Abstract

The results of an implementation of the Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILD) strategy developed by Thornton & Sokoloff [1] are presented. The strategy guides the students through prediction, observation, registration, and discussion steps. The sample consists of 166 students split in two groups: the control group (CG) of 66 students divided in 17 work teams and the experimental group (EG) of 65 students, formed by 13 work teams. The implementation was carried out in an introductory physics course corresponding to Newtonian mechanics as part of the lab sessions at a large private Mexican university. The covered topic was collisions and linear momentum and the collected data corresponds to the 13th week of classes when the topic was studied in the classroom. The goal was to identify the feasibility and success of the implementation in a learning setting where other active learning strategies have been used. Among the main findings it is reported a better conceptual evaluation of the students along with a positive attitude shown by the lab assistants. Besides that, a change in the students’ reasoning when comparing their prediction and observation registered was found.