1. Higher Standards and fewer failures?

2. 1st effort: Working with High School Physics Teachers
To Launch Students into College Physics
2/7/ :30-2:30 NJIT CKB 116
Professor Gordon Thomas, Workshop Leader
Presented by
NJIT Center for Pre-College Programs, Physics Department,
College of Science and Liberal Arts
NJIT Welcomes You

3. 2nd effort: Working on teaching methods

4. Old effort Results: Lectures and old assessment: results

5. 2nd and 3rd efforts: Active learning and controlled assessment

6. 2nd and 3rd methods: results

7. Adoption of active learning?

8. 4th: Attitude is another factor

9. Different teaching Summary
Failure rates
Control:
College
boards
“A” rates
Different sections of same course, same exams, same homework, same tutoring, similar students}

10. U. Washington data is consistent with NJIT:

11. How I started to study teaching: October 27, 2011
My course:
1. Multi-section, required, intro physics course with 15 sections
“A Gateway Course”.
2. Must learn to solve physics problems using math
3. Uses multiple choice questions

12. Analyzed learning with assessment
We have addressed both standards and the failure rate in a 15-section physics course that is required for most students at NJIT. This course is the first one that entering students take, and prior to our project 50% of the students failed and 10% got A grades. Over 5 years, we tried a variety of changes, designed to keep the % of A grades constant while reducing the failure rate. We have succeeded in both keeping high standards and reducing failure. This talk will analyze the methods we used, including encouraging a philosophy among the faculty of helping rather than weeding out students. We also used an ETS method of exam construction, variants of active learning, less pure lecturing, increased tutoring, and increased advising. We also see problems with these efforts in the future.

13. Attitudes: What can we do about them?
Nature, July 2015, M. Mitchell Waldrop
Attitudes: What can we do about them?

14. Latest % failure with different teaching styles in same course.
Mostly lecture
23%
Mostly Active %
Fail
SAT
Scores

15. Gen-Ed Courses Dr. Elizabeth Petrick, Assistant Professor, Federated History Department
Problems with student engagement:
Serving the needs of majors and non-majors
Classroom management / lecture plans:
In-class group work
Mixing learning styles / teaching delivery
Discussion-focused class time

16. Student scores from 1st part of 2018: STUDIO

17. Student final scores F2017 SCALE-UP

18. F 2015

19. Student success is predicted by entrance score
NJIT
Texas Tech
One of the plotted data points (bottom left) belongs to Wright State as this graph is repurposed from another use.
The regression line was computed for the peer institutions plus Wright State.

20. Careless mistakes cause the most trouble.

21. Data on failure and success Traditional method%J
Fail Pass
Data on failure and success
Traditional method
frequency %
Grade
New method
Active learning
Step by step, basics + physics
Exam that matches learning

22. % of student failure {same course, same exams, same homework, same tutoring, similar students}

23. Different Profs fail many more students
Lectures
Active
Learning
Lecture
methods
59% 7%