Credentials
“A Tale of Two Curricula” compares student gains on the BEMA (Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment) for Matter and Interactions (MI) courses versus traditional courses at four major universities. MI students show statistically significant gains in pre-test/post-test scores over students in traditional introductory physics courses at all four universities. A copy of the paper as well as some additional background information can be found at, http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~chiu/matter-interactions/.
Student gains in Mechanics for MI vs. traditional students are not as significant. A possible explanation is that because the MI approach to teaching physics is quite different it takes students a semester to “get the hang of MI”.
Introducing MI
Students in traditional introductory physics courses often see physics as a collection of loosely connected special purpose formulas. Physics education research indicates that courses should focus more on fundamental principles, brining modern physics into introductory courses and emphasize the role of computers in learning physics and in research. MI is based around these suggestions.
The MI Mechanics book is organized around 3 fundamental principles
Ch. 1-4 are on the momentum principle, dp = F(env)dt
Ch. 5-9 are on the energy principle, dE = W(env) + Q
Ch. 10 is on the angular momentum principle, dL = T(env)dt
F(env) stands for forces from the environment. Similar for W(env) and T(env)
Explanations in MI stress reasoning based on the 3 principles rather than mathematics to help students understand the main concepts. MI also stresses connections between the micro and macro frequently referring to the atomic nature of matter. Because the book is arranged around 3 broad principles many modern topics such as the Bohr atom and relativistic particle collisions are introduced early and naturally.
Programming
MI makes considerable use of programming in Python to illustrate equations and concepts. Students program a variety of programs in Python and use a VPython module provided by the book’s authors to handle all sorts of visual manipulations (changing angles, zooming in and out). The book also provides several Python “demos” that can be shown during a lecture.
MI at UT
- The course is taught by 1 lecture professor, 1 graduate TA and 3-4 undergraduate learning assistants (LAs). There are also 2 computer assistants who are starting to build a database of computer questions (Quest) for the MI courses.
- Students enrolled in Phys 303 K/L (Engineering Physics I and II) also take an associated lab course. Lab often fails to align well with the lecture course but this problem is widespread in our department and not exclusive to UT.
- There are a total of 4 TA sessions a week each with its own LA. Overall the role of the LAs is still being figured out in the weekly planning meetings.
- Programming is carried out in the discussion sections with a scaffolding for the program provided by the TA and students filling in the details. Last semester 5 discussion sections were devoted to programming 5 different simulations (projectile motion, mass-spring oscillator, satellite orbits, energy and angular momentum of a satellite and illustrations of the 3 principles under different force laws).
- Students bring laptops to discussion and spend 20-30 mins writing the program in class. They then modify parameters and explore possible behaviors in the program based on prompts from the TA. There are also homework (Quest) questions and exam questions based around the simulations. Much effort is made to make the simulations a coherent part of the course rather than something separate and extra.
- The TA and LAs held online office hours in the evening through a free trial with the company Elluminate which students found very helpful. Attendance at online office hours was much higher than during traditional office hours in past years.
- Student responses on end of the semester surveys were very positive. They felt the MI course provided a strong conceptual understanding and that lectures, discussions, simulations, homeworks and the book all tied together very well.
The Future
- Introductory E&M is being taught using MI right now.
- Prof. Chiu plans to continue using MI in the future and encourages the adoption of MI for other calculus based intro physics courses. He is happy with talk to any professors considering adopting MI.
- Pat Morgan is ordering a sample of MI books for professors to browse to consider if they would like to adopt MI in other classes.
