Analyzing My Own FCI Data

I'm in that glorious time of year known as My Student Teacher's Solo Period where I just sit in the library and get other work done, while my intern handles my classes. How did I get so lucky?

So what have I been doing with all my time? Besides running an uncontested campaign for City Council, co-organizing the Montpelier Energy Fair, and refinancing my mortgage, I've been crunching data from my classroom.

Oh gosh this is embarrassing. But I think it's healthy to just put it out there!

I've been using the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) since 2007 as a pre and post test for my students, to see if I have actually taught them any physics. In case you're not familiar the FCI is a nationally recognized physics test and I could be comparing my results with traditionally taught classrooms or project-based classrooms all over the country, and that's great, but it seems too that at least in my case - there's something to be said for gaining experience. The algorithm for Normalized Point Gain (G) is (Average post test score -Average pre-test score)/(100 - Average pre-test score)

Back in 2010 I was floored by how good my scores were, and then in 2011 you can imagine my disappointment. Was 2010 just a good dream? What happened? This of course led to a serious revamp of some specific units and putting my entire curriculum in digital form. Apparently it's paying off! It appears yet again that I'm making progress. I've already disaggregated the data to tell me which unit is my weakest, so I know where to focus my energies for next year! 

In an industry where your product graduates, it's good to feel like you're making some kind of progress. 

Force Concept Inventory Results for Year 1

This year I gave my students a physics exam called the Force Concept Inventory (available here). The idea is to give this Newtonian Mechanics test at the beginning of the year before anything has been taught, and then again after you've finished Newtonian Mechanics as a way to measure student progress, effective teaching, growth as a teacher over the scale of years.

This is the first year I'd ever given this test, so I didn't expect high results, especially considering we didn't cover centripetal motion at all. Something else to note is that I did not actually give the test at the beginning of the year, I gave it just before we covered "force", so the point gain is artificially low. I just tallied the results yesterday, and had some rather interesting discoveries.

For my classical physics class students gained about 3.5 points (out of 30), I only had one student regress, and I had 2 or 3 receive the same score. Those students who remained the same or regressed were mostly in the same class and I would normally consider them "bright" students, however they were singularly difficult students for me to connect with. Bright, but unfortunately apathetic, or perhaps "too cool" for my class. And now we have the proof that it, indeed, did nothing for them.

My Experimental Physics Class was a different story however. I only had six students who were enrolled in both the first and second semesters and took both tests, and un-expectedly, four of these students made no gains at all. It was shocking and hubling to find that 2/3 of the student population hadn't apparently "learned" any physics over the year. Shocking. The student with the highest gains jumped 6 points and another moved up 3 points, which averaged out to 1.5 pts/person, but what this tells me is that either I'm not getting through to them, or they're not prepared to take this sort of assessment. Or both. Curious, curious.