Branching Out in Physics Lessons with Decision Trees
One area where my level 2 NCEA physics students commonly struggle is in the topic of kinematics, in particular, projectile motion. The problem usually comes with them struggling to choose which of the four equations of motion they should use to solve these types of problems. Recent developments in artificial intelligence , in particular, Chat GPT-4, a powerful natural language processing tool could be used to generate decision trees and flowcharts that can help students solve these types of problems. A decision tree is a diagram that shows the possible outcomes of a series of choices, while a flowchart is a diagram that shows the steps of a process or algorithm. Both can help students visualize and organize their thinking and guide them to the correct solution. So, in order to create these decision trees, students had to develop an effective prompt. The model they used was based around the work of Brad Weinstein . He uses the PREP model, where each letter in the acronym represents Prom