To Draw Or Not To Draw? Examining The Necessity Of Problem Diagrams Using Massive Open Online Course Experiments

Abstract

Previous research on problem diagrams suggested that including a supportive diagram, one that does not provide necessary problem solving information, may bring little, or even negative, benefit to students' problem solving success. We tested the usefulness of problem diagrams on 12 different physics problems (6A/B experiments) in our massive open online course. By analyzing over 8000 student responses in total, we found that including a problem diagram that contains no significant additional information only slightly improves the first attempt correct rate for the few most spatially complex problems, and has little impact on either the final correct percentage or the time spent on solving the problem. On the other hand, in half of the cases, removing the diagram significantly increased the fraction of students' drawing their own diagrams during problem solving. The increase in drawing behavior is largely independent of students' physics abilities. In summary, our results suggest that for many physics problems, the benefit of a diagram is exceedingly small and may not justify the effort of creating one.

Publication Date

2-17-2017

Publication Title

Physical Review Physics Education Research

Volume

13

Issue

1

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.13.010110

Socpus ID

85025103849 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85025103849

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