Replacing traditional final exams with project-building in advanced undergraduate physics classes

This paper presents the implementation of project-building replacing traditional final exams in advanced undergraduate physics classes at a small liberal arts college. Students from 'Circuits' class and 'Dynamics' class built projects using the concepts learnt thorugh out the semester. Projects for Circuits class were built in teams of three and projects for Dynamics class were built by individual students. Majority are original projects. A total of 18 students built 11 projects. Students were required to present their findings, conclusions and data in a scientific paper format and an oral presentation. Students were presented with challenging and open-ended real-life problems. This paper also presents the learning outcomes, and how students successfully used the classroom concepts to solve the challenging real-life problems. This paper also presents the details of all the students projects under consideration.