PER-based Techniques in a Large Lecture
Modern Physics Course for Engineers
Sam McKagan, Katherine Perkins, and Carl Wieman
University of Colorado at Boulder
http://per.colorado.edu
Introduction
•
•
•
•
Review existing research on student understanding of QM.
Interview physics professors who have recently taught course: “What
are the most important concepts you want students to learn from this
course?”
Interview engineering professors: “What do your students need to
know about modern physics?”
Set up problem-solving session for students enrolled in traditional
course to observe common difficulties.
Develop a Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Survey to assess student
learning in this course (and others).
Interview students to validate QMCS and further examine student
ideas about these topics.
Interactive
simulations
Real World Examples:
PMTs, discharge lamps, fluorescent
lights, lasers, alpha decay, STMs,
LEDs, CCDs, MRIs, BEC
How do we make
inferences from
observations?
Why do we believe
this stuff?
Physics 2130 is a course in modern physics for
engineering majors. We taught a reformed version of this
course in Fall 2005 and Spring 2006.1 Our reforms were
based on the following work done before the course:
•
•
Reasoning
Development:
Model
Building:
Physics 2130
Peer
Instruction
Modern Physics for
Engineering Majors
~200 students
Collaborative
Homework
sessions
Research Related to Course
•Development and testing of Quantum Mechanics
Conceptual Survey.2
•Case studies of six students – tracking the development of
understanding and attitudes through regular interviews
throughout course.3
•Development and testing of PhET simulations in QM.4
•Study of how simulations contribute to student
understanding and ability to visualize and recall complex
phenomena.
•Tracking how studying QM affects students’ attitudes
about science.
•Study of techniques for teaching models of the atom, and
how this affects students’ overall understanding of atoms.
•Study of student understanding of quantum tunneling.
Peer Instruction
Collaborative Homework Sessions
Interactive Simulations
• The Physics Education Technology (PhET)5 Project is an on-going
effort to create a suite of interactive simulations and related
education resources that aid in the teaching and learning of physics.
• We have developed many new QM simulations for use in this course
and elsewhere:
•Quantum Tunneling
•Quantum Wave Interference
•Quantum Bound States
•Nuclear Physics
•Davisson Germer: Electron Diffraction
•Photoelectric Effect
•Lasers
•Discharge Lamps
•Simplified MRI
•Conductivity
•Semiconductors
• 9 hours per week of problem-solving sessions where students could
work together on homework
• Staffed by learning team of instructors, TAs, and undergraduate
learning assistants (LAs).
• Laptops available for students to use simulations.
• Focused on getting students to work together to figure out the
homework, not answering questions.
• Goal: make homework so hard that students have to work together.
• Learning team observed that the level of sophistication of students’
questions increased over course of semester.
• Used H-ITT infrared “clickers” to ask concept tests in class.
• Questions designed to stimulate discussion, elicit misconceptions, or
ask students to predict as in interactive lecture demo.
• Three instructors and three LAs circulated through the class to
stimulate student discussion and make observations.
Sample Homework Problem
Sample Concept Tests
• We used these simulations extensively in lecture to illustrate key
ideas and as part of interactive lecture demos, and as part of
homework problems.
• The simulations helped students build mental models of abstract and
unobservable phenomena.
• On final exam, we found that students could give very detailed
explanations about topics where we used simulations, but not about
other topics.
Student Responses:
Many students are confused about
the meaning of potential energy.
This question effectively addresses
this confusion early in the course.
Student Responses:
Instructors observed that most
students did not know the
correct answer initially, but
many were able to figure it out
through discussion. Graphs
that students drew, before
seeing multiple choice options,
closely matched given options.
Assessment of Course
Measuring Effectiveness of Instruction on Photoelectric Effect
Our instruction on the Photoelectric Effect included:
• Three 50 minute lectures with many concept tests and interactive lecture
demos with Photoelectric Effect simulation.
• Several homework questions involving Photoelectric Effect simulation.
Previous Research:
• Steinberg, Oberem, and McDermott6 tested the effectiveness of Photoelectric
Tutor (PT), a computer program to aid in teaching the photoelectric effect, by
asking the following exam question in a modern physics class at the
University of Washington (UW), with students who did and did not use PT.
Our Study:
• We asked the same exam question, with the order changed and the wording
modified to be consistent with the vocabulary used in our course.
• Twice as many of our students answered Q3 correctly as those using PT.
Common exam questions
Percentage of students who
correctly answered exam questions
Course
Q1 (c)
Q2 (a) Q3 (b)
N
UW w/o PT
UW w/ PT
65
75
40
85
20
40
26
36
CU Fa05
88
85
84
189
CU Sp06
78
84
79
182
End Notes
QMCS (Quantum Mechanics
Conceptual Survey)
Course
% Correct normalized
Pre Post
gain
N
CLASS (Colorado Learning and
Attitudes about Science Survey)
Course
% Favorable
Pre Post Shift
66.1 67.1 1.0* 135
70.2 68.0 -2.1* 150
N
Ref. Eng. Sp06
30
Ref. Eng. Fa05
32
Trad. Eng. Sp05 (30)
Trad. Phys. Sp06 44
Trad. Phys. Fa05 40
65
69
51
64
53
0.50
0.55
0.30
0.36
0.21
156
162
68
23
54
Ref. Eng. Sp06
Ref. Eng. Fa05
Trad. Phys. Sp05 (44)
63
0.33
64
Trad. Phys. Sp05 78.5 74.8 -3.7* 61
In a typical physics course, students’
favorable (expert-like) responses to CLASS
questions decrease significantly from pre to
post. The shifts for our reformed classes are
not statistically significant.
The QMCS is still in development and has
gone through several versions. The analysis
here includes only the 12 questions that were
asked all three semesters. Because no pretest
was given in Spring 2005, we assumed the
incoming population was similar to the
following spring. The normalized gains for
reformed (traditional) classes are similar to
normalized gains on the FCI for reformed
(traditional) classes.
Trad. Eng. Sp05 68.5 60.5 -8.0*
Trad. Phys. Sp06 72.1 67.2 -4.9*
Trad. Phys. Fa05 78.6 72.9 -5.7*
55
25
47
References
1.
For course materials, contact the authors or go to:
http://jilawww.colorado.edu/~mckagan/2130archive/
2.
Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Survey:
http://cosmos.colorado.edu/phet/survey/QMCS/
3.
Sam McKagan, Katherine Perkins, Wendy Adams, Danielle Harlow,
Michael Dubson, Chris Malley, Sam Reid, Ron LeMaster, Carl
Wieman, “Teaching Quantum Mechanics with PhET Simulations,
Poster DB06-10 AAPT 2006.
4.
Sam McKagan, Katherine Perkins, and Carl Wieman, “Case Studies
of Student Understanding and Beliefs in Modern Physics,” Talk
DF05 and Poster EJ02-05 AAPT 2006.
5.
Physics Education Technology Project, http://phet.colorado.edu.
6.
Richard N. Steinberg, Graham E. Oberem, and Lillian C.
McDermott, “Development of a computer-based tutorial on the
photoelectric effect,” American Journal of Physics 64, 1370 (1996).
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the NSF for providing the support for this
project. We also thank all the members of the PhET Team and
the Physics Education Research at Colorado group (PER@C).