Redesigning a junior-level electronics course to support engagement in scientific practices

TL;DR

This paper describes the redesign of a junior electronics course to actively involve students in authentic scientific practices, leading to improved modeling skills and better understanding of measurement systems.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for integrating scientific practices into course design and reports initial positive outcomes from this transformation.

Findings

Students more likely to identify discrepancies in models

Students tend to refine models to match measurements

Enhanced understanding of measurement systems

Abstract

Building on successful work on studying and transforming our senior-level Advanced Lab course, we have transformed our junior-level Electronics course to engage students in a variety of authentic scientific practices, including constructing, testing, and refining models of canonical measurement tools and analog circuits. We describe our approach to the transformation, provide a framework for incorporating authentic scientific practices, and present initial outcomes from the project. As part of the broader assessment of these course transformations, we examine one course learning outcome: development of the ability to model measurement systems. We demonstrate that in the transformed course students demonstrate greater likelihood of identifying discrepancies between the measurement and the model and significantly greater tendencies to refine their models to reconcile with the measurement.