Using physlets to teach electrostatics

By fully automating all aspects of the learning experience for online courses, a large reduction of education costs can be achieved, while simultaneously matching or improving student performance as compared to human delivered online or traditional lectures. The main elements of an effective fully automated online course or lab are: fully automated content delivery using text-to-speech technology, highly visual course presentation using animated 2D and 3D illustrations that are synchronized with the course delivery, interactive 2D and 3D activities, and automated student assessments. A two semester undergraduate physics course that uses these elements to deliver a fully automated learning experience will be presented in this paper. The course can significantly decrease the cost of learning, while improving accessibility, quality, and uniformity of instruction. The course has a virtual reality physics lab with physics-based modeling of the relevant underlying principles and a variety...

Based on the conclusions of my previous research activity and on many previous studies related to attitudes of students to physics in high schools and in universities [1], it has become clear that physics classes should be made more colourful, attractive and interactive. In order to improve our students' researching, questioning, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making and computational competencies we should focus more on different types of activities (hands-on experiments, ICT based activities, educational games, study of simulated phenomena). For increasing their motivation we can use different types of educational methods like cooperation, project method or peer instruction, flip classroom [2] etc. The aim of this work is to show some examples of the resources from the online courses: http://www.sukjaro.eu/cikkek/cikkek.htm prepared to teach some of the fundamentals of modern physics. All free online courses-or parts of them-can be used separately to teach modern physics in high schools or at BSc level. Each course includes gamification and group-work activities, contains students' and teachers' guides and self-evaluation tools, like multiple choice questions, interactive exercises with simulation, theoretical exercises etc. All courses are related to study the properties of the radioactivity: the random behaviour, the exponential decay law, notions of half-life, decay constant and activity. If we want to let our students leave high schools, universities and colleges with an adequate knowledge and with applicable skills in physics we should use the advantage of the ICT, multimedia and their applications [3].

Taylor Sharpe is a mechanical engineering student at Portland State University. He is involved in initiatives involving science education, rural public health and monitoring, and renewable energy / energy efficiency technologies. He is the co-founder and pedagogy/communications lead for Physics in Motion, a student team working to integrate physical teaching devices into the existing Physics with Calculus Workshop program run by the Portland State Physics Department. Mr. Geng Qin, Portland State University Geng Qin is a mechanical engineering student at Portland State University. He is committed to science education, innovative design, and stage performance. He is the co-founder and design lead for Physics in Motion. Physics in Motion is working to integrate physical teaching devices into the existing Physics with Calculus Workshop program run by the Portland State Physics Department. Research from the past three decades has found that an interactive engagement approach to teaching the sciences which involves physical interaction with systems helps students build effective mental models. Our team of engineering students has developed a novel tabletop teaching device called the Touchstone Model 1 (TM1) designed to help incoming students solidify and retain knowledge of first-term General Physics in an iterative manner. The device is a combination of classic physics models: a pendulum of adjustable length, a rail system including an incline plane, a rolling ball/weight, and a ball launcher. An integrated microcontroller combines these conceptual models, and allows the difficulty of the problem to be adjusted by including or excluding new physics concepts in tandem with the lecture curriculum. The design is informed by a pedagogical model based on giving students open-ended problems that require a network of conceptual knowledge. This hybrid hands-on and inductive model could increase student motivation to more deeply understand concepts that have often been difficult to learn. A prototype device has been partially integrated into Portland State University's existing Physics with Calculus Workshop curriculum, being used in three of nine weekly sessions. At the end of the term, anonymous questionnaires were used to gauge student interest in the device as a learning and motivation tool in the workshop environment, informing future research and development of the device. The data from the student surveys was also used to create a more formal assessment of student knowledge gains. Positive results were seen in both categories, with unanimous student approval and a small median increase in test scores. A second prototype is under development, and could be more fully integrated into the workshop model in the future. Precision machining and an integrated microcontroller could build on the initial prototype and can be thought of as a modular, highly-predictable Rube Goldberg machine. A novel aspect of this work is that the device was conceived, developed, fabricated and tested entirely by undergraduate engineering students. Another distinctive feature is that an Arduino microcontroller provides the data collection and control of the apparatus, allowing for great curriculum mobility.

The physics of the last century is now included in all EU secondary school curricula and textbooks, even if in not organic way. Nevertheless, there are very different positions as concern its introduction and students' conceptual knots in classical physics are quoted to argue the exclusion of modern physics in secondary school. Aspects discussed in literature are goals, rationale, contents, target students, instruments and methods. Very different goals, i.e. the culture of citizens, popularization, guidance, education, build different perspectives and aspects to treat selection: fundament, technologies and applications. Methods used are story telling of the main results, argumentation of crucial problems, integrated or as a complementary part in the curriculum. Modern physics in secondary school is a challenge, which involves curriculum innovation, teacher education and physics education research to individuate ways that allows the students to face the interpretative problems and manage them in many contexts and in social decisions. In this perspective, modern physics is an integrated content in curricula involving the building of formal thinking. Our research focus on building of formal thinking is on three directions: 1) Learning processes and role of reasoning in operative hands-on and minds-on phenomena interpretation; 2) object-models as tools to bridge common sense to physics ideas and ICT contribution focusing on real time labs and modelling; 3) building theoretical way of thinking: a path inspired of Dirac approach to quantum mechanics. We developed four different kind of proposals: 1) the physics of modern research analysis in material science: resistivity and Hall effect for electrical transport properties, Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy to look to structure characteristics, Time Resolved Resistivity for epitaxial growth; 2) Explorative approach to superconductivity phenomena (a coherent paths), 3) Discussion of some crucial / transversal concepts both in classical physics and modern physics: state, measure, cross section, 4) foundation of theoretical thinking in quantum mechanics.

2003

Introduction Typical materials for a physics class A new alternative: The Physics Suite Motivation Who are we teaching and why? The growth of other sciences The goals of physics for all Are we already achieving these goals?0 Figuring out what doesn't work and what we can do about it Introducing Sagredo Why Physics Education Research? Knowledge as a community map Building the community map for education The impact on teaching of research on teaching and learning Even good students get the physics blues.