Day 5

A. Mani
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai, India

Concept inventories are MCQ-based instruments designed to test the understanding of concepts (and possibly the reasons for failure to understand) by learners. Often, they are deemed to be rather incompatible with student centered modes of learning and evaluation. Some inventories require students to provide justifications for their answer and thereby significantly boost the quality of assessment offered. In this research the problem of adapting the subject/concept specific instruments to make room for diverse response patterns (including vague ones) is explored in some detail by the present author. It is shown that high granular operator partial algebras invented by
her [1] with additional temporal and key operators are well suited for representing them. Rough concept inventories, proposed in the research, can handle vague subjective responses, improved standardization and the basic apparatus for the formal study of consequence in the contexts.

A weak summary of the proposed methodology is as follows:

1. select a number of key concepts in a subject or topic;
2. situate them relative to the concepts and granular concepts described in the model (or alternatively situate the concepts relative to a concept map in terms was constructed from and is a
   part of, and basic well-understood concepts);
3. formulate multiple choice questions that aim to test key aspects of applications of the chosen concepts;
4. each question is required to have at least one correct answer and a number of distractors based on alternative conceptions;
5. require explanation from students for their choice;
6. evaluate explanations relative to model in terms of concept approximations (or alternatively evaluate explanations relative to concepts that are definitely and possibly understood).

References

1. Mani, A.: Dialectical Rough Sets, Parthood and Figures of Opposition-I. Transactions on Rough
   Sets XXI(LNCS 10810) (2018) 96_141

---

Soham Dighe
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai, India 
sohamdighe228@gmail.com 

Collaboration is the key to success. Creating a collaborative workplace often results in a win-win situation, where everyone involved can gain from the experience through successful outcomes and the feeling of achievement.

In the modern-day world, major collaborations happen over files and documents.

There are certain collaboration problems that we face with respect to the same:

1) File duplication and the inability to access the most current document version.

2) Users are unsure of which is the final document version.

3) Important documents are accidentally written over.

4) Time is lost searching for documents which are often never found.

5) Document naming conventions are convoluted.

6) Document access permissions are confusing.

7) Client collaboration and file sharing is not clearly defined.

8) Users are unable to access boiler plate documents, forms and templates.

File Duplication stays the top most problem as users end up working on multiple versions of the same file. That’s where GIT, a version control tool, comes into picture. By definition, Version control is a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later. GIT is as useful to a programmer like me, as well as to a researcher. In my presentation I will be focusing on both the roles and how can we as users benefit from the same.

---

Anirvan Gupta¹, Nivedita Azad^2
1Department of Physics, Smt. Devkiba Mohansinhji Chauhan College of Commerce and Science, Silvassa, U.T. of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, India

²Department of Botany, Smt. Devkiba Mohansinhji Chauhan College of Commerce and Science,
Silvassa, U.T. of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, India
niveditaazad1984@gmail.com 

In the auditory channel, humans are highly attuned to emotional signals in speech and music that arise from shifts in the frequency spectrum and intensity of sound. In this study, responses of human beings from various age groups were observed by exposing them to sinusoidal tones of frequency within human hearing range. Similar to a mechanical resonant system, the human body also has an internal cavity, which, when exposed to an external frequency equal to its natural frequency, vibrates with maximum amplitude. An attempt was made to estimate the resonant frequency of an individual. The study is expected to throw light on the acoustic environment most suited for an individual to make him realize a state of contentment when he is in an enclosure meant for worship or meditation. The study may also support people from medical background to treat a person through acoustical techniques.

---

V. C. Sonawane
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai, India 
vcs@hbcse.tifr.res.in

Learning by ‘making things ‘is highly encouraged as students can take multiple decisions regarding material, size, proportions, control during experimentation. Making which engages them with doing science. With this idea, we took up the challenge to make an incubator from scratch as a learning experience in the Integrated Laboratory.  

Incubator is a device used to grow and maintain microbiological cultures or cell cultures. It basically maintains optimal temperature, humidity and proportion of CO2 & O2 in an enclosed area like the atmosphere. Incubators are essential for a lot of experimental work in cell biology, microbiology and molecular biology. An incubator for hatching hen or quail eggs has more demand since it has commercial value. As chicken eggs are readily available and are the biggest single cell available for us to study embryos in the laboratory, we decided to build it. Chicken egg is a eukaryotic organism whose cells, unlike prokaryotes, have a nucleus enclosed within a membrane. We decided to study it, partly to make this unit a part of Makers Lab. Idea struck us that we would design and fabricate a portable incubator. Four eggs were kept for hatching but only two hatched. During the entire 21 days, we learnt many things. In this workshop interesting facts related to incubators as hardware and the study of embryos will be discussed in brief.  

---

Tripti Bameta¹, Arjun Singh² , Deepa Chari³ & Mashood K K ⁴
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai, India 
tripti@hbcse.tifr.res.in ¹, arjun@hbcse.tifr.res.in ² , deepa@hbcse.tifr.res.in ³ & mashood@hbcse.tifr.res.in 4 ,

The direction of force due to atmospheric pressure is a difficult topic for students to understand. Our study involving 35 high school students point towards the existence of two contrasting mental models of atmospheric pressure underlying their conception of the direction of force due to atmospheric pressure. These mental models, which we call the weight model and the collision model, were revealed as part of an activity to determine atmospheric pressure. Our study shows a predisposition among students to adhere to the weight model. We discuss everyday experiences and textbook presentations as two plausible sources for this predisposition. The activity and associated discussions have shown potential to facilitate student’s transition from the weight model to the collision model.

---