Studying the Effect of Interactive Examples on Introductory Physics Courses

AAPT Meeting, Sacramento, CA, August 2004 (Contributed Talk)

Interactive Examples (IE's), developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are online homework problems that guide students through the solution by providing help in the form of questions.1 As students progress through the help sequence they may choose to stop at any time once they are able to solve the problem. Because help is given in the form of questions, students remain engaged throughout the interactive help sequence. Dynamic feedback is given based on a student's correct or incorrect answer to the help questions. Data from five years of an introductory mechanics course and an introductory E&M course has been analyzed to measure student performance gains.