The last 3 objectives are assessed throughout the semester via chapter tests.
Final Exam consists of the following 8 questions plus 29 multiple choice questions from the Force Concepts Inventory written by HestenesFor each question, be precise and make the strongest statement possible. Include units.
For all but #2 and #4, answer on a separate sheet of paper.
For security reasons, the exam itself is not posted here. If you would like to see this part, please send me an e-mail
Results of PHY 211 Evaluation
PART I: Force Concepts Inventory (created by Hestenes et al for AAPT members)
The following are the number of correct answers from a field of 7 PHY 211 students' tests plus 5 PHY 111 students' tests.
Questions RE accelDefn {20,21} 2/14 = 14% - never worked with this repr. before
Questions RE g=const {1,17} 11/14= 79%
Questions RE N1L {4,6,8,10,26} 24/35= 69%
Questions RE FBD {5,9,12,19,22} 16/35= 46% - need more emphasis
Questions RE N2L {15,24,25,27,28,29} 29/42= 69%
Questions RE N3L {2,11,13,14,18} 14/35= 40% - not unusual, but still a problem area
Question RE projectiles {3, 16, 23} 14/21= 67%
Overall score was 18±4.4 = 58±15%
PART II: Short Answer questions written by Robert Philbin
1) Raw score 45± 30%
Students had trouble defining terms in generality. Most simply quoted the formulaic definition, about 30% incorrectly. Only a few thoroughly discussed relationships between concepts. About 1/4 of the students simply did not answer the discussion questions. This suggests using a single question which asks for an essay format answer relating pertinent ideas. For example, change #1 to "Thoroughly discuss the relationships between mechanical energy (K and U), work, and heat in the most general case of a closed system."
2) Raw score 60± 36%
This question aimed to see if students could recognize concepts within a context and detect unstated assumptions. The question could be improved by asking for more specific answers, e.g., "What assumption is associated with the factor 0.5?"
3) Raw score 51± 42%
Students had to i) estimate/compute the mass of a wheel before/after recognizing the appropriate form for rotational inertia, ii) compute a from v, r, and D t, and iii) use the rotational form of Newton's Second Law. Most students were able to do part i) and iii), but had trouble getting ii).
4) Raw score 38± 10%
No one got a) completely. This material was very recent, was demonstrated two different ways in class, and explained in reference to a refrigerator. I think that because it was a fill in the blank, students figured that they should not have to do any additional work but rather just write down the answer. Next year, specify that they should do the appropriate computation (this applies to b), which no one got correct). Similarly, no one did any calculation for c) and hence got at most 2/3 of it correct. Only 1/7 even identified the formula for d), but even he did not calculate the value! Everyone got e).
5) Raw score 47± 38%
Some did very well while others did extremely poorly, hence the fact that s /x ~ 0.8 but there was virtually no correlation between this and #1 as I expected!
6) Raw score 70± 22%
This was a recent topic that is also somewhat intuitive. Only about 1/4 were on the right track regarding the calculation of the effects, however.
7) Raw score 44± 44%
Those who participated in the lab exercise were the only students who even tried on this problem, the others left it blank (despite the fact that it was also an online reading assignment)! The score for those who attempted is was 78± 21%, far and away the best score on any problem on the test.
8) Raw score 41± 33%
The correlation between those present for the lab exercise and test scores was unclear here. All but one did very poorly. I think we did not spend enough time on this in post-lab discussion.