New video resource for calculus-based introductory physics, design and assessment. I. Electricity and magnetism

摘要

A new online video resource named Freshman Physics Classroom (FPC) was developed by a team in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Texas A& M University to supplement calculus-based introductory physics courses. This article describes the development of this resource and reports the results from the first term of deployment, spring 2017, for student performance on both course examinations and the Brief Electricity & Magnetism Assessment (BEMA). The video modules received a high approval rating (>85%) from students according to anonymous clicker surveys administered twice over the course of the semester during lectures. Data from midterm exams show that students who engaged with the resource tended to outperform students who did not make use of the FPC video modules. Distributions of exam scores indicate that students with partial understanding of a subject from the course (lectures, recitations, and so forth) benefited from engagement with the video modules. Students from the spring semesters of 2015-2017 showed nearly identical levels of conceptual knowledge according to pre-testing conducted using BEMA, where spring 2015 and spring 2016 were used as a control group. Normalized gains were higher on average for those students who made use of the FPC video modules than for those who did not. Overall, the FPC video modules demonstrated a positive influence on student conceptual understanding and problem solving ability. (C) 2019 American Association of Physics Teachers.