Eye-gaze patterns as students study worked-out examples in mechanics

This study explores what introductory physics students actually look at when studying worked-out examples. Our classroom experiences indicate that introductory physics students neither discuss nor refer to the conceptual information contained in the text of worked-out examples. This study is an effort to determine to what extent students incorporate the textual information into the way they study. Student eye-gaze patterns were recorded as they studied the examples to aid them in solving a target problem. Contrary to our expectations from classroom interactions, students spent $40\pm 3\mathrm{\%}$ of their gaze time reading the textual information. Their gaze patterns were also characterized by numerous jumps between corresponding mathematical and textual information, implying that they were combining information from both sources. Despite this large fraction of time spent reading the text, student recall of the conceptual information contained therein remained very poor. We also found that having a particular problem in mind had no significant effects on the gaze-patterns or conceptual information retention.

Figure 1

(Color) Experimental protocols for the Homework and Quiz conditions.

Figure 2

(Color) Worked-out example regions of interest. Textual (T1–T4) and mathematical (M1–M4) information in the solution were spatially separated beneath the problem statement (p) and diagram (d). Two granularities were used, treating each step either individually (a) or aggregated into textual and mathematical columns (b).

Figure 3

(Color) Mean percentage fixation time by region using aggregated columns of Fig. 2b. Error bars show the standard error of the mean.

Figure 4

Mean transitions grouped by type. Categories are between Corresponding textual and mathematical information, Sequential information, and all Others.

Figure 5

(Color) Mean percentage fixation time in textual explanations. The group means (a) are presented for the Homework (hatched) and Quiz (solid) conditions. Means are additionally grouped by each individual example (b).

Figure 6

(Color) Subject performance on target problems. As depicted in Fig. 1, each target problem was solved after studying two worked-out examples. Target Problem A followed examples 1 and 2 of Fig. 5b, while Target Problem B followed examples 3 and 4.

Figure 7

Sample conceptual recall question. The example problem statement is shown to the subject, but the two-column solution is removed. Note that the answer to this question is contained in the second textual statement on the left column of the worked-out example shown in Appendix .

Figure 8

Sample worked-out example presented to subjects. The text and mathematics are arranged into two columns and grouped into steps with dashed lines.