I’ve been in academics for more than 20 years as a member of the physics faculty at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. Here, the department is small enough that all of us get to share in the course load, which is quite nice—it gives me an opportunity to teach a wide range of courses, from physical science (for non-science majors) all the way up to quantum mechanics.
During the first years of the pandemic, everyone in education had to adapt, and most of our activities weren't conducted in the most ideal environment. At my school, we started off by moving all classes online using Google Meet. (That wasn’t too much fun.) This was supplemented with short lecture videos. (I actually enjoyed making those.) Next, we implemented a hybrid model where some students would be in class and some would be online. (This was terrible.)
While remote learning can have some advantages, as a teacher I noticed that we all picked up some bad habits over the past couple of years. Have you noticed that after a holiday, when you’ve sat around and watched too much football while eating more than you normally would, you might not be at your regular level of fitness? Well, the same thing can happen with learning.
With exercise, you know that after the holidays you have to hit the gym or get outside in order to get back in shape and feel ready to take on the world. With learning, I think it is more about figuring out how to constructively use the technologies that helped us go remote instead of relying on them as a crutch.
It can be shocking to realize how much power we carry around with us all the time. Not only is your phone a very powerful computer, it also has a decent camera and a host of other sensors.
And smart phones often belong in school: It's possible to use your phone to collect and analyze data. For an experiment, students can use the accelerometers in the phone to measure the distance an elevator travels. Or how about using a long-exposure photo to measure the speed of the International Space Station? You can even solve physics problems by creating Python code right on your phone, or use built-in lidar to create 3D maps of a room.
In larger lecture-style classes, as a first step in class discussions, I have the students use their phones to vote their answers to conceptual questions. (One of my favorites is about the acceleration of a tossed ball at its highest point. A common answer is that since the velocity is zero, the acceleration is also zero—but that’s not true. In fact, if the acceleration was zero at the highest point where the velocity is also zero, the ball would just magically appear to be stationary.)
However, there is one way the students use their phones in class that I think is not always such a good idea: They take pictures of everything. (Admittedly, this has been going on for a while, so it’s not purely pandemic-related.) Now, don't get me wrong—I also take a lot of pictures. Photos are not just a great way to capture memories of your favorite dog; they can also serve as a reminder of things we need to do, like taking a picture of the grocery list. So what's the problem with students taking a picture in class of a physics solution or the derivation of an equation?
Let me give a real life example. It's my introductory physics course, and I'm going over a practice problem. I find it to be useful to model effective problem-solving strategies so that students can see the entire process. Of course, students have an opportunity to ask questions as I demonstrate the solution, and I pause several times to let them attempt each part before progressing. Once we make it to the end, the problem is finished, and at least part of the solution is written on the board. (Sometimes stuff gets erased.) Before you know it, some phones come out. Snap!
Why is that bad? I think it encourages students to think of physics problems as being like the game Pokémon Go, where the object is to capture as many solutions as possible. But it’s not: The process is important, not the solution.
I don’t mind if the student is just taking a picture to help them remember the result, intending to go back and work through the whole thing on their own. That's not a bad idea. However, I'm just afraid that all too often a student feels that the solution is the goal. Having the answer is not the same as understanding.
Or take the example of students who start off working on a problem in pairs using presentation boards mounted around the room. After working for five minutes, each student will move to a new board with a new student to work for five more minutes. This goes for three or four rounds until most pairs have solutions. (I got this idea from a fellow physics educator; it's called whiteboard speed dating.)
Sometimes these speed dating problems are a little difficult. Students can find it challenging to even start. They are afraid to put something on the board that might be wrong, because no one wants to be wrong. Wouldn't it be better to just not write anything down and wait? I mean, surely Dr. Allain (that's me) will eventually go over the solution and then boom, phone picture!
When this happens, I tell the class the following very important idea: "It's better to do something wrong than to see something right."
Those mistakes are part of the learning process. You can't expect to always get everything right when you are learning. It would be like going to basketball practice but not taking any shots because you are afraid that you might miss. Yes, you are going to miss. Missing a goal is how you get better at taking shots. The same is true for physics or any type of learning.
In the end, I let my students take photos, because there’s a chance they might actually use the pictures in a practical way. Also, banning phones would mean that I couldn't have any phone-based classroom activities, and it might send the wrong message that I have all the answers and the students need to earn those answers through hard work. Instead, the answers are just the tip of the iceberg.
But if you’re a student heading back to school in January, and your teacher allows phones in class, my advice would be to take pictures if you need to save something off the board. But don’t stop there. Force yourself to go back and work through any problems or solutions from those pictures. Treat the photo as the beginning of the learning process, not the end.
There's another place where the students’ focus on answers—instead of the learning process—is clearly visible: websites that give solutions to physics problems. During the pandemic, students took advantage of these more often, because more assessment was moved to an online form, which makes it easier to cheat. And because these sites are becoming more popular, there are now more of them. This makes me sad. The problem is that students can just copy a solution without understanding it, and it's all too obvious that many times this is exactly what happens.
Consider the following very common projectile-motion problem that is covered in just about every physics textbook: A ball is launched horizontally off a table that is 1.2 meters above the floor, and it hits 1.7 meters from the starting point. What is the launch velocity of the ball?
The problem is normally solved by looking at the horizontal and vertical motions separately. (That's the cool part of projectile motion.) Just about every textbook calls the horizontal velocity vx and the vertical velocity vy. So, when a student submits a solution using u for the horizontal velocity and u' (called u-prime) for the vertical velocity, it just looks weird. Why would they pick those symbols for the variables? You know why: They found the answer online.
You might think that if instructors assigned unique physics problems, the students would actually create their own solutions. That doesn't work. I can make something weird (and honestly quite fun) for a physics question, but students post it online within hours. It would actually be funny if it weren't so bad for learning. And even worse, someone is making serious money from these online solutions, which often require a subscription to their services.
If you’re a student who is tempted to use online answers, I’d urge you to use them only to work through a part of a problem that you are stuck on or to double-check that you’ve understood the problem correctly.
There's one more thing that students have a problem with lately—going to class.
Online learning isn't all bad; in fact, for some learners, it offers opportunities that weren't there before. Videos can help students keep up with class—well, if they actually watch them—and they provide an opportunity to review material that was perhaps a bit confusing. Going remote gives students a certain amount of flexibility to compensate for things that happen in real life, like catching the flu or getting a flat tire. Life happens, and it would be a shame to miss out on school. And it can be a bonus in Louisiana: When we have to cancel class because of a hurricane (yes, that happens), we won’t lose much class time since we can just switch to an online mode.
But there's something about in-person classes that I've found difficult to replicate in an online environment. I like to think of a physics class as a community of learners. Students can play the role of educator and learner at the same time when they interact with their peers. (And don't forget the other learner in the course—the instructor. Even teaching an introductory physics course, I still find some new understanding every time I teach it, which is why I love it so much.)
If you’re a teacher, there’s so much more that can be done during class time than just lecturing. You can have students work on problems—or even better, have them find the error in a solution to a problem. You could have them create problems that other students could solve. Honestly, the possibilities are endless. If you are looking for more ideas (at least in physics), check out the American Association of Physics Teachers’ resource site: Compadre.org.
If you are a student, try to attend class as much as possible. Don't think of it as though you are in a movie theater watching a bunch of answers. Instead, use that time to engage in all the learning opportunities.
In the end, the goal is to practice, not to get everything right. When it comes time to work on your homework, let yourself get stuck. Work the problem to the point where you don’t know what to do anymore. Getting stuck is the first step to getting unstuck, right? After all, if you don't have any troubles with a physics problem, then you either already understood it or it wasn't that great of a problem to begin with.
