Physics Third Year Review Report - May 2008

Evaluation Rubric

Assessment contact: Jerry Hinnefeld, Professor of Physics, Department Chair

Attachments: 2006 and 2007 assessment reports; current assessment plan; Fall 2007 faculty assessment survey; Force Concept Inventory (available from Physics Department)

Changes to educational goals, and rationale: The educational goals in the departmental assessment plan adopted in September 2005, while identifying the same desired outcomes as those in the 2005 Third Year Review report, are stated terms that make them more amenable to assessment. For example, in the 2005 Third Year Review one of the stated goals was, “Students majoring in physics should learn to apply fundamental physical principles to the solution of complex problems.” In the current assessment plan this sentiment is recast as a measurable outcome -- “Students completing the major in physics will be able to apply fundamental physical principles to the solution of complex problems.”

Assessment techniques added or discontinued, and rationale: A simple end-of-semester survey has been implemented to assist in the documentation of assessment data collected through the activities we identify as “faculty inventory.” All active faculty in the department are invited to complete the survey after each semester. A copy of the survey is appended to this report.

Assessment instruments used: We continue to use the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), a nationally normed instrument for determining the extent to which students of mechanics have overcome common Aristotelian misconceptions in favor of a Newtonian understanding of force an motion, in selected courses. Results are included in our internal assessment report and discussed within the department. A copy of the FCI is appended to this report.

Analysis performed and conclusions drawn: Each spring the department’s assessment coordinator prepares and distributes an internal assessment report, which serves as the basis for discussion at a department meeting. The report includes results of the FCI, Faculty Assessment Surveys, selected items on course evaluations, assessments of students’ oral and written presentations, reports on graduates’ success in graduate school admission and completion, and descriptions of student research projects.

We have concluded, based on the experience of recent graduates, that we could do more to help our senior students prepare for the Physics Graduate Record Exam (GRE). We have also noted that some of our students carry out very successful research projects, and that these research experiences help them to strengthen their understanding of a particular set of physics concepts.

Some of our faculty members have noticed a larger percentage of students in our general education courses who are ill-prepared or disinterested. This correlates with the replacement of our traditional courses for non-science majors with versions of PHYS/AST/GEOL-N190 The Natural World, a Common Core course of the campus-wide general education curriculum.

What changes have been made to the program? How did assessment data and analysis support these changes? We have added an introductory seminar course, PHYS-S106 Contemporary Physics Seminar, aimed primarily at students who are either in the introductory physics sequence, PHYS-P221/P222, or are not yet in PHYS-P221/P222 because they are not yet ready to take the co-requisite, MATH-M215 Calculus I. Our hope is that this course will improve the retention of students who arrive at IUSB self-identified as physics majors or pre- engineering students. The course was taught for the first time in Fall 2007. The format of the course was altered modestly for Spring 2008, based on the Fall 2007 experience. Specifically, student feedback on Fall 2007 course evaluations indicated that the enrolled students were often intimidated, and so disinclined to ask questions of the speaker, by the presence of advanced physics students and physics faculty members. For the Spring 2008 offering the first several presentations, which were by faculty members within the department, were open only to enrolled students.

Some faculty members are now requiring student presentations in upper-level courses for our majors. This is at least partially in response to the observation, noted in the department’s 2007 internal assessment report, that our majors would benefit from more experiences with written reports and oral presentations.

What changes are planned in the coming years to the program and to assessment techniques, and why? We plan to take steps to prepare our majors better for the Physics GRE. Some of these steps will be taken within existing courses -- for example, by including problems or questions on homework assignments that are of the type commonly seen on the GRE. This will require those of us teaching upper-level courses for majors to become better acquainted with the coverage and the style of question found on the Physics GRE. We will need to be careful, of course, not to let the content of our courses become narrowly focused on the content of this standardized test.

While our current assessment plan identifies alumni surveys as one of our assessment techniques, we have not yet utilized this tool. We plan to do so in the coming year, as we feel recent alumni are in a unique position to identify the strengths and shortcomings of their IUSB physics education.

How were faculty, students, administration, alumni and other groups involved in
assessment? Student involvement in assessment has been primarily through selected items on course evaluations. Faculty involvement includes responding to the end-of-semester surveys and participating in the discussion of the internal assessment report. Alumni will be brought into the assessment process with the alumni surveys mentioned above.

How were assessment data and results shared with these groups? The internal assessment report prepared by the assessment coordinator is the primary vehicle for sharing assessment data and results with the department faculty. The annual reports are available to students, alumni, and anyone else on the web site of the campus Assessment Committee.

Summarize the most important impacts: The most important impacts of our assessment efforts to date have been the modifications to our curriculum – the expansion of our modern physics course to a two-semester sequence, greater attention to the sequencing of courses and to coordinating the content of courses to match this sequence, the commitment to offering a major elective course in each semester, and the creation of the introductory seminar course. These seem to be the factors behind our recent improvements in retention of majors, which is reflected in our solid enrollments in upper-level courses in the major.

Faculty Assessment Survey
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Indiana University South Bend
Fall 2007

From the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Assessment Plan, adopted in October 2005: “The department’s faculty members are often in a position to identify program strengths and weaknesses that are not addressed by the other methodologies listed here. Faculty surveys following each semester provide an opportunity for bringing these observations to the attention of the rest of the department’s faculty.”

Our educational goals for physics majors are summarized in the following three statements:

1) Students completing the major in physics will know and understand in detail many of the concepts that are used to describe the physical world, including the structure of matter, the fundamental interactions of nature, the relationship between force and motion, and the concept of energy.

2) Students completing the major in physics will be able to apply fundamental physical principles to the solution of complex problems.

3) Students completing the major in physics will be able to communicate results of their experimental or computational work clearly, both orally and in written form.

Based on your experiences in the last semester, is there evidence that we are meeting or exceeding these goals in some areas? Is there evidence that we are falling short of these goals in some areas? If so, please elaborate.

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Our educational goals for students majoring in other natural sciences or mathematics are summarized in the following two statements:

4) Students completing physics courses as cognate requirements will know and understand physics concepts that will help them to better understand concepts in their own major areas of study.

5) Students completing physics courses as cognate requirements will understand the relevance of their studies in physics to their own major areas of study.

Based on your experiences in the last semester, is there evidence that we are meeting or exceeding these goals in some areas? Is there evidence that we are falling short of these goals in some areas? If so, please elaborate.

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Our educational goals for students studying physics, astronomy, or geology for general education
purposes are summarized in the following two statements:

6) Students completing courses in these areas as part of their general education curriculum will know and understand a limited set of concepts that illustrate a scientific approach to understanding the physical world.

7) Students completing courses in these areas as part of their general education curriculum will have gained an appreciation of the scientific approach to understanding the physical world.

Based on your experiences in the last semester, is there evidence that we are meeting or exceeding these goals in some areas? Is there evidence that we are falling short of these goals in some areas? If so, please elaborate.

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Are there any other observations about student learning that you would like to share with your department colleagues? If so, please elaborate.

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