Catherine Martin-Dunlop received a Scholarly and Creative Activities (SCAC) grant, in the form of three units of teaching release time, to evaluate an innovative learning environment in a first-years physics course this fall. Catherine has been an assistant professor in the Science Education Department in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics since 2005, shortly after receiving her Ph.D. from Curtin University of Technology. Studying innovative science classroom environments is one of her focus areas of research, and she enjoys conducting collaborative studies with scientists in her College.
Catherine's study is quantitative and qualitative in approach. Four scales from the Test of Science-Related Attitudes--TOSRA (Fraser, 1981) have already been used to collect data on the first day of the course. The TOSRA will be administered again as a posttest. Approximately two-thirds into the 15-week course, Catherine plans on assessing the learning environment as well in which she will compare students' actual and preferred perceptions of the classroom environment. Scales will likely be drawn from the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory--CUCEI (Fraser & Treagust, 1986) and the University Social Constructivist Learning Environment Survey--USCLES (Taylor, Fisher, & Fraser, 2002). The qualitative component will consist of interviews with students and the instructor, Dave McKay, classroom observation notes, and artifact analysis involving the students' rewritten, 'reflective' lecture notes.
The physics course is designed to enable students to overcome possible weaknesses in their high school academic preparation, to improve their attitudes towards physics, and to raise their self-efficacy about performing well in a physics course. The primary learning goal is for students to develop deep conceptual understanding of fundamental physics' concepts, particularly in mechanics and calculus, allowing them to be successful in the next, more traditional course. A secondary goal is to provide a personal, supportive, and enjoyable learning environment that encourages students to continue on in physics, and to eventually find physics-related careers especially in areas with low numbers of minority students.
Physics classes in many universities have notoriously low enrollments and few students choose physics as a major. The course Catherine is studying is trying to change this by creating a learning environment in which students can avoid doing countless problems from a textbook, understand rather than memorize, and make cognitive connections between theoretical ideas that arise during class discussions and practical work that is done during laboratory investigations. There are no prerequisites for the course, it is based on a credit or no credit grading system, and enrollment occurs only with the instructor's permission who reminds students that attendance and participation are mandatory. During the course, more emphasis is placed on formative assessment (checking for understanding; e.g., rewritten lecture notes) rather than summative assessment in which a final examination can spell disaster for a student. No tests and no textbook certainly make it an unusual physics course and, undoubtedly, a course many of us wish we could have taken.
This article will also appear in the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Learning Environments Special Interest Group (SIG) Newsletter.
