"Cutting Costs and Increasing Knowledge: Effectively teaching large scale physics classes on a budget"

Teaching physics at a large university has many challenges that both instructors and students face: large class size, time commitments of instructors, and the ever increasing cost of education. This discussion will look at the work being done in the large introductory Physics classes at the University of Texas at Austin to address these three issues. I will also address how our design should fulfill a forth and most important goal: more effectively assist the students in gaining a mastery of physics. Finally, I will present some initial data that has been collected comparing our new curriculum to the more traditionally taught physics class to see if this design effectively solves the issues we face.