PHYS 1101: “General Physics I” and PHYS 1102: “General Physics II,” the self-paced two-semester auto-tutorial physics sequence, has been discontinued starting this semester.
Previously, many Cornell life science students used these asynchronous classes to satisfy their physics requirement as an alternative to the in-person sequence, PHYS 2207: “Fundamentals of Physics I” and PHYS 2208: “Fundamentals of Physics II.” For students who had planned around the auto-tutorial courses, particularly pre-med students who map out their four years of coursework in advance, the change arrived without much explanation.
The decision to remove the class was made through a vote of the physics faculty following a four-year evaluation of Cornell’s introductory physics offerings, funded by a College of Arts and Sciences Active Learning Initiative grant, according to Prof. Natasha Holmes, physics.
“There were a lot of assumptions made about who takes these courses and what students get out of them that we wanted to actually put data to and get some evidence for,” said Prof Holmes.
Prof. Holmes co-led the project with Charlotte Zimmerman, a postdoctoral researcher in the physics department. Under the Active Learning Initiative grant, Zimmerman observed classes, interviewed students, administered comprehension tests before and after the courses and pulled enrollment records.
The two courses drew similar students, she found, and produced the same results.
“There was no meaningful, statistical difference between the students that took the class,” Zimmerman said. “Their starting scores in both classes were exactly the same, and their ending distributions were very, very similar.”
Instead, the gap was in who completed the course. According to Zimmerman, more than 100 students dropped the auto-tutorial every semester for the past several years, out of the 200-300 students initially enrolled. In contrast, in PHYS 2207 and 2208, which covers the same material but through in-person lectures, discussions and labs, only about 10 students out of 200-300 dropped per semester, Holmes said.
Flexibility and self-pace, which were considered to be the auto-tutorial sequence’s greatest benefits, came at a hidden cost. Those classes were missing something education research identifies as central to learning physics: collaboration with other students.
“On paper, it’s this class where students have tons of access to TAs for one-on-one help. There are lots of activities for them to engage in,” Zimmerman said. “In practice, it was missing … peer-to-peer interaction.”
Senior Lecturer Glenn Case, physics, who is in his third year as course head for PHYS 2207, emphasized the lack of social interaction in the auto-tutorial format.
“It was a course that was possible to take in isolation. You could do it all by yourself and really never have to talk to another person,” Case said.
Taylor Birkey ’26, who took auto-tutorial as her first physics course, said the flexibility felt short of expectations.
“For a class that was supposed to work around your own schedule, it didn’t feel that way in practice,” she said. “After one semester of auto-tutorial physics, I knew it would be the last ‘auto’ class I’d ever take.”
Staffing and resources added to the case for discontinuing the auto-tutorial. Because the PHYS 1101 and 1102 offered a learning center that had to be staffed whenever it was open, the number of staff required did not fall as enrollment fell.
“Especially the weekend was the time that students really wanted to be in that learning center working on stuff, and we just couldn’t support that,” Holmes said.
Still, little of that reasoning was visible to students while it was happening. Holmes said the physics faculty debated the courses over four years of research and meetings before voting, and that the data behind the decision functions as an internal department evaluation that cannot be released.
Asked where that reasoning could have been shared with students, Holmes said she was not sure such a place exists.
“There’s no outlet to publish our curricular decision making,” she said.
Now, the resources are being redirected into improving PHYS 2207 and 2208, where the department has begun implementing new instructional strategies supported by evidence from the Cornell Physics Education Research Lab specifically for life science students. Additionally, Zimmerman said one longer-term goal is to offer mechanics and electromagnetism in the same term, a change biology and pre-health advising staff have specifically requested.
"Preliminarily, what we see is a very positive result," Case said. "The measures that the department has and thinks are good measures are showing that we're moving in the right direction."
