Improving Student Understanding with TEAL

Introduction O ver the last three years, the MIT Physics Department has been introducing major changes in the way that 8.02, Electromagnetism I, is taught at the Institute, through the TEAL (Technology Enhanced Active Learning) Project [Supported by the d'Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in MIT Education, the MIT/Microsoft iCampus Alliance, the MIT School of Science, and NSF] (Belcher 2001). After being taught as a prototype twice, in fall 2001 and fall 2002, TEAL went to a large-scale implementation for the first time in spring 2003. In the first two prototype years of the program, student reaction as judged by commentary in The Tech was generally positive (Chen 2001), but in spring 2003 the student reaction ranged from positive to mixed (Li 2003) to very negative (Agarwal 2003, LeBon 2003), with numerous questions raised about the format. In this article, I address the educational efficacy of the TEAL format, using assessment results from TEAL fall 2001, TEAL spring 2003, and from a control group from spring 2002, when on-term 8.02 was taught in the traditional lecture/recitation format. This assessment strongly suggests that the learning gains in TEAL are significantly greater than those in the traditional lecture/recitation. This result is consistent with many other studies of introductory physics education over the last two decades. It is also consistent with the much lower failure rates for Background and Motivation