As we greet a new class – whether new freshmen on “orientation day” at a college, or on the first day of class in Physics 1 – we should have had some discussion about what is most important for these people to learn, how we will help them learn it, and how we will determine whether they have indeed learned it. This should be tempered by acknowledging that we’re preparing them for life after graduation, and that what they remember when they graduate is a better measure of their success in Physics 1than their score on this year’s final exam.
PBB09 What Else (Besides the Syllabus) Should Students Learn in Introductory Physics?, Pritchard, D. E., Barrantes, A. and Belland, B. R., Physics Education Research Conference 2009, M. Sabella, Ch. Henderson, C. Singh, Eds. Ann Arbor, Michigan: July 29-30, 2009. AIP Conference Proceedings 1179, pp. 43-46 Also (better Figures), MIT Faculty Newsletter, Nov/Dec 2009 , http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/222/pritchard.html
We polled various teachers what we should teach non-majors beyond the syllabus, instructors rated “sense-making of the answer” and expert problem solving highly, with PER {Physics Education Researchers favoring “epistemology”, and Atomic physics researchers favoring “physics comes from a few principles”. Students at three colleges preferred “more modern topics”, and the “relationship of physics to everyday life and society”. The things that they want to learn anti-correlate with the priorities of their instructors (r = -0.41).
PBP12 What do Seniors Remember from Freshman Physics? Pawl, A, Barrantes, A, Pritchard, D.E., and Mitchell, R. Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 8, 020118 (2012)
We found that graduating students score only 50% or less on physics questions unless they major in physics or a related field. On kinematics graphs and vectors all MIT seniors improved on their freshman scores. Seniors in physics, aero and astro, and mechanical engineering all had courses involving mechanics and on average scored as well as they did as freshmen without benefit of study and review.
Collectively this supports the maxim Use it or lose it.
Pri22 A Unifying Online Proposal for MIT’s Educational Mission Based on Open edX David E. Pritchard MIT Faculty Newsletter VOL. XXXIV NO. 3 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022
Has the PI’s ideas on how to make Open edX a platform for curating and sharing content so teachers can assign research-proven resources to their students for lecture, recitation, and homework.