Teacher Education Instruments

Teacher/Faculty Workshop Evaluations

Instrument 6: Questionnaire for Project PHYSLab Participants

Project: Project PHYSLab II
Catlin Gabel School

Funding Source: NSF: Teacher Enhancement (ESIE)

Purpose: To determine how the Project PhysLab workshop will influence teacher's teaching style and subject matter

Administered To: 20 high school teachers who participated in one of the three workshops held in 1997

Topics Covered:

• Impact on Outcomes: classroom activities, collaboration, content, equipment use, instructional practices, pedagogy, student interest, teacher understanding
• Implementation Activities: resource acquisition
• Plans & Expectations (Teacher/Faculty): leadership
• Workshop Evaluation: activities, incentives, materials, organization, practical value

Format/Length: 16 open-ended short-answer response questions

1. How many students are or will be using equipment and/or ideas picked up through Project PHYSLab? Include your '96 - '97 classes. Break this down by year if that will help you or just include all the students impacted by this program.

    

2. How many experiments have you added or will you insert into your physics curriculum as a result of attending Project PHYSLab? How many experiments did you revise as a result of the workshop?

    

3. How important was the equipment grant in making use of ideas learned at the workshop?

    

4. What pieces of equipment do you find most useful? Be specific. Examples: Motion Detector, Force Probe, ULI, MPLI, Smart Pulley, digital timer, CBL, accelerometer, PASCO 6560, and etc.

    

5. Have you planned or do you plan to share ideas learned from the workshop with other physics teachers in your school or your geographical area? Be specific if these workshops will include national meetings, state science meetings, or local gatherings (or individual) of physics teachers.

    

6. As you reflect over the past several months or years, what are the two or three greatest benefits you derived from Project PHYSLab?

    

7. Have you been able to acquire additional equipment similar to what we used in the workshop as a result of taking equipment away from PHYSLab? Be as specific as possible.

    

8. What are your two or three favorite ideas you picked up from the workshop?

    

The following questions are more general in nature. Please be as complete as possible.

• Did participation in Project PHYLab result in increased understanding of science concepts, skills, processes and curriculum?

   

• What additional knowledge or understanding of key concepts did you gain from attending Project PHYSLab?

   

• Report on areas of PHYSLab experiments or the experiment you designed which you felt were particularly strong and weak. In what areas were your own skills improved as a result of working with these experiments.

   

• Did this project increase communication among science educators? Are you in touch with more physics teachers as a result of Project physlab?

   

• How frequently do you communicate with other science teachers outside your school building? What is the content of these communications? is it related to equipment, physics problems, sharing experiments, teaching hints, sharing demo ideas or etceteras? Is this increase in communication at all related to your participation in Project physlab?

   

• Were classroom curriculum and instructional practices improved as a result of the workshop?

   

• Has there been any change in how you teach physics as a result of the workshop? Evaluate changes in student interest, local support and experimental equipment and/or facilities.

   

• Was the Project PHYSLab workshop sufficiently well defined and implemented in a cost effective manner?