A First Year Experience:

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• A First Year Experience
• Teaching
• How Things Work
• for non-science freshmen
• at Sewanee
• Course Design Assessment Workshop
• The ACS Reform of Introductory Science Courses
• for Non-Science Majors Program
• Rollins College, January 9-10, 2004
• Supported by the W.M. Keck Foundation of Los
  Angeles
• Ben Szapiro
• Department of Physics
• The University of the South

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OUTLINE

• The First Year Program (FYP)
• Design of the new course (HTW)
• Implementation
• Course materials
• Examples
• Assessment and Evaluations
• Conclusions, Questions

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The First Year Program

• Implemented in 2002, second year. Increase
  retention, improve advising, enrich academic
  life.
• 1,200 FYP Budget plus 7,000 Faculty
  Replacement.
• Restricted to first semester freshmen plus AP.
• Students pre-enrolled over the summer
  (preferences).
• Seminar style (under 15 students).
• Faculty is also advisor, all students live in the
  same dorm.
• Writing intensive.
• Hands-on, Minds on.
• Minimize lectures, engage students in active
  learning.

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10 TIPS FOR FYP SUCCESS Diane W. Strommer   1)
Understand Your Students (where are they coming
from, where are you coming from).   2) Clarify
Course Objectives (assignments, activities,
quizzes are supporting elements of course goals,
not goals themselves). Content to cover vs.
what students will achieve at the end of the
process (able to understand, to do, to apply
general principles, or other outcomes).   3) Pay
particular attention to the first class (sets the
tone, is the appetizer that provokes hunger or
spoils appetite?). Explain course goals and then
use Icebreakers (for instance, pair students to
gather info about one another and then introduce
them to the class). Use nametags. Pose a
question like Name 3 ways in which college will
be different from high school. Skills needed to
succeed in college? Share a defining event with
the class (identify common experiences).   4)
Establish a Climate for Learning (comfort zone to
participate, build self-confidence and trust).
Create base groups (4-5 students, cooperative
learning). Research on learning suggests
beginning a class with a brief activity to foster
reflection (What is the most important thing
learned from our last class or assigned
reading).   5) Abandon the Non-Stop Lecture
(active vs. passive learning). In lectures
students pay attention about 50 of the time and
retain about 50 of that. Traditional Discussion
(professor posses a question to the whole class)
is not much better (80 of the time is the
professor talking). Learning as a spectator
sport. vs. Small Group Discussion. To learn
means break new info into meaningful chunks,
make connections between them and things we
already know. Students need to generate their own
examples of the concepts and explain them to
someone else. Faculty teach as faculty like to
learn, but not as students learn best.
Abstract/Reflexive learners are only 10 of high
school seniors. Variety of learning styles
requires variety of teaching styles. Attention
span, learning styles, lifelong learning skills
need to be at the forefront of teaching
strategies.  
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• 6) Involve Students with Varied Activities. Break
  class in small groups. Active learning Maybe a
  good idea to explain to the students (who might
  prefer a passive lecture style)
• a) Research on learning shows that students
  learn more when they work actively and
  collaboratively in groups in class.
• b) Developing skills in working in groups will
  impact future employment.
• c) Content in the group tasks will be on exams or
  projects.
•  
• 7) Provide opportunity for Reflection. Quality
  journal writing might help.
•  
• 8) Take Risks. Takes about 3 years of experience
  to get it right. Be aware of teachers fears not
  adequately prepared, expose ignorance, glazed
  eyes and bored faces from students, ambivalence
  about power (grade and credentials) over their
  lives.
•  
• 9) Include Upper-Class Students. Student mentors
  are key, use them wisely, empower them, and
  assign them responsibilities in guiding
  discussions.
•  
• 10) Develop a Support Group. Steal liberally from
  the activities and ideas of other FYP faculty,
  regular meetings and communication.

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Some Cognitive Principles (Joe Redish) Principle
1 Individuals build their knowledge by making
connections to existing knowledge they use this
knowledge by productively creating a response to
the information they receive. Corollary 1.1 .
Learning is a growth, not a transfer. It takes
repetition, reflection, and integration to build
robust, functional knowledge. Corollary 1.2 .
Building functional scientific mental models does
not occur spontaneously for most students.
Repeated and varied activities that help build
coherence are important. Principle 2 What people
construct depends on the context including
their mental states. Principle 3 It is
reasonably easy to learn something that matches
or extends an existing schema, but changing a
well-established schema substantially is
difficult. Corollary 3.1 . It's hard to learn
something we don't almost already know. Corollary
3.2 . Much of our learning is done by
analogy. Corollary 3.3 . Touchstone problems
and examples are very important. Corollary 3.4 .
It is very difficult to change an established
mental model.
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You are presented with 4 cards and told that the
only rules are that if one side of the card shows
a vowel then the back side must show an odd
number.. As a rigorous and skeptic person you
are asked to check if the cards comply with this
rule. What is the least number of cards you need
to flip if presented with the 4 cards below?
1
2
A
7
K
2
ANSWER (Circle one) 0 1 2 3
4 ?_at_!
TIME TAKEN TO DECIDE (in seconds)
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A bartender writes for each order on the front of
a card the drink and on the back the age. As a
bar owner you need to check if he is complying
with underage drinking laws. What is the least
number of cards you need to flip if presented
with the 4 cards below?
52
GIN
COKE
16
ANSWER (Circle one) 0 1 2 3
4 ?_at_!
TIME TAKEN TO DECIDE (in seconds)
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Same logic, different difficulty!

• These problems provide a very nice example of
  both productive reasoning and context dependence.
  In the two cases, most people call on different
  kinds of reasoning to answer the two problems.
  The second relies on matching with social
  experience- a kind of knowledge handled in a much
  different way from mathematical reasoning.
• This result has powerful implications for our
  attempt to instruct untrained students First it
  demonstrates that the assumption that once a
  student has learned something, theyll have it
  is not correct. The example shows that even
  changing the context of a problem may make it
  much more difficult. Second, it points out that a
  problem or reasoning that has become sufficiently
  familiar to us to feel like 16/Coke/52/Gin may
  feel like K/2A/7 to our students!

Source E.F. Redish, Teaching Physics, J.Wiley
Sons, 2003
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Main Objectives of HTW

• Introduce students to the scientific method and
  basic critical thinking (and tinkering!) skills.
• Science appreciation. Idea of Leverage A
  few basic principles may be applied to a large
  number of a situations.
• Predictive powers! Increase students confidence
  on analytic and synthetic skills
• Improve writing and logical skills, scientific
  reporting. Library!
• De-mystify technology. Use current technologies
  as motivation (CDs, cell phones, GPS, bicycles,
  MRI, Segways, hydrogen fuel cells, etc.).
• Foster interest in life-long learning and ability
  to evaluate and decide.
• Convince students of the need for both
  quantitative and qualitative analysis.
• Focus on estimates rather than mathematical rigor.

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Web Page, Blackboard

• http//www.sewanee.edu/physics/PHYSICS111/PHYSICS1
  11.html
• Team taught Randy Peterson/Ben Szapiro (first
  time). Coordination?
• Shared advising, grading, alternated front/back
  roles.
• Fun experience, offered as a summer course in
  July 04.
• HTW textbook by Lou Bloomfield used sparingly
  (large vs. small classes).
• Grading C for satisfying requirements (3 papers)
• 1) How fast can you bike?
• 2) The CD player
• 3) Personal Project (3 page summary) reviewed
  by a classmate.
• Quizzes, special projects, discussion board
  contributions, attendance to talks, etc. are for
  extra credit (no downside).
• PowerPoint Project presentations in lieu of Final
  Exam, followed by closing dinner. Best projects
  voted by classmates for extra credit.
• Dont you wish that all your courses would fall
  neatly into place?

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Co-curricular activities

• Dinner at faculty homes and restaurants
• Trip to bicycle shop (hands-on, greasy!)
• Invited speakers/test run of recumbent bikes
• Group bike rides (PE credit)
• Visit to Hospital Cancer Center
• Attendance (rewarded!) to departmental talks by
  invited speakers
• 1,200 FYP Budget

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Assessment How well are students learning?(As
opposed to How much material did I get to cover?)
Learning can and often does take place without
the benefit of teaching-and sometimes even in
spite of it- but there is no such thing as
effective teaching in the absence of learning.
There are gaps, sometimes considerable ones,
between what was taught and what has been
learned. By the time faculty notice these gaps in
knowledge or understanding, it is frequently too
late to remedy the problems. Thomas A. Angelo/K.
Patricia Cross Classroom Assessment Techniques
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Assessment techniques tried

• Quick recaps (25 minutes, before moving on)
• Break into 4 Groups
• 3 minutes Group Discussion, agree on a summary
• Election of a Group Spokesperson.
• 3 minutes summary given by the speaker Q A
• Quick Quizzes (Individual, 15 minutes, Extra
  Credit)
• Extensive rewriting of papers, with trail.
• Mutual student grading of first draft of papers.

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Teacher Evaluations

• Students feedback trough informal conversations
  plus
• 1) Standard Questionnaire
  2) FYP Questionnaire
• Main pros Intellectually stimulating, close
  faculty-student relationships, students feel that
  the faculty knows them well, good advising. Other
  freshmen saw HTW as the coolest class. 14 out
  of the 15 students would recommend it to an
  incoming student. Some students got the
  inventors spark. Positive role model of the AP
  (Melissa Glaser). Is liberating not to have to
  cover a given set of materials.
• Main cons Some students would prefer more
  lecturing and less discussion, disliked
  rewriting, disliked crunch at the end, some
  complained about math limitations getting in the
  way. Some students not used to alternating
  teachers, they wanted one single authority
  figure.

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Preliminary Conclusions

• Effective way to introduce students to science.
• Writing intensive requirement involves lots of
  extra work.
• Biking, exploring, field trips, etc., add an
  important out of classroom element to learning
  and getting to know them.
• More flexibility on the topics, be more
  responsive of students interests. Revise the
  issue of discussion board and grading system. Use
  of Blackboard CMS?
• Is exciting to teach with objects, brain hands
  gt cooperative learning.
• By comparison, our standard intro physics courses
  (with its a chapter a week model) are drier and
  less stimulating.
• Go into Studio Physics format.
• Q A