April, 2003

PHY110Y/PHY138Y Laboratory Evaluation

Prepared by David Harrison

INTRODUCTION

Ruxandra recently surveyed students in our PHY110Y/PHY138Y Laboratory about their opinions regarding the lab. This document summarises the results.

458 students participated, which is 41% of the students enrolled in the laboratory. This participation rate is less than usual; last year the figure was 60%.

In the table below, the numbers in parentheses were the responses to the same question in last year's evaluation. In general, students this year were less positive about the lab than last year.

I have two comments about this year's laboratory which may relate to the results of the evaluation.

1. Group sizes were if anything somewhat larger than last year, and were the largest ever. We believe that the size of the group is a major factor in student satisfaction and learning.
2. The academic staff complement this year was about 1.25 FCE instead of last year's 2.00.

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

Question	Mean ± Standard Deviation
Everything considered, give an overall rating of the lab by choosing one of the following: 1 Excellent 2 Good 3 Fair 4 Poor 5 Very bad Comment: below we compare this result to previous years.	3.29 ± 0.98 (3.08 ± 0.97)
Please compare the Physics lab with other labs you are taking: 1 Much better 2 Better 3 The same 4 Worse 5 Much worse Comment: this result is disappointing	3.63 ± 1.02 (3.36 ± 0.98)
Are you learning enough from the lab? 1 Yes a lot 2 Yes, fairly much 3 A little 4 No, not at all	2.87 ± 0.92 (2.80 ± 0.79)
Do you think the free choice of experiments in the second term is a better educational program than the lock-step that you had in the first term? 1 Yes, much better 2 Yes, better 3 They are the same 4 No, it is worse	2.06± 0.90 (2.01 ± 0.96)
Does the lab demand too much time from you? 1 Not much time 2 Reasonable 3 A bit heavy 4 Too much time Comment: perfect!	2.77 ± 0.81 (2.43 ± 0.74)
Do you get adequate and prompt feedback on the quality of your work? 1 Yes always 2 For most of the labs 3 Sometimes 4 Never	2.57 ± 1.02 (2.53 ± 0.93)
Do the marks you have received reflect the quality of your work in the lab? In your opinion the marks you have been given are: 1 Too high 2 A bit high 3 Reasonable 4 A bit low 5 Unfairly low	3.71 ± 0.77 (3.59 ± 0.71)
Please rate your demonstrator in terms of his/her teaching ability and help provided: 1 Excellent 2 Very good 3 Good 4 Fair 5 Poor	2.99 ± 1.30 (2.93 ± 1.27)
At the beginning of the year you read a series of web-documents on Error Analysis, did some computer exercises, and answered some questions on this topic. As an aid to your learning, this material was: 1 Invaluable 2 Useful 3 Not bad 4 Poor 5 Useless	3.24 ± 1.12 (3.04 ± 1.10)

Here is a comparison of the overall rating of the laboratory this year and in three previous years:

In the above table, the errors assume that the uncertainty in the number of responses is the square root of the number.

BEST AND WORST EXPERIMENTS

In addition to the multiple choice questions summarised above, we asked the students two related questions:

• Which experiment was the best you have done this year?
• What was the worst experiment you have done this year?

A typical student in the laboratory does 5 or 6 experiments in the course of the year. It is perhaps amazing that virtually every experiment in the laboratory is cited as best by some students and worst by others. This occurs every year.

Here are this year's results for these questions. The numbers in parentheses are from last year.

Another recurring surprise is that some experiment's "popularity" changes dramatically from year to year. Above the Thermal Expansion experiment shows a large change from last year, although the apparatus and Guide Sheet are identical.

For the Non-Core experiments, we only include ones that have 5 or more votes as best or worst.