  Four sections of introductory physics for physical scientists and engineers
(about 180 students each) are compared. One section, treatment group, was
organized so that students worked to learn the classical ideas connecting
forces and motion over the first 6 weeks of the 10 week quarter and then used
the final 4 weeks to apply those principles to algebraically complicated
problems. The other sections learned ideas at essentially the same time as
calculations over the entire 10 weeks of the quarter. The treatment group and
one of the control sections were taught by the same instructor, had identical
curricular materials and this instructor was blind to the comparison measure,
the final exam. After controlling for GPA as well as for incoming conceptual
understanding, the treatment group was found (with greater than 99% confidence)
to perform better on the final exam than the control group taught by the same
instructor and, by a similar measure, the treatment group performed
significantly better than any other section. The treatment group also had
higher conceptual learning gains and so should be better prepared for later
learning.
