1 / 17

Evaluation of Improved Outcomes in Physics Service Courses

Evaluation of Improved Outcomes in Physics Service Courses. PD Jarvis 1 , JE Humble 1 , RD Watson 1 , IA Newman 1 , E Chelkowska 1 and S Stack 2 1 School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Tasmania, Hobart 2 Elizabeth College, Hobart. Background.

kimberly-woods
Download Presentation

Evaluation of Improved Outcomes in Physics Service Courses

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Evaluation of Improved Outcomes in Physics Service Courses PD Jarvis1, JE Humble1, RD Watson1, IA Newman1, E Chelkowska1and S Stack2 1School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Tasmania, Hobart2Elizabeth College, Hobart

  2. Background • Poor student performance in and reports on courses in Physics for Life Science • Problems perceived by staff: • Variety of student courses (Pharmacy, Agriculture, Surveying etc) • Variety of student academic backgrounds • Lack of student interest • Poor SETL (Student Evaluation of Teaching and Learning) reports • Problems perceived by students • Difficulty of material • Lack of apparent ‘relevance’

  3. Nature of the units The ‘Physics For Life Sciences’ stream at UTH comprises: • Semester 1 - KYA171 Applied Physics, prerequisite: TCE Year 11 Physical Sciences • Semester 2 - KYA172, Biological Physics, prerequisite: TCE Year 12 Physics or KYA171.

  4. The Student body • KYA171.Compulsory for Horticulture, Agriculture and Surveying students, optional for others. • KYA172.Compulsory unit for Agriculture, Pharmacy and Surveying students, and optional for biological students in the Faculty of Science and Engineering

  5. Formal evaluation (1) • KYA171. • Six fortnightly tests, with the best five counting 60% • One group reading report, counting 20% • A 2-hr end of semester exam counting 20%. (Students did not need to attend this if they already had a pass mark, however most did so).

  6. Formal evaluation (2) • KYA172 • Four tests, one every three weeks, with the best three counting 60%. • One group experimental presentation to the class, 10% • One group experimental report, 10% • An end of semester exam, 20%. As in the first semester unit the exam was not compulsory.

  7. Our CUTSD project was designed to: • be non-technological in nature, • based on ‘constructivism’, building on students’ prior knowledge and background, • achieve a conceptual change in the students’ understanding of physics, using constructivism as a referent, and • inculcate ideas of science as a process of inquiry.

  8. The approaches • Encouragement of Group participation. • Encouragement of questions and discussion in lectures • Group work in some lectures • Explicit teaching of problem solving strategies • Explicit checking of learning progress for student awareness and formative feedback • Identification of different learning modes

  9. Evaluation of the teaching techniques • Comparisons with results in previous years • Staff workbooks • Anecdotal comments from lab staff • Post-hoc student focus groups • Formal SETLs

  10. Problems with evaluation • Very difficult to achieve clear outcomes. • Cultural difference between Physicists, and Educationalists • Physicists expect clear-cut results • Educationalists’ results are necessarily less precise. • Several staff and several techniques meant that totally clear-cut outcomes were impossible. • This was accepted in principle from the outset • But the reality didn’t strike home until later.

  11. Comparisons with results in previous years • Assessed marks better, possibly significantly so, from the previous year. Grade Point Averages were 1998 1999 • KYA 171 1.60 (61) 1.75 (53) • KYA 172 1.83 (70) 2.10 (77) (numbers of students in brackets)

  12. Staff workbooks • Valuable qualitatively but hard to use quantitatively. • More valuable as a record of what had been attempted than as an indicator of what had been achieved.

  13. Anecdotal comments from lab staff • By their nature of lesser value. • However most remarks were positive. In particular students liked the increased attention and feedback. • ‘Relevance’ is a very individual parameter. Almost all students want it, rather fewer can define or vocalise it. • Staff and students’ views on relevance often differ, sometimes quite widely. • Students often seem to mean “Engagement”.

  14. Post-hoc student focus groups • These were probably the strongest indicator. • Most of the participants appreciated the constructivist techniques and the discussions which flowed from them.

  15. Formal SETLs • These showed a definite improvement over the previous year. • However the statistical reliability of this outcome is not strong. • (But politically it is important)

  16. Conclusions (1) • Evaluation proved to be much harder than we expected. • Do NOT expect the types of certainties which one requires of an experiment in the physical sciences. • Different measures can give contradictory results.

  17. Conclusion (2) • Our indicators revealed the pivotal role of students’ backgrounds in evaluating and interpreting the effectiveness of the project. • The act of measuring affects the quantity being observed! • There are two types of students: • Interested in building an understanding of physics • Wanting clear information in order to pass exams. • The latter predominate in our Life Science stream.

More Related