Tale of two curricula: The performance of 2000 students in introductory electromagnetism
| Autor: | Ruth Chabay, Michael F. Schatz, Marcos D. Caballero, Mark P. Haugan, M. Jackson Marr, Richard Catrambone, Lin Ding, Matthew A. Kohlmyer, Bruce Sherwood |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2009 |
| Předmět: |
Sequence
LC8-6691 Computer science 4. Education Physics QC1-999 05 social sciences Microscopic level 050301 education General Physics and Astronomy 01 natural sciences Special aspects of education Education Electromagnetism 0103 physical sciences Mathematics education ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION Vector field 010306 general physics 0503 education Curriculum |
| Zdroj: | Physical Review Special Topics. Physics Education Research, Vol 5, Iss 2 (2009) Physical Review Special Topics. Physics Education Research, Vol 5, Iss 2, p 020105 (2009) |
| ISSN: | 1554-9178 |
| DOI: | 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.5.020105 |
| Popis: | The performance of over 2000 students in introductory calculus-based electromagnetism (E&M) courses at four large research universities was measured using the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA). Two different curricula were used at these universities: a traditional E&M curriculum and the Matter & Interactions (M&I) curriculum. At each university, postinstruction BEMA test averages were significantly higher for the M&I curriculum than for the traditional curriculum. The differences in post-test averages cannot be explained by differences in variables such as preinstruction BEMA scores, grade point average, or SAT Reasoning Test (SAT) scores. BEMA performance on categories of items organized by subtopic was also compared at one of the universities; M&I averages were significantly higher in each topic. The results suggest that the M&I curriculum is more effective than the traditional curriculum at teaching E&M concepts to students, possibly because the learning progression in M&I reorganizes and augments the traditional sequence of topics, for example, by increasing early emphasis on the vector field concept and by emphasizing the effects of fields on matter at the microscopic level. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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