Stony Brook University
Course Title: Physics for Life Sciences
Contact: Rod Engelmann
Stony Brook University plans to redesign Physics for Life Sciences, a two-semester, four-credit introductory physics course sequence which starts each fall with an annual enrollment in both courses of ~1280 students. The majority of the students are juniors. Each term, three faculty members each deliver three traditional one-hour lectures a week, 16 faculty members hold one-hour weekly recitation sessions, and 26 graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) hold 52 two-hour lab sessions per week. Homework is web-based and graded by software for credit. Exams in essay format are graded by hand.
The course faces both academic and resource problems. The traditional, lecture-based format is ineffective in engaging the students. Different GTA styles lead to a non-uniform lab introduction and inconsistency across sections. Individual help for students is insufficient. The steadily growing enrollment, which has almost doubled during the last five years, has become increasingly difficult to service with fixed resources. Due to planned increases in enrollment campuswide, the annual increase in course enrollment is projected to continue and may accelerate for years to come.
Stony Brook University will employ a Replacement Model in its redesign. Both course and laboratory lectures will be delivered electronically. Lecture time will be replaced by three weekly interactive workshops taught by three faculty in three sections employing a class response system. Both the workshops and the lab sessions will be preceded by web-graded homework for credit; lab reports will also be automatically graded. All homework and lab report grading software has a strong tutorial component. A help room will be staffed with GTAs and undergraduate teaching assistants (UTAs) who work for credit and are supervised by a faculty member. Individual help will be provided by the three faculty members teaching the workshops via e-mail, and in a virtual help room during peak hours.
The redesigned course will enhance the student learning experience by encouraging active learning. Students will be actively engaged at every step along the instructional process. Students will have the tools for prompt self assessment, including the extensive tutorial queries in all web-graded homework and lab reports. Additional help via e-mail and a virtual help room provided by faculty and extended help room coverage with GTAs will further support student learning.
Student learning outcomes will be assessed by comparing performance data from parallel sections in fall 2008 from one traditional section enrolling 200 students and three redesigned sections enrolling 750 students. Performance on common content items selected from the final exam and on pre- and post-tests using Physics Concept Inventory Tools will be compared.
The redesigned course will reduce the cost of instruction by eliminating recitation sections, increasing annual enrollment from 1280 to 1370, decreasing the number of lab sections from 52 to 46 and increasing their size from 24 to 30. The number of full-time faculty will be reduced from 32 to 8 and GTAs from 26 to 24. These actions will decrease the cost-per-student from $463 to $236, a 49% savings. Full-time faculty will become available to teach additional courses, and the classrooms used for traditional recitation sections will be opened for other uses.
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