Distance Education in Physics via the Internet

Abstract

This article describes three connected projects in physics: (1) a very successful course at the university level; (2) a collection of several thousand multimedia materials, its status and evaluation, and its dissemination; and (3) Web experiments—experiments that can be operated remotely from a distance via the Internet.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from Bund-Länder-Kommission für Bildungsplanung und Forschungsförderung (BLK), Intel© Education, German employers' association Gesamtmetall, and the Eberhard-von-Kuehnheim foundation of BMW AG. We thank our co-workers in the FiPS project, Dr. M. Menzel, Dr. D. Roth, and Dr. F. Schweickert, our colleagues of MPTL, as well as our students in the video project. We finally express our thanks to the students in the RCL project and, last but not least, our co-worker Dr. M. Vetter, who has driven the open-source approach in that project.

Notes

1. This distance course is offered only in the German language. The interested reader may have a look at the Web site, http://www.fernstudium-physik.de Additional information, for example about course syllabus including media, discussion forum, grading tool, and technical precourse (partly in English) is available at http://pen.physik.uni-kl.de/fips/

2. Germany has mandatory military service for male citizens, who are obliged to serve for nine months. However, a conscientious objector may petition for permission to do nine months of alternative civilian or community service.

3. For example, on average we counted about one hundred messages (questions, comments, replies, etc.) per day, which compares with about eighty students active in their study (during winter term 2000–2001). We also found that the difficulty of writing formulas or drawing graphics due to the text-based newsgroup was no restriction to the ongoing discussion. Where it was necessary, students contributed to the discussion with attached images of graphs or formula.

4. For that purpose, the students were initially grouped together by their regional proximity of home or place of work, as far as it was possible.

5. For example, we made questionnaires on the technical equipment of our off-campus students as well as on their familiarity with communication tools. In winter term 2000–2001 (1999–2000), the result was computer 100% (90%) and Internet access 93% (77%). Tools were rated as follows: e-mail 95%, FTP 39%, ICQ 38%. In the beginning, some individuals had no access to computers and were provided laptop computers with built-in modems on loan. About ten years after the beginning of the project, some technical problems observed earlier (related to hardware, software, Internet connection, and bandwidth) no longer played a role. This strengthened our decision to use the Internet from the beginning. Since then, it has been interesting to observe how students manage these modern technologies with a kind of naturalness, such as the application of LaTeX for formulas in the homework assignments. This continuing change in everyday use of Internet and Communication Technology, coupled with technological developments such as Web 2.0, offers opportunities for new forms of interaction, contributions by the students, cooperative teaching/learning, and so forth, via the Internet.

6. The submissions are typically in electronic format, ranging from scanned handwritten solutions to word processed by means of LaTeX and pdf format, for example.

7. Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning is part of the Physics Education Division of the European Physical Society. This working group organizes annual meetings where multimedia material is presented and discussed. In particular, a core team of the members collects and evaluates multimedia material on a specific topic of physics curriculum. Since 2004, there is a joint evaluation of material with the MERLOT-Physics editorial board. The Web site is at http://www.mptl.eu

8. Only material that is easy to access via Internet and, in general, free of charge has been collected. Since the beginning of the evaluation process, an increasing number of commercial products appeared on the market (stand-alone, or CD-ROM attached to a physics textbook). This evolution must be considered in the near future.

9. The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) hosts a huge archive of links to multimedia material in a variety of disciplines. Each discipline is managed by an editorial board. The material is peer reviewed and described in detail. The Web site is at http://www.merlot.org

10. The Physics Education Division (PED) of the European Physical Society (EPS) hosts several working groups on educational issues. The Web site is at http://education.epsdivisions.org/