In this virtual workshop, we will review strategies for how to use PhET to create sim-based inquiry activities for science classes, including activity sheets that students can use as they work independently or in small groups while they have direct access to simulations on their own device.
Is this your first time learning about PhET? If so, we encourage you to first finish the Introduction to PhET Simulations workshop and the Whole-Class Strategies workshop to learn how a PhET sim can be presented in a whole class setup.
All Virtual Workshops
If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected]
Goals
Reflect on inquiry learning in science education.
Develop strategies for writing sim-based inquiry activities for science.
Design a sim-based science lesson plan and activity sheet.
Format
Videos
Readings
Activities
Reflections and discussions
Total Time
4-7 hours
In the first part of this workshop, we will explore contexts in which students have direct access to simulations on their own devices.
Student-Sim Interaction
10 minutes
Students can interact with simulations (sims) at the beginning of an instructional unit to explore which variables control the phenomenon under investigation, and relate what they learn to their prior knowledge. Such interaction supports the construction of scientific models. Students can also use a sim at the end of a unit to reinforce what they have learned and apply this knowledge to solve problems.
Research shows that students will benefit the most from sims when you give them a high degree of autonomy over their learning, and when you encourage them to explore questions with the sims individually or in small groups. Structured interaction with sims is especially valuable when you have learning goals in mind that target skills and procedures. For example, you can design experiments that allow students to control variables. Students can use PhET sims in the following setups:
Guided-inquiry activities using worksheets during class: Design short activity worksheets focused on sims for student groups to work through in class. You can check in with the whole class and facilitate class discussions periodically during the activity to ensure that students are all mastering key ideas before moving on.
Homework assignments: Assign homework questions that require the use of a sim as part of pre-class preparation before a topic is covered in class, or as a follow-up in which students dig deeper into a topic you may have demonstrated that day. The design of PhET sims allows students to engage in scientist-like exploration, even without the presence of an instructor to guide them.
Combined digital and physical laboratory activities: Students can use PhET sims as pre-lab preparation to help get them familiar with a phenomenon before gathering data. You can also use PhET sims in a laboratory setting, either on their own or paired with a benchtop experiment. Students can make observations directly in the sim and compare them to observations using physical equipment.
Guided-inquiry activities in remote learning: Comprehensive science education requires that students engage with experimentation, and PhET resources are among your best allies, particularly for remote learning. You can use digital worksheets to engage students in an inquiry activity, and you can easily integrate PhET sims with learning management systems and other tech tools to make the experience more personalized and collaborative while providing quick feedback on students’ understanding.
Note: PhET strongly recommends that teachers avoid using “cook-book” style activities, in which teachers provide lists of detailed, explicit instructions on how to modify the sim, and what to observe, as it can limit student exploration and engagement.
The next video shows what a guided-inquiry activity looks like when working with small groups of students.
In the video,
Which skills did you notice the students practicing?
How does the teacher interact with the students?
How do you think this activity should change if the interaction with the sim was given as homework? How about in an online class?
Thinking about our own classroom,
What resources might you require to develop a guided-inquiry activity in your class?
How important is it to give your students a worksheet when they directly interact with the sim?
What characteristics do you think this worksheet should have?
Sample Activities
30 minutes
It’s time to step into the role of a student and work through a PhET activity. This exercise will give you an understanding of what it is like to experience a sim for the first time and how you might progress through it. Here we share activities in different areas of science: physics, biology, and chemistry. Choose the one that suits you best.
Pre-Lab Activity
Let’s find out what prior knowledge you have about the topics that we are going to address in class. For this purpose, we are going to use a pre-lab activity. Select from the activities below that are most relevant to you, explore the activity, and then think about what you already know regarding the topic.
"*Note: This activity is most suitable for those who can see the full range of colors. If you have color blindness, we suggest you choose one of the other two activities."
Open Play with Sims
Now it’s time to explore the sims, starting with “open play.” Try to discover as much as possible–figure out how to use the sim, find the controls, and take note of what kind of questions you have. (Are your questions about the phenomenon? Patterns you think you are observing? Questions about why the sim acts the way it does?). Choose a relevant sim and take 3-5 minutes to play with it.
Now that you’ve explored the sim,
What can you do with this sim?
What questions do you have?
What connections did you make between the questions in the pre-lab and what you experienced in the sim?
Student Activity Sheet
Now that you have explored a sim, completed an activity from a student's point of view, and reviewed the teaching guide, let’s analyze and reflect:
Now that you’ve completed the activity as a student,
Did you achieve the lesson’s learning goals and how do you know?
Lesson Structure
20 minutes
Effective activities often include a teacher guide to show the outline of an activity, indicating its structure and the duration of individual activities, as well as recommendations for students and teachers. Check out the corresponding teaching guides for the activities carried out in the prior section:
Now that you have explored a sim, completed an activity from a student's point of view, and reviewed the teaching guide, let’s analyze and reflect:
Do the proposed activities achieve the learning goals?
What skills and attitudes are also fostered by these types of activities?
What characteristics and structure do the activities have?
What should be your role and that of your students in such an activity?
There are many ways to teach with the aid of PhET sims when students have individual access to the sims via their own devices. For example, the lesson structure can follow a simple framework that is easy to replicate:
Pre-Lab activity to identify prior knowledge: Students become aware of what preconceptions they have regarding the topic, and connect new ideas about the topic with their previous experiences.
Open exploration with sims: Teachers give students a brief amount of time (3-10 minutes) to explore the sim without explicit instructions. This time helps students learn sim controls and features, gives them ownership over the sim as a learning tool, and primes their questions and curiosity for the activity.
Share-out: Students share discoveries they make, guided by the teacher.
Activity worksheet: Students work through broad Challenge Prompts that encompass multiple correct answers. The structure of the document encourages students to explore, experiment, collect data, and analyze it.
Discussion and checks: Students pause periodically to discuss with their peers or the whole class, while the teacher circulates and checks the progress of individual students and groups.
Discussion and summary: The teacher facilitates a discussion in which students share their thoughts and the teacher guides students toward the learning goals.
Analyze each section of the suggested lesson layout.
What do you think is the importance of each part?
How might this structure work in your classroom?
What classroom norms might you need to establish?
In the second part of this workshop, we will look at the components of an effective activity sheet to guide students’ interaction with sims.
Designing Activity Sheets
20 minutes
PhET sims are designed to guide students in inquiry-based exploration of scientific phenomena, and as such are most effective when students have control over their interactions with the sim. Having an activity sheet helps to guide students in their interaction without explicitly instructing them on how to use the sim. The worksheet helps organize their data and makes it easier for them to identify relationships and build conclusions. In this section, we give some recommendations on how to design effective activity sheets that have emerged from research and classroom observations by the PhET team.
Please watch this video for tips and recommendations from other teachers and the PhET research team on how to design student worksheets for in-class use of our sims.
A summary of the information contained in the video can be found in the following document:
Activity Sheet Design
Check the worksheet examples used in the previous video and identify which suggestions were implemented (if any) as described in the Activity Sheet Design guidelines. (To open the documents you need to be registered on the PhET website and be logged in to your account.)
Familiarity with students' prior knowledge aids in planning activities that motivate students to obtain evidence that can lead them to modify their prior beliefs—beliefs which are often naive (incomplete or incorrect). Merely providing an explanation or a demonstration is usually not sufficient to get students to modify these beliefs. Instead, a series of activities that inspires students to modify their knowledge are required. With an effective series of activities, students must confront parts of their knowledge that can no longer fully explain their observations and they must refine prior ideas and construct new knowledge that satisfactorily explains their observations.
We recommend starting an inquiry-based lesson with a short activity in a written or oral format that enables students to become aware of their prior knowledge and that links the given topic to their experience. Generally, a pre-lab activity asks students for predictions and explanations regarding everyday situations that relate to the topic at hand. Students do not use a sim to answer these pre-lab questions. Instead, the pre-lab is linked to the questions in the main activity worksheet, which is where the sim is introduced.
For each sample pre-lab activity below,
Review the examples of typical prior knowledge and ideas that some students may have about the specific topic.
Interact with the sim. Think of the types of questions you could ask students in a pre-lab activity to make them aware of their ideas.
Consider the types of questions you might ask on the main worksheet, keeping in mind that these questions should be designed to obtain evidence and contrast students’ findings with any naive prior knowledge and ideas.
Review the examples created by other teachers and compare them with your own thoughts.
Physics Example: Density
Naïve prior ideas and beliefs that students often have regarding density:
The concepts of mass, volume, and density are not differentiated—students attribute characteristics of one concept to another.
Density is related to only one of the variables (mass or volume) and not to the relationship between them.
Density is not considered to be an intrinsic property that does not change with the amount of matter.
Density is not associated as being a characteristic property of a substance which allows it to be differentiated from other substances.
What kind of pre-lab activity might you assign to students?
What questions might address students’ prior knowledge by leveraging the sim?
Review the following resources from educators who have worked with the PhET team and contrast it with what you had planned:
Biology Example: Mendelian Inheritance
Naïve prior ideas and beliefs that students often have regarding inheritance and Mendelian genetics:
The characteristics of offspring depend exclusively on their parents.
Not all genetically-determined characteristics are inherited. Some genetically-determined traits may result from the nature of the environment (for example, giraffes have long necks because they had to stretch their necks to reach the treetop leaves to feed themselves).
Certain physical characteristics are the result of the mixture of two others. For example, a rabbit with black fur and one with white fur can have offspring with gray fur.
What kind of pre-lab activity might you assign to students?
What questions might address students’ prior knowledge by leveraging the sim?
Check out the following resources from educators at the Digital University Institution (Colombia) in which they included an experimental coin toss game to determine Mendel's laws. Sims can be combined with hands-on manipulatives to enrich the student experience. Contrast these examples with what you had planned:
Chemistry Example: Build a Molecule
Naïve prior ideas and beliefs that students usually have regarding molecular formulae:
The words molecule, element, and atom are synonymous
The chemical formula and the name of the molecule are the same
There is confusion in the meaning of a coefficient and subscript in a chemical formula
What kind of pre-lab activity might you assign to students?
What questions might address students’ prior knowledge by leveraging the sim?
Review the following resources from educators who have worked with the PhET team and contrast it with what you had planned:
Planning Your Pre-Lab Activity
Now that you have reviewed some examples of pre-lab activities, think about a topic you wish to address using an active-learning strategy with a PhET sim.
What prior ideas do you think students have about the topic?
What type of activity would you use to make students aware of their prior ideas? Would you use a quiz, a written activity, or an oral one?
Why do you think a pre-lab activity is important?
How can the activity sheet support students to acquire new information to address prior ideas and achieve the learning goals?
What connection do you see between the pre-lab and the worksheet questions?
Challenge Prompts
60 minutes
Identifying learning goals and student’s prior ideas helps us design activities that can effectively pair with PhET sims. These activities should be planned and organized in a worksheet in a way that encourages inquiry. The worksheet should allow students to explore, gather and analyze data, and draw conclusions on the basis of reasoning and analysis, and achieving this can be done with the use of open-ended Challenge Prompts.
Writing an open-ended Challenge Prompt can be quite difficult! Prompts should be open enough that you are not instructing students on how to use the sim, but also specific enough such that students are capable of achieving your learning goals.
The Challenge Prompt should inspire students to explore in detail a key idea or concept that they can answer by achieving a particular configuration in the sim. Here are some example Challenge Prompts that encourage targeted inquiry:
Find all the ways to make bunnies take over the world in the Natural Selection sim.
What’s the biggest orbit you can make in the Gravity and Orbits sim?
How many circuits with three lit bulbs can you build in the CCK sim?
List all the essential items for making a neutral carbon atom in the Build an Atom sim
What are two ways to increase the kinetic energy of the skater in the Energy Skate Park sim?
How can you make the substance more acidic? Try it in the pH Scale sim
How can you create the smallest non-zero acceleration in the Forces and Motion: Basics sim?
Develop a procedure for identifying the mystery fluid in the Under Pressure sim.
Let’s practice writing some Challenge Prompts:
Review the given learning goal and the original prompt. Consider how students will end up using the sim.
Try modifying the prompt to make it more open-ended, but so it still achieves the same learning goal.
Compare your ideas with other teachers’ suggestions of Challenge Prompts.
1. Physics Example: Bending Light
Learning Goal: Estimate the index of refraction of a mystery material.
Original Prompt: Set the top material to be air and the bottom material to be Mystery B. Use Snell’s law to calculate the index of refraction of material Mystery B.
In this example, all students will be “answer-makers” because they are following directions to find an answer for themselves. If every student is asked to follow the same actions interacting with the sim, the exploratory nature of sims is not fully utilized. If every student takes the same route towards answering the given questions using the sim, a subsequent discussion cannot encompass different student points of view. Consider this possible modification:
New Prompt: Design an experiment to determine the index of refraction of one of the mystery materials. Compare your results and discuss them with a partner.
In this new version, students must experiment with the different sim tools, generate questions, and try to identify relationships and patterns. Using the instructions presented in the example, most students will not be able to deduce Snell's law on their own, but they might achieve the learning goal of simply estimating the index of refraction. Each student will follow their own path, so they can have a rich discussion with various inputs and ideas, highlighting certain methods of finding the index of refraction that are more accurate than others. In addition to this discussion, students might be able to identify the need for a model that describes a more exact relationship between the behavior of light and the index of refraction of a given material. PhET sims are often the informal preparatory basis for formal learning. PhET sims help by generating interest and providing an experience that allows students to more easily comprehend the abstract formalism of scientific concepts and models.
2. Physics Example: Energy Forms and Changes
Learning Goal: Compare the heat capacities of different objects.
Original Prompt: Select the Link Heaters and Energy Symbols options. Heat up the water and olive oil at the same time. Which one heats up faster?
Now it is your turn. Try to rewrite the original prompt so that it is more open-ended, but still reaches the learning goal.
How will students use the sim to respond to the prompt?
How could you modify the prompt so that it is open-ended, but still achieves the learning goal?
New Prompt: Compare your new prompt to one provided by PhET in the Challenge Prompt Exercise sheet at the end of this section.
3. Biology Example: Gene Expression
Learning Goal: Determine the conditions that affect the mRNA transcription rate.
Original Prompt: On the mRNA screen, increase the concentration and affinity of negative transcription factors to high, while decreasing the concentration and affinity of positive transcription factors to low. What effect do these settings have on the rate of transcription?
In this example, the statement is formulated in such a way that all students will be following explicit instructions. Therefore, this approach does not take full advantage of the exploratory nature of sims. Check out the following modification that scaffolds learning:
New Prompt: Adjust the concentration and affinity in each biomolecule to find out which conditions affect the rate of mRNA transcription. Write down your discoveries.
This new version allows students to compare variables. It also avoids providing instructions for all possible interactions, which leads to broader exploration and different answers that later motivate a richer discussion.
4. Biology Example: Natural Selection
Learning Goal: Understand the role of environmental factors and mutations in the survival of species.
Original Prompt: Select either the equatorial or arctic environment in the sim. Then, click on the right-upper box to add a dominant or recessive mutation. In the environmental factors box, first, click wolves and try it. Describe: Did the rabbit population stabilize? Does the number of rabbits increase or do they die?
Let’s practice. In this example, your goal is to rewrite the prompt so that it is open-ended, but still reaches the learning goal. Keep in mind the following:
How will students use the sim to respond to the prompt?
How could you modify the prompt so that it is open-ended, but still achieves the learning goal?
New Prompt: Compare your new prompt to one provided by PhET in the Challenge Prompt Exercise sheet at the end of this section.
5. Chemistry Example: Gas Properties
Learning Goal: Determine how changes to the pressure, volume, number of particles, or temperature in a contained system influence the properties of a gas.
Original Prompt: Double the number of particles in the container. What happens to the pressure, volume, and temperature of the gas?
Once again, this example gives explicit directions to the students, restricting them to a single action– to double the number of particles. Every student will get the exact same result, discouraging diverse answers. Check out this new prompt:
New Prompt: Find three actions in the sim that increase the pressure in the container. Describe each of your actions, identifying the variables that are involved.
This new prompt cues students to notice the important effects of a given action within the sim and gives them space to write what they notice. In the statement, one gives a specific goal—namely to increase the pressure in the container. The new prompt allows them to explore the sim and find out different ways to accomplish the task. Through discussion, you can encourage students to compare their results with other groups.
6. Chemistry Example: States of Matter: Basics
Learning Goal: Describe the molecular model for solids, liquids, and gasses.
Original Prompt: For each of the phases of matter, describe: 1) How its constituent particles are arranged, 2) How those particles move, 3) Their relative speed.
Let's practice. In this example, your goal is to rewrite the prompt so that it is open-ended, but still accomplishes the learning goal. Please keep in mind:
How will students use the sim to respond to the prompt?
How could you modify the prompt so that it is open-ended, but still achieves the learning goal?
New Prompt: Compare your new prompt to one provided by PhET in the Challenge Prompt Exercise sheet at the end of this section.
More Examples
Remember, there is not a “correct” Challenge Prompt or a “best” activity worksheet. Prompts and worksheets might work differently for each classroom. The modified Challenge Prompts here are only examples that can guide you to take advantage of the characteristics of PhET sims and the activity design tips mentioned in this workshop. However, writing good activities is a process that involves regular adaptation and depends on the nature of your students. Practice improving even more challenge prompts in the following document. Find the examples you just worked on and compare your prompts with the ones proposed by our team below:
Challenge Prompt Exercise
Post-Lab Activities
15 minutes
A concluding activity is important for determining if students have achieved the learning goals. Students should be able to communicate their answers and justify conclusions with evidence they have collected during the activity. Additionally, students should be able to answer questions about scenarios other than the exact one used in their activity, thereby demonstrating their ability to apply their understanding to new contexts. Verifying students’ achievement of learning goals can be accomplished in several ways, such as the following:
Including final questions on the activity sheet that help students synthesize conclusions.
Using Concept Questions and facilitating a final oral discussion with the group.
Preparing a couple of written questions as an “exit ticket” for students to submit.
Doing post-lab activities on a regular basis familiarizes students with the expectation that they will write down their reflections or critically answer a question that evaluates their learning, even if they do not receive a grade for it. This structure can also help students identify remaining questions, and help them to reinforce their knowledge or encourage them to consult with the teacher. Post-lab activities are also useful for you as a teacher because they help you identify if there is a concept that is confusing for the majority of your students and requires more attention.
Some of the examples that have been reviewed above include post-lab activities, either as a written document or as Concept Questions. Some even use the same pre-lab and post-lab questions so that students can reflect on how their answers changed as a result of the activity. Review a few examples below directly from the PhET website. (Remember that you must register and login to open the following documents.)
Physics:
Chemistry:
Biology:
Homework
10 minutes
Even without an instructor present to guide them, students can engage in scientist-like activities using PhET. As you already know, many of the sim design features such as the choice of controls, the feedback provided when students explore, and visual representations help students discover how a given sim works.
As such, sims can be used:
Prior to instruction, to reveal students’ prior ideas of a phenomenon and to start developing a framework of important ideas, abstractions, and concepts in advance of any formal instruction.
After instruction, to support conceptual reasoning and to help students develop an even deeper understanding.
For PhET homework to be successful, we recommend keeping assignments short. Try to mix a variety of questions within the assignment that encourage students to explore, predict, conclude, and justify their answers. The same tips for writing challenge prompts in an inquiry-based activity can apply to homework questions as well. Try to design contextual activities that connect these questions with the physical world. Review more tips on how to use PhET within homework in the following PhysPort article:
What are some tips for using PhET with Homework?
Congratulations! You have completed the Science Activity Design workshop.
Take a moment to summarize:
What are the main ideas or skills you learned from this workshop?
How will you take what you have learned and implement it in the near future?
Now It’s Your Turn!
1-2 hours
Now it’s time to design a draft of your first PhET activity. Review the instructions for the activity in the document below.
"If you are taking this course independently, we recommend that you complete the following activities and save them to your computer. (Should you later decide to enroll in a facilitated version of this course, you can then submit these assignments to earn a certificate)."
Activity Sheet Template
Now that you know how to design a science activity sheet using PhET, continue with your learning journey with one of our other workshops:
Math Activity Design: Create your own PhET inquiry-based activities for mathematics classes.
Facilitating PhET Simulation Use: Prepare, implement, and reflect on your use of a PhET inquiry-based activity.