All educators know from experience how easy it is to overestimate what students are learning. This is especially true when teaching students about the use of technical machinery and electronics.

 

Practice alone doesn’t make perfect. Students need feedback to make adjustments and to learn from their mistakes.

 

If only they’d had a chance to use the multimeter, or run the PCR machine, or troubleshoot the fuel injector a few more times. They knew what they were supposed to do; they just didn’t have enough practice doing it. Right?

 

Well, maybe. But simply giving students more time with those devices might not have helped much. Without expert guidance, they would most likely have blown the fuse, or contaminated the DNA, or mistuned the fuel injector. Without some kind of mental model of how those devices work, simply tinkering aimlessly with them is an inefficient way to learn.

 

 

Enter the age of computer simulation. With it, educators can create models: graphic representations of systems or devices linked to an interactive model that implements their function.

 

Instructors can program computers to generate a series of challenges that require students to use the simulation for a particular purpose—measuring a voltage, sequencing a gene, or tuning an engine, for instance. Knowing what challenge the students faced, the computer can analyze their actions and provide practical feedback, point out errors, offer suggestions, and even present a brief tutorial on difficult topics. It can also score their performance and encourage them to repeat a challenge (with randomly generated variations), seeking both improved scores and increased understanding.

 

Of course, no matter how well students score on these artificial tests, they also need to practice on real equipment. No one wants to hire a biotechnician, for instance, who has never worked with a PCR cycler. The simulation, no matter how realistic, is intended to supplement the real world, not supplant it. The extra practice and deeper understanding provided to students who use online formative assessments give them an advantage in the classroom and in the job market.

 

 

This understanding led to the creation of the Simulations for Performance Assessments that Report on Knowledge and Skills (SPARKS) Project. With support from the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program, SPARKS creates formative assessments for electronics instruction.

 

Using simulations of circuits and test equipment, SPARKS assessments give students an opportunity to practice their skills and improve their performance in a safe and supportive environment. The assessments provide a sequence of realistic tasks of increasing complexity reminiscent of those commonly used in the laboratory portion of the standard college-level introductory course.

 

SPARKS remains a work in progress. Administrators are building a simulated breadboard that will enable students to build and test circuits consisting of resistors and DC voltage sources.

 

The components will be used to create assessments that explore phenomena associated with time-varying signals. The hope is that by spring 2011, all of the SPARKS assessments will be available for students to take online, wherever they are, in preparation for upcoming tests.

 

Thanks to the program’s diligent recordkeeping and reporting, instructors can be confident that their students will benefit from the hands-on experience.

 

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