Data

The items in this first section display a summary of student responses to the listed questions, where 1
denotes “Strongly Agree” and 5 denotes “Strongly Disagree”. While charts look nice and provide some
useful information, I have included a deeper analysis in the next section.
The following 3 questions were more comprehensive. In the first, 1 denotes “about to fall asleep…” and
5 denotes “very engaged!”

When asked for additional comments, one student claimed to do most work at home, while another
stated “Phet labs suck, most labs suck, we need to practice the actual problems we need to do for hw
in class”. The other 10 students in the class gave no additional comments.
Analysis
Some more interesting results come out of comparing individual student responses to related questions.
The following question combinations were written with this intention.

“I enjoyed science before entering this class.” – “I enjoy science.”

The responses to these questions are identical for every student.

“I enjoyed physics before entering this class.” – “I enjoy physics.”

Of the 9 who responded to both questions, 3 indicated that they enjoyed physics more in this
class than they had previously, moving from either a 2, 3, or 4 to a 1 on the scale described
above.

“I feel challenged in most science classes and settings.” – “I feel challenged in this physics class.”

On average, the level to which students feel challenged in this class is about .5 a point on the
scale described higher than in other science classes.

“I am actively involved during most meetings of my physics class.” – “I often feel confused in my physics
class.”

For 5/12 students, there was a direct correlation between how involved they felt during class
and how confused they were. For a different 5/12, there was a weak but still present correlation.

“Class time prepares me to do the assigned physics homework.” – “I have more homework than
necessary in this class.” – “Other students in my class are more prepared to do the assigned physics
homework.”

For 8/12 students, those who felt more prepared by class time to do their work were more
comfortable with the amount of homework assigned in the class. The remaining 4 showed a
similar but weaker correlation. Interestingly, only one student believed that their classmates
were more prepared than them for the assigned homework, but this student also reported they
spend most class time talking with classmates, and that they were overall “about to fall asleep”
in the class.

Summary
On average, students report being engaged in the class and seem to enjoy its challenge. Those who are
unengaged tend to spend their time talking with classmates, while others spend theirs doing classwork,
collaborating with classmates, or doing hands-on activities or labs.