Education research: preliminary MPEX comparison (Cuesta College, Fall Semester 2008)

The Maryland Physics Expectations survey (MPEX) was administered to Cuesta College Physics 205A (college physics, algebra-based, mandatory adjunct laboratory) students at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA. The MPEX was given during the first week of the semester, and then on the last week of the semester, to quantify student attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions about physics using six question categories, rating responses as either favorable or unfavorable towards:

1. Independence--beliefs about learning physics--whether it means receiving information or involves an active process of reconstructing one's own understanding;
   
2. Coherence--beliefs about the structure of physics knowledge--as a collection of isolated pieces or as a single coherent system;
   
3. Concepts--beliefs about the content of physics knowledge--as formulas or as concepts that underlie the formulas;
   
4. Reality Link--beliefs about the connection between physics and reality--whether physics is unrelated to experiences outside the classroom or whether it is useful to think about them together;
   
5. Math Link--beliefs about the role of mathematics in learning physics--whether the mathematical;
   formalism is used as a way of representing information about physical phenomena or mathematics is just used to calculate numbers;
   
6. Effort--beliefs about the kind of activities and work necessary to make sense out of physics--whether they expect to think carefully and evaluate what they are doing based on available materials and feedback or not.

Cuesta College
Physics 205A Fall Semester 2008 sections 70854, 70855
(N = 30, matched pairs, 
         excluding negative informed consent form responses)

Percentage of favorable:unfavorable responses
        Overall Indep.  Coher.  Concept Real.   Math    Effort
Initial 56:22   47:14   45:32   52:27   66:13   55:20   71:12
Final   51:28   44:24   53:25   49:35   68:11   42:35   52:27

Perhaps most notable this semester is a higher gain in coherence, no loss in reality, and a smaller losses in concept and effort compared to previous semesters. Unique to this semester, compared to previous semesters was not just the mere implementation of electronic response system "clickers" (Classroom Performance System, einstruction.com), but the use of known best practices of using clickers (i.e., "think-(pair)-share"), from current education research. More analysis on the impact of using clickers on this introductory astronomy class will be forthcoming on this blog.

Previous posts:

• Education research: preliminary MPEX comparison (Cuesta College, Spring Semester 2008)
  
• Education research: preliminary MPEX comparison (Cuesta College, Fall Semester 2007)
  (More detailed discussion on interpreting historical MPEX results at Cuesta College.)
  
• Education research: student expectations in physics
  (Background on the MPEX by E. F. Redish, J. M. Saul, and R. N. Steinberg.)