Physics Vignettes

Screencapture from a vignette covering circuits using Minecraft

During my graduate research assistantship under David Rosengrant, physics educator and dean at the College of Education, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, I assisted in developing several game-based, alternative assessments called ‘vignettes’.

Our goal for the vignettes is to replace traditional end-of-chapter textbook questions. Typically, textbooks conclude each chapter with questions designed to test students' understanding of the material. However, as Rosengrant notes, “... while these problems help with problem-solving skills, many times students develop heuristics simply to solve a problem without actually understanding the content."

Vignettes present students with a familiar platform—video games—in a visually engaging way, encouraging them to solve physics problems based on in-game environments. In this setting, students are required to find data, make estimates, and refine their skills in forming assumptions.

During my initial introduction and work alongside Dr. Rosengrant, several vignettes had already been produced, though they were several years old and in need of review. In addition, several physics topics had not been introduced yet, such as electricity, magnetism, waves, and optics.

As my background is not in physics, I assisted in the visual refreshment of the vignettes, recorded gameplay footage, helped in the recruitment and management of physics students who were better equipped to help review and produce more vignettes, and offered suggestions on games that may be the best display of physics principles/have the greatest alignment with real-world physics.

Under my supervision, two undergraduate physics students helped develop 19 new vignettes and updated 14 existing ones.

You can view an example of one of our vignettes here. This is an ongoing project, which I continue to assist with remotely.