How do you deal with student attitudes regarding physics laboratories?
We at Michigan Tech. have over the past year completely redesigned our
introductory labs. We are going to "discovery" labs as a prerequisite
for the regular physics course. We use Pasco Scientific data
acquisition systems, experiment equipment, and sensors. The laboratory
operation is the following:
Students have guide writeups for exercises.
Just doing the activities and answering questions posed in the writeup
is considered minimal and recieves minimal credit.
The expectation is that students will go beyond what is on the
writeup(pose problems and make relevant measurements).
Labs are 1hr. 50min. long. Lab writeups are generally designed so that
most will be done with the minimum within 1hr. 15min. Students are
expected to utilize remaining time to extend, evaluate, and maybe
redo(tweek the system) where deemed desirable.
Students are expected to arrive on time.
Students recieve credit for efforts up to a maximum.
The problems:
A not insignificant portion of students refuse to accept that we are not
taking anything away in grading, but are rather giving credit. They
can't seem to accept that they don't start out with an A, but must earn
it first.
A large number of students dislike having to stay in lab through the
alotted time. They want to race through the writeup and leave. (We
allow them to leave early but remind them that we will not be able to
give them the maximum credit).
Our students are primarily engineering. When they are done here, they
will go to work at a multitude of engineering companies.
Will they start work at a maximum salary and recieve deductions like
points?
Will they be allowed to leave work early because they finished a minimum
task?
Any suggestions, comments, Help?
--
Jerry Hester Email:
jhester@mtu.edu
Dept. of Physics Phone: (906)
487-2273
Michigan Technological University Fax: (906) 487-2933
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, Michigan 49931-1295