Section 3.10 Meeting with Instructors and Current Students
The committee also facilitated two focus groups. They wanted to hear the perspectives of the instructors who taught most of the lower-division introductory physics courses. They also wanted to hear the perspectives of the current undergraduates enrolled in the upper-division courses. They were far enough along in their deliberations to be able to put forth a tentative plan and to request feedback.
As shown in Appendix D, the committee's presentation began by reviewing problems with the current curriculum: that sophomore majors did not have any experiences that helped them identify as members of the physics committee, that fall junior year was too intense, especially for transfer students, particularly due to poor sequencing with mathematics courses, that students did not get enough content before taking the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) early in the fall of senior year, that the three week paradigms in physics courses were too short for some students, that paradigms in physics courses with just-in-time mathematics weeks seemed to work better than the separate mathematics methods course, that the time expectations for the electronics courses were too high, and there was not enough time and credit given for the senior thesis.
Next the committee presented the tentative plans for the two new sophomore courses, Ph 315 The Physics of Contemporary Challenges and Ph 335 Techniques of Theoretical Mechanics. The slides presented details about the proposed topics, connections to contemporary challenges, and goals for developing problem-solving skills and mathematical sophistication in physics contexts. The slides also presented a comparison of the current credits and required courses for a major with the proposed credits and required courses, including the shift from three 3-week courses each term of the junior year to two 5-week courses each term. In addition, the slides provided the proposed course schedule for majors, both those in the main sequence and those in the transfer sequence.
The committee members were surprised by some of the perspectives articulated during the focus groups, particularly by students who spoke positively about one of the courses that the committee had been considering eliminating. The students had particularly valued the laboratory experiences associated with that course, not only doing the experiments but also learning how to write them up. Their input prompted some re-thinking of the plans, including where and when to include the labs that the students had particularly praised.