Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-2-2014

Publication Title

American Journal of Physics

Volume

82

Issue Number

2

First Page

153

Last Page

163

DOI

10.1119/1.4857435

Disciplines

Applied Mathematics | Engineering Physics | Physics

Abstract

This paper describes our large reformed introductory physics course at UC Davis, which bioscience students have been taking since 1996. The central feature of this course is a focus on sense-making by the students during the five hours per week discussion/labs in which the students take part in activities emphasizing peer-peer discussions, argumentation, and presentations of ideas. The course differs in many fundamental ways from traditionally taught introductory physics courses. After discussing the unique features of CLASP and its implementation at UC Davis, various student outcome measures are presented showing increased performance by students who took the CLASP course compared to students who took a traditionally taught introductory physics course. Measures we use include upper-division GPAs, MCAT scores, FCI gains, and MPEX-II scores.

Comments

This is a preprint that was uploaded to arxiv.org The Version of Record was published in the American Journal of Physics and can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1119/1.4857435

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