Physics overhauls course curriculum

This semester, the School of Physics is bringing some major changes to Physics I and II, otherwise known as 2211 and 2212, as part of an overhaul of its two most widely taken courses.

Class attendance is now mandatory for the over 2,000 students currently taking the intro physics courses. All sections of 2211 and 2212 are also now using the Personal Response System (PRS) to answer course questions during lecture. Undergraduate TAs have also been hired to lead 2212 laboratory classes, and some of the lab periods are now being used as Analysis Tutorials, essentially TA-led recitation time in which more complicated physics problems are worked out by students in a group.

According to Michael Schatz, physics undergraduate coordinator, these changes, along a change in textbooks last fall, are simply steps in their "continual attempt to improve physics education."

"It is part of our job as professors here.We are in the process of constantly seeking how to find better ways to teach," Schatz said. "Implementing new materials, new technologies and new approaches to teach physics better.is the driving motivation behind any change we bring into the classroom."

This semester's changes in policy, however, are not only a continuation towards "better physics instruction," but are also a result of the changes implemented last semester.

Last fall's new textbooks were designed to help students look at multiple ways of solving a problem, while the new course schedule "significantly decreased the amount of material covered, in order to teach the topics in more depth," said long-time physics instructor Martin Jarrio.

"The idea is that it is preferable to have the students really understand a relatively small amount of material, rather than giving them only the vaguest inklings of a large 'smorgasbord' of ideas," said Jarrio, who was, and still is, heavily involved in the curriculum changes.

PRS questions were also added to some of the lectures.

"The point of using this technology," Schatz said, "is to get students to interact more, to pose questions, to interact with the instructor and themselves.to develop problem-solving skills. There are lots of different ways of representing a problem," he said.

Physics instructors felt, and still feel, that many students simply memorize a slew of formulas without really understanding the physics behind the formulas. The overwhelming consensus among the various instructors seems to be that most students don't actively engage in problem solving, but instead hunt for a 'magic formula' that they hope will lead to the answer.

In response to this concern, as of last semester, more and more handwritten problems have been added to physics quizzes in place of the standard multiple choice questions.

While more handwritten problems meant more hand-grading for the instructors, the trade-off was that they would have a firsthand look at how well students really understand the problems.

Unfortunately, the experience of grading the problems led some physics instructors to realize that some students really did not understand many concepts that the professors felt to be basic and central to the course.

"We were appalled," said Physics Instructor Eric Murray.

Whether or not it was related to the curriculum change, a small drop in GPA occurred last semester. According to the instructors, this drop was not a large one, and was not unexpected, due to warnings at the beginning of the semester that no "end-of-semester curve" would be implemented. Many students, however, believed that a majority of the class had failed.

"Usually when the students see their grades, they see their position in the class with the people who drop the class removed," Murray said. "Last semester, the people who dropped the class weren't taken out of the mix." Thus it appeared that a very large number of people failed, but that number included those who failed and those who dropped the class.

However, based on what he had seen while grading the quizzes, Murray said that he was "not surprised" that there were many bad grades.

According to Jarrio, the poor performance on the handwritten problems was "a major part of the motivation in introducing the new tutorials-our goal is to make sure that students can't get through the course without taking an explicit step away from knee-jerk formula-jockeying and toward analytical problem-solving."

The tutorials are held instead of a hands-on lab, and there are five in all spread throughout the semester. Students are expected to look over a pre-lab reading and be prepared to take a quiz at the beginning of the lab period. The students then split into groups to solve a number of questions relating to a topic covered in current lectures.

Another consequence of last semester's changes comes from the use of the PRS transmitter. Lecturers using the PRS last semester were able to accurately track the attendance of their students by seeing which students answered questions and on which days. From those numbers, students were placed into three categories according to percentage of attendance: 80 percent or more, 80 to 60 percent, and 60 percent or below.

The data showed that the average grades of those in the highest attendance bracket had significantly higher grades than the lower two, with the lowest attendance group having the lowest average grades.

Though the relationship is not necessarily causal, Schatz said, "There is a strong correlation between people who didn't show up to the lecture and people who didn't do well in the course."

As a result, the attendance mandate was established. The details vary between 2211 and 2212, but essentially, students are permitted to miss a certain number of classes. For each class missed over that limit, points will be taken off their respective final grades.

However, missing a PRS question also cuts down on each student's PRS or "classroom participation" grade. Schatz stressed that the PRS is not simply an attendance-taking tool, but that its primary purpose is to engage students in the classroom. According to students, however, the degree of interaction differs from lecturer to lecturer since there are no set guidelines for teachers on how to use the PRS questions.

"We only got one minute to answer the question," said Angharad Pagnon, a second-year Mechanical Engineering major who took 2212 last semester, and whose instructor used the PRS on a regular basis. "The questions were either deadly obvious, or didn't demonstrate concepts, or were of a difficulty that was unrealistic," she said, countering the effectiveness of the PRS questions. Pagnon is glad, however, that the TA-led tutorials are now being held. "Access to help outside of class was lacking last semester."

As for mandatory class attendance, most students hold a negative view towards the policy. "The class lecture and reading are at a much lower level than the homework and quizzes," said Jeff Ely, a first-year Industrial Engineering major currently taking Physics I. Because of that, he said that he doesn't feel that lecture attendance is helpful to his grade in the class. He said, however, that the PRS questions do help to foster conversation in class.

"It's helpful that they have us discuss the answers with each other," agreed Toni Cliett, a first-year Architecture major also in 2211, though she finds it "annoying that they make you come [to class]," even though she feels she would come to class regardless.