Section 3.8 Redesigning the Junior Year Paradigm in Physics Courses
After much deliberation, the committee members came to agreement on a redesign of the junior year courses that involved shifting to a five-week course structure, combining several of the current courses, and to a limited extent adding or eliminating some topics. Appendix C presents Table 1, the proposed plan for upcoming 2016-2017 academic year, and some details.
Shifting to a five-week paradigm course structure.
The Paradigms 2.0 committee decided to recommend that the junior-level paradigms courses become 5-week courses, with a typical structure of one week of relevant mathematics methods preparation and four weeks of physics content. Students would enroll in two of these 5-week three-credit courses each term, rather than the three 3-week two-credit courses each term that currently comprised the junior-year program. The total number of credits would remain the same, six credits.
The committee recommended this shift for several reasons. Five-week courses likely would reduce stress on the students, particularly at the beginning of the junior year, by giving them more time within a course to integrate the content well. Also this format had been successful at the graduate level. The plan was to continue the daily one or two hour class sessions (one hour: Monday, Wednesday, Friday; two hours, Tuesday and Thursday).
Making a few major changes.
The one-week mathematics methods portion of a course, to be known as math bits, would replace the mathematics methods capstone course spring term. These just-in-time mathematics instructional sessions would occur within all the paradigm in physics courses, perhaps as a one-week preface as before but also possibly interspersed within the five-week time period. They might be taught by the same faculty member throughout the year or taught by the faculty member teaching the physics portion, depending upon the situation and faculty preferences.
The proposed new schedule omitted Ph 429 Reference Frames. The rationale for this recommendation was that the content of this course was largely independent of the rest of the paradigms in physics courses and could be taught elsewhere. For example, special relativity already was taught in another department and also could be expanded in one of the new sophomore level course for majors. Coriolis forces also could be included in a new sophomore level course for majors.
As discussed above, a meeting of the Upper Division Curriculum Committee had generated a long list of possible goals for new courses to be offered during the sophomore year. The purpose of such a course or courses would be to give special attention to physics majors beyond what they experienced in the very large required introductory physics series, Physics 211, 212, 213. The Paradigm 2.0 committee brainstormed some possibilities for new courses to address at least some of those goals. As discussed in Part VI: Changing Instruction: Chapters 4 and 5, two of the committee members took responsibility for designing and teaching two new courses for sophomores: Ph 315, Physics of Contemporary Challenges, and Ph 335 Techniques of Theoretical Mechanics.