Physics 11 – I was away today on ProD duties, and I had my students do the post-test FCI. I haven’t analyzed the results yet but they’re not great. From my perspective, they were downright disappointing. However, talking to students, it turns out that many kids had one or two other tests that same day and they were test fatigued. I think that would play only a small role in the situation. I also have to realize that we don’t cover any circular motion in physics 11, and while students with the deepest and best conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics can figure out rotational motion on their own, for others the rotational motion is pretty confusing.
While I think that the FCI should not be prepped for, next year I need to pay more attention to getting the right day for students to do it. As well, while doing unbalanced forces I think I will do some peer instruction on rotational motion.
Use FMCE! It only covers 1D forces, motion, and just a tad bit of energy and is a far far more reliable / valid measure of student learning. Your students do need to be more familiar with graphs to use the FMCE.
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I just checked it out and I would like to try it. Do people use scantron cards for this test? I’m thinking that the scantron cards my school has don’t go up to option H. Any ideas you have on this would be appreciated!
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Let me ask around. I use it with small #s of students (preservice physics teachers, a few others), so they fill out the actual test by hand and I grade it by hand.
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My colleague who runs Phys Port sent this link to me. I don’t know if they have info that will help you specifically, but its a great collection of ideas and resources: https://www.physport.org/recommendations/Entry.cfm?ID=93330
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Thanks Brian, I’ll definitely check it out!
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