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Re: Order of E&M topics (was B and electric charge)



The fact that you have better results with Newton's Third Law is an
indication that the "70% barrier" is not the student's fault. The Modeling
Method students typically master everything BUT the third law, and your
results demonstrate that the third law need not be out of their reach.

I believe a proportional gain of .60 roughly corresponds to a score of 75%,
given that most classes - high school or college (!), start within a point
or two of 25% on the FCI pretest. Perhaps for Harvard or Cal Tech the
proportional gain is a better statistic, but for high schools the final
score turns out to be sufficient to measure a course. (For individuals, of
course, there will be greater variability in the pretest.)

BTW - the pretest scores in colleges - indicating a nearly complete failure
to think in terms of Newton's laws - was one of the early indications that
traditional high school physics education was failing abysmally.

Chris


* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Christopher A. Horton, Ph.D.
4158 RR#3 (Hwy. 204)
Amherst, NS B4H 3Y1
CANADA
ChrisAHorton2@hotmail.com
(902) 447-2109

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us
will have been effaced. Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has
in it something for every age to investigate ... Nature does not reveal her
mysteries once and for all."
- Seneca, "Natural Questions", first century, quoted by Carl Sagan in
"Cosmos", p.xi.

* * * * * * * * * * *


----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Cohen <Robert.Cohen@PO-BOX.ESU.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: Order of E&M topics (was B and electric charge)


-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Horton [mailto:ChrisAHorton2@HOTMAIL.COM]
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 10:48 AM

Rick wrote:

[snip]
<< . I can fairly state that my General Ed physics class regularly
ends up the first semester above 70% on the FCI and my new
Calculus-Physics
class (with whom I spent much less time working on Newton's
Laws) ended up
this year at 66% and a normalized gain of .47. >>

For a non-research-based course those are outstanding
results. How do you
do it - aside from mantras?

Wait a sec - doesn't the 70% barrier correspond to the gain, not the
score?
Wouldn't a gain of 0.47 be *below* the 0.70 barrier?

P.S. FWIW, my students seem to find the 3rd law questions easiest (once
they
get over the difference between "force", "inertia" and "effect").

--------------------------------------------
Robert Cohen rcohen@po-box.esu.edu
570-422-3428 http://www.esu.edu/~bbq
Department of Physics
East Stroudsburg University
East Stroudsburg, PA 18301
--------------------------------------------