Sustaining The Progress To Improve Physics Education

Abstract

One of the problems we face in teaching introductory physics courses at the college level is that about 2/3 of students never had physics prior coming to college.  Thus, many students find it very difficult to learn physics for the first time at the relatively fast-paced teaching of college physics courses.  Sometimes the drop/failure/withdrawal rate at West Virginia University is as high as 65% (~2/3) for the introductory physics courses taken mostly by pre-engineering students.  Obviously, there is a strong connection between the students’ physics backgrounds and the success rate of passing physics.  With the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, we created an intervention course for a small group of students who did poorly in the first test in one of the physics courses. This intervention course ran concurrently with the regular physics course, but started at the fourth week of class after the first test. Students who received our intervention showed significant improvement in the subsequent physics tests.¹ The recruitment of the students and the supervision of the course were the result of a unique collaboration between the College of Engineering and the Physics Department.  After the expiration of the NSF grant, the intervention course was cancelled due to the lack of funds.  The labs associated with physics classes, however, give us the opportunity to continue the advancement of physics learning after the ending of the NSF grant.