Meredith and Redish reply: We’re happy that our article stirred interest and some strong responses. We agree completely with Walter John that the topics should be motivated and illustrated by concrete and relevant examples—and, we would add, ones seen by the students as being of authentic biological relevance! The key examples that we and other reformers of introductory physics for life sciences use often include those John mentioned, and the students have responded positively.
Like Poovan Murugesan’s biology students, ours also have a penchant for focusing on memorizing and grades, and they have little experience with problem solving. Professors in biology tell us that those are not permanent fixed traits but depend on context; in biology courses, the very same students are often engaged and deeply curious. There is certainly evidence (see reference 3 in our article) that when students are challenged in physics classes with difficult work that they care about, they rise to that challenge. The rationale behind cutting topics as a solution to the issues Murugesan noted is based on research. If topics are covered quickly, students often have no choice but to memorize;1 deep learning takes a good deal of time. We also interact closely with biologists and are seeing them respond to the calls for upgrading the curriculum with changes of their own—including more math, active engagement pedagogy, and problem solving.
Mordechai Rorvig points out correctly that we did not put all of our work about teaching physics to life-sciences students in our article. We clearly could not fill in all the answers he is looking for in such a brief account. Our intent was to start a serious conversation with the broad physics community about the course and the challenges it presents to anyone who wants to teach it well, but not to review the research on the topic. We refer Rorvig to the article’s references 2, 3, 4, and 9 for more details on qualitative and quantitative research related to reforms in the course. In addition, relevant papers will soon appear in the American Journal of Physics and Physical Review. Rorvig also correctly points out the reasons why biologists are different from physicists: They study very different kinds of systems and must use very different kinds of tools. We note that the differences have implications for how to introduce biology students to physics. We are indeed including computational as well as analytic examples, but we did not have room to discuss that aspect.
Inferring that Rorvig questions the approach of science education reformers in general, we ourselves are somewhat bemused that he takes us to task for codifying our subjects “when their research is a matter of fundamentally open questions.” How else would one proceed with open questions other than to carefully observe and codify one’s observations? We agree that there is much to be done, but substantial strides have been made in the past 20 years in understanding what matters and what works in a college physics classroom. Because such advances provide a strong basis for continuing improvement, they cannot be considered simply “tweaking.”
