Section 3.4 Beginning Deliberations
General discussion among the committee members initially considered various issues associated with the modern physics course, the electronics courses, the computational courses, and the specialty courses. These issues had been long standing and were a primary motivation for undertaking this formal reform process.
Also raised was the question of whether to continue the current structure of the nine junior paradigms courses, currently a series of three 3-week courses each term, or would it be better to shift to two 5-week courses each term? Such a shift might ease stress for the students if they had a little more time to adjust to what was happening, as they still seem to be experiencing difficulties at the beginning of the junior year.
Also a series of computational courses had been designed to accompany the paradigms courses and perhaps the electronics courses should do that as well, or maybe aspects of both the computation and electronics courses should somehow be incorporated within the paradigms in physics courses.
These considerations led the committee to begin their deliberations with the junior-year paradigms in physics courses, even though the initial perspective had been that these courses were largely ok and were not expected to be a focus of the current reform effort.