Learning fundamental mechanics relationships using inquiry-based learning activities

Inquiry-based learning activities (IBLAs) consist of presenting teams of students with a physical situation and asking them to predict what will happen. The students collaboratively experiment with physical hardware that becomes the "authority", thus forcing students to confront any misconceptions. Several variations of the activity are presented, requiring students to examine and reformulate their thinking on the mechanics concepts involved. We have developed four IBLAs to date, focused on the principles of mass and acceleration relationships, work energy, and gyroscopic motion. Initial results have been very promising for the IBLAs, with increased performance on the Dynamics Concept Inventory and on subsequent transfer questions. In order to improve upon IBLA implementation, including when to intervene with explanations, we are recording talk-alouds with individual students. Sessions from the first IBLA, which involves hanging different masses on pulleys and predicting accelerations, have indicated that students can often predict and explain the first two iterations of the activity, but struggle when presented with a slightly different version of the concept. Our future work involves measuring engagement and motivation during the IBLAs, determining when and why an "aha" moment occurs, and developing best practices for developing, implementing, and assessing IBLAs.