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raleighliving · 2 years

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Interview with NCSU Staff Member

This was an interview I conducted April 22nd of 2021. I've tried to eliminate as much personal information as possible (including the initial "about yourself" question) since if any attitudes or opinions have changed I wanted to respect the individual while still showing I did in fact talk to people about this.

RL: How do you feel, personally, about the NCSU physics department and the work you do there? Do you particularly enjoy it, have things been rough due to the Pandemic, etc.

Staff Member (SM): The department is very collegial and a great place to work. Our faculty are performing research that will have direct impacts on the future. We have faculty working to develop transparent plastics for greenhouses that can let appropriate light through for plant growth while using the light that is not needed to generate electricity to power the facilities, faculty using physics techniques to probe how biological macromolecules self-organize to exert mechanical force and accomplish biological function, information needed to understand cancer, birth defects, and miscarriage, and faculty who initiate discussions with the general public about the end of the universe through popular science books. On the teaching side, we have many faculty who have received teaching awards such as the Board of Governor's award, the Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award, NC State's Academy of Outstanding Teachers, and even national awards such as the American Physical Society’s Award for Excellence in Physics Education. We take both teaching, research, and service very seriously.

As with everyone else, we have pivoted with COVID as everything has moved online. I'll comment more below on specifics.

RL: on to the fun stuff here, I've talked to a number of your students from a plethora of graduating classes and they all echo this similar belief that "The NCSU physics department operates on a 'fail to pass' mindset where class averages sit at the low sixties until a curve is brought in".

SM: The first thing needed is to understand what we teach. You had comments in your thread from both physics majors and non-majors.

We teach physics to a very large number of students each year; approximately one out of every 10 students at NC State is currently taking a physics class. The vast majority of these students are not physics majors, with about 60% of them taking the calculus-based classes (205/208) and 40% the algebra-based ones (211/212). Loosely speaking, PY205/8 are primarily filled with engineering students and PY211/2 are life-science majors. The total numbers of students taught in 2020 are Fall 211/2/05/08 (2131), Dept. Total (2819), Spring 211/2/05/08 (2416), Dept. Total (3158). Multiply this by 4 to get a rough number of credit hours. Note physics majors take PY201/202 which is a similar class, but taught at a higher level than PY205/8.

To summarize more accurately from what I've gathered, many seem to think that the Physics department at NC State operates in a way that is purposefully obfuscated/overly complex and then saves itself by fiddling with homework weights or by curving every assignment. How would you respond to these statements?

Although I don't know, I would guess that most of your comments arise from students taking PY205/208. There are multiple sections of each course and they are taught with a common syllabus so that everyone has the same homework, tests, etc. regardless of the section they take. Exams are common across all sections and are given in the evenings. We have one one faculty member make the first draft of the test each time, but they are thoroughly vetted by all faculty teaching the course. Very few of the initial problems remain exactly the same after each problem has been reviewed by multiple faculty members.

We put out practice tests for the students based on tests from previous years. We provide the students many ways to test their knowledge, including a set of representative problems with only answers available. There are an ample number of worked out solutions provided throughout the chapters in the book and other resources and this tool provides a way to test their knowledge prior to the test. If someone is struggling with the practice test, they will not be able to learn it from there, but need to step back to more structured problems with explanations before revisiting the practice test again. We do not provide practice tests that completely mirror the actual tests because we are asking the students to learn the material as opposed to memorizing how to work a small subset of problems.

All courses are taught by faculty, with the graduate TAs overseeing the associated one-hour laboratory courses (PY206/9). During the pandemic, we have had to introduce more technology into the course since everything had to rapidly switch to online, which has caused a few hick-ups, but overall it seems to be going well given the rollout to such large numbers of students with little time to vet the technology.

When it comes to tests, we do evaluate them and in many cases either apply a curve for each test or one for the class as a whole. Student performance has changed during the pandemic as a result of not being able to discuss problems with their peers, not having group study sessions, no in-person tutoring, etc. We have tried to account for this by reducing the difficulty of the tests, but that is not always sufficient. I will note that many students are doing incredibly well and the averages have been running lower recently because the tail of the distribution is much longer now than before. The median for the tests however is higher than the average.

While not part of your question, over the past few years, the numbers of students cheating has unfortunately significantly increased and we have been forced to put measures in place to help ensure the integrity of the course for the majority of students who are spending many hours preparing. Pre-COVID, these measures included assigned seats during the tests and randomized numbers/answers across tests. Post-COVID, early indicators showed significant increases in cheating (~15% of students). This is a nationwide issue and I have seen multiple discussions by department heads across the country. We thus needed to put structures in place in this new reality.

These have evolved over the past two semesters based on both faculty and student feedback. They include Respondus Monitor, which was chosen by the University/DELTA and they purchased a site license. Due to the large number of students, other monitoring options are not really viable. We are also using ~30-minute segments for the tests, which is aimed to allow one to take a short break between parts. This also helps the student continue should they have temporary connectivity problems or technology failures. The test uses randomized numbers and numeric questions, which is the same format as their homework. There is only one chance per question and the questions are presented in a fixed ordering that is unique for each student. This minimizes opportunities for collaborative work during the test. In a test setting, we want students to work on problems individually, not in groups. We understand that this presentation of questions is not ideal, but this has been implemented for integrity reasons. Students may bring several pages of your individually prepared notes – on paper. We would like them to be able to access resources, but we want it to be resources that they created and hope it will help alleviate some of their anxiety. The test is not open book. Electronic versions of the textbook are cumbersome during a testing situation, and provide a significant advantage to students fortunate enough to own a second device or a printed copy. Students must submit their handwritten work for each problem. This is required, as it will help us verify that they did the work themselves.

RL: Do you feel like the Physics and engineering courses use "weed out" courses? What are your thoughts on weed-out courses in general?

SM: We teach the material at a level that is consistent with norms across the country and we do not consider our role to be a weed-out course. We do cover a lot of material in class and it moves quickly. It requires significant work outside of the classroom and for many, it is the first challenging course (of many) that they take at the University. Our syllabus is consistent with almost all similar engineering-based courses and we are regularly reviewed as part of the College of Engineering's ABET accreditation process. I meet regularly with administrators from the College of Engineering to make sure we are covering the appropriate material for their students. We also have active collaborations with engineering faculty teaching higher-level mechanics and statics courses developing tools that can be used across the two colleges in multiple courses. In addition to university resources, there are many local opportunities for students to get extra support - either from their professor during office hours or from our graduate students who work in our own tutorial center.

RL: Do you have any statistics for your department's graduation rates that you could share? Searching through public information it looks like the average failure rate for physics students teeters between ~22-25%, and according to College Factual [Data May have changed since 2021] NCSU only awarded 29 BA's in the last year, and the school has an overall on-time graduation rate of 44%. Compared to notoriously difficult Physics and Engineering schools like MIT, which holds an 85% graduation rate comparatively, this is troubling data, to say the least. If you could provide any statistics or data contrary, however, that'd be greatly appreciated.

I'm not sure where the numbers they quote come from. Per the University's Institutional Data Profiles, the current numbers for physics are:

Retention and Graduation Rates

Data Element 2020-2021

Four Year Graduation Rate 60%

Five Year Graduation Rate 67%

Six Year Graduation Rate 78%

First Year Retention 91%

Note that these numbers only include freshmen who started at NC State. This excludes all transfer students from the community college route.

We produce about 30 bachelor degrees per year which is par for a department of our size. You can see national statistics here: https://www.aps.org/careers/statistics/upload/bachdegree1115.pdf [Numbers may have changed since 2021]. This number is also consistent with the size of our incoming class which also runs about 30. Note that about 1/2 of our graduates started in physics as a freshman. The other half of the class (both incoming and outgoing) change their major in the process. Much of this happens as students see a much broader set of options when entering the university and there are many that move between different areas in sciences and engineering. Our program as a whole has about 140 physics majors across all years and about 120 graduate students en route generally to a PhD.

Again, a mix of data here in that our majors do not take the engineering sequence where you are quoting the ~22-25% failure rate. For these classes, I looked at the pre-COVID PY205 DWF (#'s of D's, F's, and Withdrawals) rates and how they compared over eight spring semesters (averaged over all sections of PY205 taught not including honors). Note that a D is not considered failing the course, however the College of Engineering requires a C or better to move forward with their curriculum so I have included it in this analysis. Also during COVID, the University introduced additional S/U grading options and allowed withdrawals much later, so it has been almost impossible for me to get meaningful statistics on student success during this time. Pre-COVID, the DWF rate across all sections over the previous eight years was 22.8% and with a median of 25.1%. I looked in detail for the spring semester prior to the shutdown where the rate was 24% across all sections. Here, almost half (11 of the 24%) were either W's or students who did not show up for the final exam. Of course there will always be variations from year-to-year and also from instructor-to-instructor, but we try to keep these reasonably small.

RL: Overall, what message would you like to send to the students in your department? What sort of takeaway do you want people who enter these courses and feel they were given a purposefully twisted challenge to have instead?

SM: The physics department takes our teaching responsibilities seriously and works hard to deliver classes aimed to set students up for future success. We stress building critical thinking skills and understanding of why as opposed to just identifying what formula to use to solve the problem.

RL: I thank you for your time, and apologize for taking so long to reach out to you. It has been super hectic with my own personal life and I hope that you have a great afternoon.

Additionally, if there's anything you'd like to say otherwise feel free to include it outside the interview guidelines. Or if you have any questions for me, etc. etc.

SM: As a side note, with the very large numbers of students that we teach, there are quite a few that struggle. Much of this is not the physics itself, but lack of math skills. We have been creating resources for students to help fill holes in that knowledge, but this is taking time both to identify them and to put them in place. For example, we found out a year or so ago that matrices were removed from the NC high school curriculum. We have now shifted gears to include that foundational math knowledge into what we teach. More and more students are not taking trigonometry in high school which makes solving problems with angles incredibly difficult. The list goes on. With the pandemic now, I worry about what additional deficiencies we will be seeing. We are actively reaching out to high school physics teachers to assess where students will be and will be meeting to determine if we need to make additional adjustments in the course for the fall.

I'm happy to talk more about any of this in detail if it would help. We do care and are not out for the students as many would think. It's generally their first "real" course at the university and it catches many by surprise.

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If the staff member I spoke with is okay with me publishing his name and the first question, I'll be more than happy to. You know who you are, and if you reach out to my email again I'll respond to your wishes within my ability and make edits where needed.

More content™ to come, especially when I can complain about people complaining about the rezoning or whatever else is going on around town.

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