Appendix IX.E: Assessment Report, “Closing the Loop”
May 2003

OBJECTIVE IV
Graduates of the Physics Department will have a strong command of the nature of oral and written communication in the traditions of physics.

OUTCOMES
1. Students will prepare and give oral research reports appropriate for professional meetings such as those of the American Physical Society or American Astronomical Society, and will prepare written reports in the format of Physical Review Letters or other refereed journals.
2. Students will have experience working in groups to accomplish common objectives

ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENT (this is a course-based assessment)
1. Evaluation of oral and written reports in required Senior Laboratory course PY 452, and in
advanced electives; oral and written reports from Honors projects and summer research
2. Evaluation of group assignments in upper-division courses, Senior Laboratory; exit interviews

ASSESSMENT BENCHMARK
not yet established

BACKGROUND
PY452 is a required laboratory course taken by Seniors during the Spring Semester. Students work in teams on a project that consumes most of the semester. Each team has a unique project. Students are graded on a pass/fail basis. Each team is required to give a public presentation based on its project. The departmental faculty is invited to hear those presentations each year at the end of the semester. This year seven projects were presented on the afternoon of May 7th. Students were informed prior to the presentations that faculty reviewers would be present, and that the faculty reviews would not be used in figuring course grades.

PROCEDURE
o PY452 instructor Professor Hans Hallen prepared a rubric that faculty reviewers used to evaluate the student presentations. Teams were scored on a five-point scale (5 being the highest score) in each of three categories:
1. presentation and organization
2. physics content and explanation
3. general impression of talk as a contributed talk at a professional meeting
o Seven faculty members attended at least some of the presentations. Those filing out rubrics were Robert Beichner, Don Ellison, Hans Hallen, and Richard Mowat.
o The data from the rubrics was compiled by Richard Mowat.
o The findings were presented to the department's undergraduate academic program review committee (UAPRC).
o Recommendations (see below) were made by the UAPRC after discussion of the findings.

FINDINGS, based on rubrics completed by four faculty members who heard all seven presentations:
(Compiled by Richard Mowat)

1. Each group was scored on each of three categories (5-point scale for each category) by four faculty reviewers. Typical scores were 3s and 4s with a few 5s. An average of the four reviewers' scores was made to smooth out variations. Those average values are plotted below.

Average value of the seven group scores = 3.8

Average value of the seven group scores = 3.4

Average value of the seven group scores = 3.6

 2. Reviewers made verbal comments during the presentations, and a few reviewers made written comments on the rubrics. The most serious remarks concerned the students' computation and presentation of the uncertainties in their measurements.

RECOMMENDED ACTION (as discussed by the Physics Department Undergraduate Academic Review Committee):
The PY452 instructor will be asked to present these findings to next year's class and to challenge the students to achieve average scores of 4.0 or higher. (Students are already provided with guidelines and training exercises, they just need a little more motivation to perform at a higher level.)