Re: [Phys-l] Premed Requirements Commentary

[Rick Tarara <rtarara@saintmarys.edu>]

JC constantly harps on 'gain'--normalized gain on the FCI is what I assume 
he's referring to--AS IF this is a proven, meaningful measure of something. 
Of what?  Does it predict which students will end up being good scientists, 
good engineers, good doctors, good Indian Chiefs?  Without such a 
correlation, then the results of one (now ancient) test, a test that CAN be 
taught to, a test that is limited to a narrow conceptual and topical area, a 
test that (admittedly) requires a lot of student/instructor work to do well 
on, is only a tiny piece of data.  As many of us have commented--look to 
your graduates and their successes or failures to evaluate the educational 
program.  If you can show that there is a general failure to understand 
Newton's Laws that is causing bridges to fall, causing people to be 
misdiagnosed, that is holding back the frontiers of science research, etc., 
then we can all be much more worried about 'gain' and lack thereof.

Rick

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>
> Your course may actually be doing well, but can you prove this?  What sort
> of gain is achieved?

> The instruction was uniform, but carefully constructed.  I
> suspect that they achieved the maximum 25% gain for a conventional course.