Our Clients Faculty, Students, College of Engineering, U of I Our approach Infrastructure

1. Educating in Bulk:The Introductory Physics Course Revisions at IllinoisMats Selen, UIUC Department of Physics • Our Clients • Faculty, Students, College of Engineering, U of I • Our approach • Infrastructure • Pedagogy • Technology • Some Research Results • The particle physics approach. • “Physics 100” • Helping under-prepared students • Deep thoughts • Just Do It

2. Calculus Based: Total enrollment of about 3500/year Mostly Engineering (& Physics) students • Physics 111 (4 hrs, mechanics) • Physics 112 (4 hrs, E&M) • Physics 113 (2 hrs, thermo/stat-mech) • Physics 114 (2 hrs, waves/quantum) Each week: Lectures (2x75 min) Discusison (2 hrs) Lab (2 hrs) • Algebra Based: Total enrollment of about 1100/year Mostly pre-med & biology students • Physics 101 (5 hrs, mechanics, heat, fluids, waves) • Physics 102 (5 hrs, E&M, Light, Atoms, Relativity) Each week: Lectures (2x50 min) Discusison (2 hrs) Lab (3 hrs) Our Clients:

3. How it used to work: • Tradition, Tradition, Tradition • Lecturer “owns” the course and is free to “reinvent the flat tire” every semester. • Discussion TAs pretty much on their own. • Labs intellectually disconnected from rest of course. • Typically only quantitative problems on exams. • RESULTS: NOBODY IS HAPPY !! • Lecturer dislikes it since it’s a monster teaching assignment. • Students dislike it because they see the lecturer dislikes it and because the organization is often “uneven” at best.

4. How we do it now: • Integrate all aspectsof a course usingactive learningmethods in ateam teachingenvironment. • Typically 3 faculty share the load for a class: • Lecturer (lectures, ACTs, preflights, exams). • Discussion Director (TA training, quizzes, exams). • Lab Director (TA training, web homework, exams). • Course administration is shared responsibility: • Faculty meet at least once a week with each-other and with their TA’s to plan the campaign. • Overall co-ordination is very tight (web helps this). • Everybody works on creating exams. • Course material changes adiabatically: • Recycled & tuned from semester to semester. • People don’t need to re-invent the whole stew, but can focus on the spices!

5. 42 of ~70 faculty have taught in these courses since 1995 ! Advantages of this approach: • Existing (evolving) infrastructure lowers the bar for participation. • This is now seen as a reasonable teaching load. • Most of our new junior faculty start teaching in these courses (i.e. not a heavy assignment). • Pain & Gain are shared • No burnout & No heroes. • Makes it possible to keep quality high and material consistent even though instructors are changing.

6. THE NEW THE OLD good bad bad good Feedback (are things better now ?) THE NEW Spring 01 Total Physics TAs = 75 # “Excellent” = 58 77 ± 6 % THE OLD Spring 95 Total Physics TAs = 77 # “Excellent” = 15 19 ± 5 %

7. Standard stuff these days Details of some key components: WEB-centric organization Peer instruction in Discussion & Lab sections ACTs & Preflights in Lecture Homework & Interactive Examples Exams

8. WEB-centric organization • All course materials available on-line. • Lectures, discussion & lab materials, exams… • Makes our job easier (copy spring01  fall01). • All students do several on-line assignments every week: • Homework, Interactive Examples, Quizzes • Preflights for lectures, labs & discussion • Exam preparation & exam results • All grades & progress throughout the semester • Students know in advance what everything is worth and the final thresholds for A,B,C,D,F etc

9. This is hard for TA’s to get used to: Training ! Details of some key components: WEB-centric organization Peer instruction in Discussion & Lab sections ACTs & Preflights in Lecture Homework & Interactive Examples Exams

10. A Question TA to the rescue ! Discussion Sections NO LECTURING HERE • Key Idea: Collaborative Learning • Students work in groups of 4 on problems prepared by the senior staff. TAs act as facilitators, not lecturers. • TA preparation very important (extensive training program). • Orientation, Weekly Meetings, Mentor TAs, Observation • Content of prepared materials very important

11. Lab Sections • PREDICT • OBSERVE • EXPLAIN • Engage the students in the learning process and promote mastery of concepts by manipulation of experimental apparatus. • Web-based Prelabs; Lab reports finished within class period.

12. The most fun you’ll ever have teaching! Details of some key components: WEB-centric organization Peer instruction in Discussion & Lab sections ACTs & Preflights in Lecture Homework & Interactive Examples Exams

13. Pre-Flights !! • Students are asked to answer a set of conceptual questions (on the Web) prior to every lecture (and discussion, and lab). • The main structure is: • Students read about material in text. • Students answer pre-flight questions on material prior to lecture. • Physics 101 PF’s due at 6am, lecture starts at 1pm. • Graded on participation, not correctness. • Instructor uses pre-flight responses to guide lecture preparation. • Pre-flights are reviewed during lecture, often presentedagain as ACTs, and often capped off with a demo. • Use their own words, (both right & wrong) • With careful preparation, the pre-flights can form the “backbone” of the lecture.

14. What I typed in a simple text file: What the students see on the web:

15. Statistics: Free response: “NTUPLE” inspired The instructors interface to thestudent responses (also on web):

16. T correct W W Lecture 6, Pre-Flight Questions 7&8 Two identical boxes, each having a weight W, are tied to the ends of a string hung over a pulley (see picture). What is the tension T in the string? 1. T=02. T=W3. T=2W This is exactly what Iprepare before and show during the lecture

17. T W W Students see their own answers Two identical boxes, each having a weight W, are tied to the ends of a string hung over a pulley (see picture). What is the tension T in the string? 1. T=02. T=W3. T=2W Due to Newton's second and third laws, the rope itself is massless, so any force transmitted across it is done so without the diminishing of any magnitude. As each box has an equal weight, the tension T must be zero, as each box's force cancels the other's out. The force applied to the rope is transmitted to the other side. This example would be just like a person hoisting up a box, pulling on the rope with a force of W. In this case, the tension would just be W. The string has the tension of two weights.

18. Homer: "mmmm.....donut...(slobbering)...center of mass in tummy...." Flanders: "why no diddly-o there Homer. The center of mass would be in the center of the hole." Homer: "Doh!" CORRECT You're not getting my answer unless i get sprinkles.....suckers ! unfortunately, i think the center of mass of this perfectly symmetrical donut would be the center of the donut which does not seem to exist; so, i'll just say homer ate it. I think it would be in a the middle of the dough in a circular pattern. Kind of like the onion in an onion ring. UMMMMM..... Onion rings!!!! INCORRECT Students have fun with answers... Shown is a yummy doughnut. Where would you expect the center of mass of this breakfast of champions to be located? (Explain your reasoning Homer).

19. Details of some key components: WEB-centric organization Peer instruction in Discussion & Lab sections ACTs & Preflights in Lecture Homework & Interactive Examples Exams

20. Interactive Examples (Socratic Dialogue)

21. Details of some key components: WEB-centric organization Peer instruction in Discussion & Lab sections ACTs & Preflights in Lecture Homework & Interactive Examples Exams

22. Physics Education Research Students are happier…but are they learning more ??

23. Choose Homework B “on-line quiz” performance as metric of learning For Example: Do BEFORE vs AFTER study to see if student learning was impacted by the introduction of Interactive Examples (IEs):

24. 64% 74% 68% 56% 54% “Homework B”Example • Given C1, C3, and C4 • Three Qualitative • Compare Q1 and Q4 • Compare Q1 and Q3 • How does energy change if dielectric added to C2? • Two Quantitative • Given Q1 and E, what is C2? • Given Q1 and E, what is V3? • Four different versions given each week • Total of 269 different questions!!

25. Homework B Analysis The Homework B questions have a wide variation in difficulty • Computing the total Homework B average (pre-IE), we see: • Fall Avg = 63.2  0.2 • Spring Avg = 67.8  0.3 • We take this difference as a measure of the difference in populations, on-sequence vs off-sequence. • Until we understand how to correct for this difference, we will compare only Spring to Spring and Fall to Fall.

26. <Sp00> - <Sp99> Question # Homework B: Pre IEs Compare performance on Homework B questions (269 total!) in Physics 112 between Spring99 and Spring00 (pre IEs) Looks pretty similar.. We try to quantify..

27. d=0 Sp99 – Sp00 • Histogram the points on the previous plot to get a distribution of the normalized differences: • d (<sp99>-<sp00>)/s # Questions d Distribution centered at 0 (mean = 0.09), with width 1.17 Sp99 – Sp00 # Questions d Distribution of Differences • Create model from the following input: • Question Difficulty Distribution • Student Performance Distribution • Run “simulation” of two identical semesters and plot d distribution: Model Works

28. 112 Fa02 – Fa00 111 Fa02 – Fa01 d d 112 Sp02 – Sp00 d Compare Performance Post IE – Pre IE CONCLUSION: Systematic Improvement in all semesters ofboth courses!

29. A total of 47 questions have improvements > 3s ! d=0 • More Observations: • On avg, HWB score has improved by 1.6s Physics 112 Sp02 + Fa02 • Were improvements made in qualitative or quantitative questions? • Qualitative/Conceptual: 35 questions • Quantitative: 12 questions • Improvement occurs uniformly in both areas • fraction of all HWB questions that are quantitative = 25% • Very encouraging, but much more work is needed to understand this. Look in a little more detail at these 47 questions (18% of total)

30. Is Easy to Forget that Physics is Hard And its even worse if you are not well prepared ! Can we help under-prepared students to “get it” ?

31. Physics 100:”Thinking About Physics” (1 credit hour) Why • Despite the University of Illinois’ C of E very high admission standards, nearly 20% of accepted students are inadequately prepared to pass our introductory mechanics course Physics 111(i.e. they earn a D or F). • The failure rate is even higher for minority groups. • As high as 68% for African Americans !!(Aboutsix times higher than the average) • Many students do not realize that they are poorly prepared. • We need to identify inadequately prepared students and help them gear up for Physics 111 and beyond.

32. Under-prepared Physics 100 Physics 111 + 1hr prep Physics 112 + 1hr prep Mainstream Physics 112 Physics 111 Fall(n+1) Fall(n) Spring(n+1) How... • Typical Physics 100 enrollment ~ 100 • Getting students is a challenge…next slide. • Course Format • Online “Asynchronous Lectures” (interactive slides with sound) • Online Homework (heavy use of Interactive Examples) • Two hour discussion/tutorial once per week (expert instructors) • Material covered is first 30% of Physics 111 • Follow-up prep classes in || with Physics 111 & 112 • Physics 100 does not start until ~ 3 weeks into the fall semester. • Gives students time to evaluate their situation • Many decide to take Physics 100 after doing poorly on the first Physics 111 mid-term exam.

33. Physics 111 Grade Self Evaluation Score How • Identify students at the beginning of the semester using an online Self Evaluation quiz in “Engineering-100”. • Students receiving a score below a certain cutoff are “invited” to take Physics 100 (1 credit-hour). • Fewer than half of identified students choose to participate initially. (This should be a placement exam!)

34. Average physics 111 students Average physics 100 students All students Physics 111 Grade Self Evaluation Score Is Physics 100 helping students ? Q: Can we reduce the failure rate of under-prepared students taking Physics 111/112/113/114 ? A: Probably YES (research by Gladding & Shoaf)

35. Is Physics 100 helping students… • It seems like we might be helping, however there is a is a big caveat: Physics 100 students are self selected ! • Are we getting only those students that were going to do well anyway ? • We need more data to study this. • A real placement test would be very helpful !

36. Summing Up • We have revised all of our “big” intro classes (both calculus and algebra based). • So far so good. • Feedback very positive. • Students like it, the faculty likes it, the University likes it. • Maintaining momentum will be the challenge for the future • Our Physics Education Research Group is growing • This is becoming a real PhD research program • Graduate students are very interested • We have lots of data and many analysis ideas (like CLEO)! • Other projects • New Inquiry based physics course for elementary-ed students • K-5 teachers need more science. • I’m very excited about this…ask me later.

37. “I can do it better all by myself” Concluding Thoughts • Strong departmental support is needed to pull this off: • Vision, leadership, money (faculty release time). • Developing a sustainable infrastructure is the first part of the battle. • We are eager to give away any/all of the materials & tools we have developed, and (of course) hope to get new ideas back. • Getting faculty to “buy in” is the second necessary ingredient. • Not everyone likes this approach. • At UIUC, most people have bought in to the “new” way. • 42 of ~70 faculty have taught in these courses since 1995 !