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CLASP discussion/laboratory activity cycle: small-group work on model-based activities, whole-class discussion, and homework integrated into the next DL meeting

Design · All designs
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 design), q2 · 1 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description

The CLASP discussion/laboratory (DL) is the core instructional setting: students in five-member groups at tables with a wall-mounted blackboard work through three activity cycles of 30 to 60 minutes each, twice weekly. A typical cycle consists of small-group work on activities that ask students to discuss physical situations in their own words, use the model's technical vocabulary, diagram the situation, and sometimes translate to mathematics, punctuated by short and closing whole-class discussions carried out in the students' voice. Homework builds directly on DL activities and is checked for effort, not correctness, then followed up in the next meeting. The article states "The DLs are where the students do much of their thinking and get much of their practice with the material, so they are the most important part of the course."

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

  • Rooms must accommodate five or six small groups, each with a blackboard and a table facilitating discussion among all five students; instructors should not be responsible for more than six small groups.

Constraints

  • Student performance on quizzes and the final exam was found to be rather independent of instructor interaction type, depending more on the curricula materials than on individual instructor actions.

Target Learners

  • Undergraduate bioscience majors in large-enrollment introductory physics

Target Goals

  • Conceptual understanding and sense-making of core physics models
  • Scientific discussion and argumentation skills

Claims

Examples

Key Sources

  • Potter, W., Webb, D., West, E., Paul, C., Bowen, M., Weiss, B., Coleman, L., & De Leone, C. (2012). Sixteen years of Collaborative Learning through Active Sense-making in Physics (CLASP) at UC Davis. https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.6970. doi:10.48550/arxiv.1205.6970
Page metadata
Field Value
type design
id clasp-dl-activity-cycle
title CLASP discussion/laboratory activity cycle: small-group work on model-based activities, whole-class discussion, and homework integrated into the next DL meeting
description The CLASP discussion/laboratory (DL) is the core instructional setting: students in five-member groups at tables with a wall-mounted blackboard work through three activity cycles of 30 to 60 minutes each, twice weekly.
status review
generated by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-09-26
trust unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources 1 — potter-2012

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