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Kinesthetic Activities

There are a number of circumstances where having the students use their own bodies to represent aspects of the physical situation helps them visualize the geometric situation. These kinesthetic activities are the most unusual of the interactive engagement activities used in the Paradigms courses.

These activities break the typical norms of university classrooms, where students are rarely asked to move away from their notebooks, let alone engage in “play”-like activities. Kinesthetic activities explicitly call for students to imagine themselves part of a physical system, and for some students to move around in space. (Many students feel goofy doing this, which probably also increases their memorability and makes them more fun - see our article about the importance of laughter in the classroom). This use of imagination creates a convenient opportunity to discuss the nature of physical modeling and idealizations.

A cognitive motivation for doing kinesthetic activities is to help students develop geometric reasoning skills. Many of these activities emphasize spatial relationships and motion. The classroom and the students become a toy model of some interesting physical phenomenon, and it is hoped that this concrete model encourages students to make connections between visualization and conceptual knowledge. Furthermore, some cognitive theories describe a kinesthetic mode of learning, based on experimental evidence that visualization and kinesthetic experience are cognitively linked. From this perspective, kinesthetic activities reinforce students' visualization skills.

The social aspects of these activities make them particularly effective teaching techniques. Putting students on the spot by asking them for some kind of response creates an urgency in understanding the central idea. Having students play a role in a demonstration may also give students a sense of ownership of the activity, furthering a need to understand the central idea. This is like what happens during a comedy show when the comedian interacts with a member of the audience. If you're that audience member, it may be a bit uncomfortable at the time, but it's the most powerful and memorable part of the show.

Most of our kinesthetic activities involve the entire class. If, instead, the activity involves only a single student or a few students, care should be taken to ask for volunteers or choose students who will not be overly embarrassed by being singled out. This consideration is particularly important in the Interpreting Effective Potential Plots, as this activity explicitly sets the student up to do the activity incorrectly the first time. We have had good success by asking for volunteers who are “feeling brave today.”

Kinesthetic activities can be time consuming and should only be used when the benefits outweigh this downside. However, the activities on Acting Out Charge Densities, Acting Out Current Density, and Curvilinear Basis Vectors are all quick and surprisingly successful. (See comments in the Reflections.)

Wake people up.

Need enough space to perform it. Could bring up a few people to perform it if you don't have as much space.

Any activity. “This is the first time I've tried this activity–let's see how it goes.”

It brings you back to the basics.

It is another representation. Alternatively, you can draw arrows. Solidify the qualitative understanding. You can empathize with the charges.

Example: direction of chemical reaction.

3-d is hard to take 2-d notes or drawings.


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