First year aviation students working on their research project for a first year physics course.

Or perhaps some interactive tutorials or a fully online course or two? In recent years a number of enthusiastic teachers within the School of Physics have taken advantage of UNSW programs such as the Innovative Teaching and Educational Technology Fellowship Scheme (ITET) to develop new approaches to learning and teaching, leading to some exciting changes in our courses.

As a result of George Hatsidimitris undertaking an ITET01 fellowship the General Studies courses “Science and Religion” and “Brave New World: Science, Science Fiction and the Future” are now fully on-line, using WebCT to create a virtual classroom to teach some science and get us pondering some of the bigger and weirder questions of life. These courses are popular with both on-campus and distance education students, attracting hundreds of students each year. After this successful start the benefits of the virtual classroom are now extending much further, with all School of Physics courses having a WebCT component.

The most revolutionary changes have been in first year physics and have resulted from a collaboration between ITET fellows George Hatsidimitris and Kate Wilson; First Year Experience Grant recipients Richard Newbury and Kate Wilson; Universitas 21 Fellows Maria Hunt and Kate Wilson; and EDTEC staff Iain McAlpine and Carol Russell. The challenge has been to find innovative ways of making first year more interesting, challenging, relevant, practical and fun. We know this is what students want because as part of the change process we actually asked them! We have met the challenge by providing a more active and relevant learning experience. Workshop tutorials, where students are actively engaged using practical equipment to solve physics problems, have been introduced for some courses. In the laboratory students are now being introduced to an authentic research process, with each student being given the challenge of formulating an experiment of their own. They are encouraged to pick problems that are relevant to either their interests or to their main area of study. One of the great things about supervising these student research projects is learning from the students about the great variety of ways to relate physics in the classroom to the world outside. Studying wave properties by finding out what you need for a really good surfing beach and learning thermodynamics from studying which materials make the best radiator for a high performance car are two recent examples that come to mind.

The revolution continues. Richard Newbury, Joe Wolfe, Maria Hunt, Iain McAlpine and George Hatsidimitris have been awarded a UNSW Capital Grant to introduce multimedia-enhanced interactive and practical tutorials, extending our move to active learning and bringing even more of the world outside into our classrooms.

Maria Hunt