The Department of Physics at UC Davis, with funding from the campus and the National Science Foundation is engaged in a project to reconceptualize and redesign the way in which introductory physics is taught. In our report we will update NLII attendees on our progress and demonstrate the major technical component of our project - a network mounted learning resource.
With the end of the 1995-96 academic year, the re-engineered college physics course ( Physics 7AB&C - General Physics) has now been piloted twice. The students reaction to the pilot offerings of Physics 7 were very positive. In the fall 1996 quarter the new course will replace the traditional course and serve 1200 students annually. With the start of the quarter, a web site will be presented for the course. The Physics 7 web site will contain course information (syllabus, schedules, notices et cetera), course materials (homework assignments, solution sets, and supplemental notes) and a link to our experimental net based hypertext learning resource. As described in our Request for Partners, the learning resource is critical to the success of this new course, as the course does not follow the typical linear progression of the material found in printed texts.
The learning resource is designed so that the student can make use of the hyper-text connections to follow, for example, the concept of energy from mechanical to chemical, to biological, to statistical mechanical, and from the concept of energy to discussions of work and momentum. We are building this resource using an existing well respected print text as a test-bed. The Addison-Wesley publishing company has granted us permission to use College Physics by Sears, Zemansky and Young. This frees us, at least initially, from having to create large amounts of the "standard" textual material.
Beginning with the existing text, rewriting some sections, editing others, adding additional material and then incorporating the necessary hypertext linkages we are approaching a working prototype. An "alpha" draft will be made available to students with the start of the fall quarter. As the year proceeds we will be producing a more polished "beta" version. Some of the problems we have solved are designing readable pages, navigational issues (the student may now enter material in chapter 5 without having read chapters 1-3), producing quality/readable equations that load quickly, and site organization. The early versions will not include interactive materials; however, such tools are becoming more easily incorporated in HTML documents and the final version will include links to simulations, assessment tools and other interactive materials.
An important component of our RFP is the creation of a business model to further the development and use of such net-based learning materials. The questions of how to protect network mounted intellectual property are important to both the publishing companies and current and potential authors. We continue to work on this aspect of our project with our publishing partner.
Our understanding with Addision-Wesley Publishing is that for the testing period access to the copyrighted materials will be limited to UC Davis students. For the initial quarters access to the learning resource will be at no cost. As the academic year proceeds and the resource becomes more complete, we will experiment with methods to provide licenses and secure access to the students.
During the early fall the site will become available for viewing by interested colleagues. The course site will include a demonstration version of the learning resource with sample material. For notice of the activation of the web site and its URL, please e-mail your request to: lbcoleman@ucdavis.edu.
| Coleman HomePage |