Students in North Carolina's science pedagogy course do an experiment as lecturer Alice Churukian looks on.

 

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Project Report 2009

Content Assessment

PHYS 104: General Physics (mechanics and thermodynamics); algebra-based, mostly pre-meds
Assessment used: Force Concept Inventory (FCI)

Semester	Number of matched students	Pre-test average (%)	Post-test average (%)	Average normalized gain g*	Standard error of g**	Normalized gain of averages@
104 F07	376	37	49	0.18	0.012	0.19
104 S08	235	39	48	0.12	0.022	0.14
104 F08	344	35	44	0.14	0.012
104 S09	244	37	50	0.20	0.016

PHYS 105: General Physics (electricity and magnetism, optics, and modern physics); algebra-based, mostly pre-meds
Assessment used: Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM)

Semester	Number of matched students	Pre-test average (%)	Post-test average (%)	Average normalized gain g*	Standard error of g**	Normalized gain of averages@
105 F07	205	31	39	0.11	0.012	0.11
105 S08	185	31	39	0.11	0.013	0.12
105 F08	183	32	44	0.17	0.015
105 S09	318	27	32	0.059#	0.0091

^#Initial checks of raw data for this score have not yet revealed a source for this aberrant value.

PHYS 116: Mechanics; calculus-based, mostly physics and other science majors
Assessment used: Force Concept Inventory (FCI)

Semester*	Number of matched students**	Pre-test average (%)	Post-test average (%)	Average normalized gain g***	Standard error of g****	Normalized gain of averages@
116 F07	140	58	68	0.15	0.067	0.23
116 S08	95	61	73	0.32	0.046	0.30
116 F08	137	56	67	0.25	0.031
116 S09	132	58	74	0.34	0.039

PHYS 117: Electromagnetism and Optics; calculus-based, mostly physics and other science majors
Assessment used: Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM)

Semester*	Number of matched students**	Pre-test average (%)	Post-test average (%)	Average normalized gain g***	Standard error of g****	Normalized gain of averages@
117 F07	89	42	56	0.26	0.029	0.25
117 S08	56	46	56	0.18	0.036	0.18
117 F08	60	38	58	0.33	0.027
117 S09	100	41	53	0.19	0.023

In all courses, most faculty are using a mixture of interactive and traditional curriculum.  For this reason, the results reported here are the overall results for each course for each semester. In addition to traditional lecture, faculty are using peer instruction (clicker questions) in their courses.  Faculty are resistant to change in the way they have taught over the years, thus changes are small.  Cooperative Group Problem Solving was used – to some degree – in the recitations for the calculus-based courses.  The PHYS 117 S08 faculty member used traditional lecture only.

Based on a Chi-squared analysis, it was believed that the students had not taken the surveys seriously during the 2007-2008 academic year.  For this reason, one of a cadre of faculty members went to the beginning of each laboratory section before both the pre-test and the post-test to discuss why the students were taking the surveys.  Results of this effort are inconclusive.

^@ The normalized gain of the averages is included for F07 and S08 because of the large discrepancy in the PHYS 116 F07 results.  Verification of consistency across sections has not been calculated for F08 and S09.

* Use the following formula to calculate the average normalize gain for matched pre- and post-test pairs:

Average normalized gain g =

** Standard error =

RTOP

Level†	Course description	Instructor type and year of graduation (if applicable)‡	Instructor name	Observer name	Score	Date of observation
UG	PHYS 116	Post-doc	Fred Hall	Alice Churukian	26	3/25/09
UG	PHYS 117	Faculty	Frank Tsui	Alice Churukian	55	3/25/09
UG	PHYS 117	Faculty	Rene Lopez	Alice Churukian	52	4/21/09
HS	Honors Physics	Former TIR	David Green	Alice Churukian	69	5/12/09
HS	Physics	Student Teacher, 5/09	Chase Martin	Nick Cabot	74	2/4/09
HS	Physics	Student Teacher, 5/09	Chase Martin	Nick Cabot	67	2/26/09
HS	Regular Physics	Student Teacher, 5/09	Chase Martin	Nick Cabot	76	3/20/09
HS	Physics	Student Teacher, 5/09	Chase Martin	Nick Cabot	Not Scored	4/9/09

† Level indicates whether this is a middle school, high school, or undergraduate course.

‡ Instructor type indicates whether this is a student teacher, a recently graduated PhysTEC teacher, etc.