectives.

License

Creative Commons License
Instructions for activities by Amy T. Nusbaum and Dee Posey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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