  The performance of over 2000 students in introductory calculus-based
electromagnetism (E&M) courses at four large research universities was measured
using the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA). Two different
curricula were used at these universities: a traditional E&M curriculum and the
Matter & Interactions (M&I) curriculum. At each university, post-instruction
BEMA test averages were significantly higher for the M&I curriculum than for
the traditional curriculum. The differences in post-test averages cannot be
explained by differences in variables such as pre-instruction BEMA scores,
grade point average, or SAT scores. BEMA performance on categories of items
organized by subtopic was also compared at one of the universities; M&I
averages were significantly higher in each topic. The results suggest that the
M&I curriculum is more effective than the traditional curriculum at teaching
E&M concepts to students, possibly because the learning progression in M&I
reorganizes and augments the traditional sequence of topics, for example, by
increasing early emphasis on the vector field concept and by emphasizing the
effects of fields on matter at the microscopic level.

Physics Education