Abstract
In a previous study, students' self-expressed learning orientations towards an exercise centered on self-monitoring one's ability to solve a pre-lab physics problem were identified from a post-test feedback survey given to an introductory algebra-based physics student population spanning six measured semesters, and examined as a potential variable in course performance, force and motion conceptual understanding, and attitudes towards learning physics. The sampled population, which primarily consists of life science majors, was also asked in the same feedback survey to discuss what portion or portions of the course were relevant to their respective choices of major. In this study, we examine the fact that about 50 students out of 218 sampled students, or 23% of the sample population, explicitly stated that they perceived no relevance at all of the course to their respective majors, whereas the other 168 students cited portions of the course or the entirety of the course as being relevant to their majors. A follow-up investigation of perceived relevance versus irrelevance shows that attitudes towards physics will experience more expert-like shifts for students who perceive relevance than students who do not; in particular, the attitudinal survey's item clusters that pertain to personal interest and real-world connections appear to show the strongest effect. Further examination showed that biology majors and health science majors (two distinctive sub-populations of life science majors) show similar pre-post trends for relevance vs. irrelevance perceptions, whereas students with a performance achievement goal appeared to bifurcate between a novice-like shift for perceived irrelevance and no attitudinal shift from pre to post for perceived relevance. Discussion includes emphasis on limitations imposed by institution type among other factors.
Highlights
The notion of relevance of a university-level course to a student [1] applies to non-physics majors’ perceptions of how a physics course is relevant to their major, e.g., an introductory algebra-based physics course sequence whose population is predominately life-science
Not all introductory physics for life sciences (IPLS) populations may be treated as monolithic specific majors, e.g., a course section that has a roughly equal mixture of biology majors and health science majors, which may occur in an institution type that differs in size and/or scope from the large research universities typically featured in IPLS publications
The results in Ref. 8 indicated that learning goals were identifiable from students’ short-answer written responses to a feedback survey question on the problem solving exercise, and that they appeared to be validated in terms of representing differences in attitudinal gains on problem-solving item clusters within the CLASS survey [13], as well as on conceptual understanding clusters and over the entire survey
Summary
The notion of relevance of a university-level course to a student [1] applies to non-physics majors’ perceptions of how a physics course is relevant to their major, e.g., an introductory algebra-based physics course sequence whose population is predominately life-science. The results in Ref. 8 indicated that learning goals were identifiable from students’ short-answer written responses to a feedback survey question on the problem solving exercise, and that they appeared to be validated in terms of representing differences in attitudinal gains on problem-solving item clusters within the CLASS survey [13], as well as on conceptual understanding clusters and over the entire survey. This correlation did not translate to any perceivable effect on pre-post measurements for the FCI [14] or on overall course performance
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