Delivering Curricular Material
Using the World Wide Web
Wolfgang Christian
Department of Physics, Davidson College,
Davidson, NC 28036
Gregor Novak
Department of Physics, Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis
Indianapolis, IN 46202
Evelyn T. Patterson
Department of Physics, United States Air Force Academy
Colorado Springs, CO 80840
The advent of interactive World Wide Web (WWW) networking with the HyperText Transmission Protocol (HTTP) offers an opportunity to develop and publish curricular material which does not tie up class time, is available around the clock, and fosters collaborative exploratory learning experiences across college boundaries. If it finds acceptance by students and faculty, it will constitute a new pedagogical tool. WebPhysics is a collaborative effort that was established in 1995 to promote the design, distribution, testing and sharing of this type of curricular material. Samples of material currently available including hypertext lessons, video clips, modeling software, on-line tests, quizzes and enrichment will be presented. In addition, sample lessons from the Cockpit Physics project from the United States Air Force Academy, a web-based set of thirty-two introductory physics lessons written expressly to take advantage of the WWW paradigm, are presented. Preliminary student reaction to this technology, including the potential for collaborative learning through the publication of student work, will be discussed.
Something besides the traditional problem-solving approach may be needed to excite new students to physics. (Sheila Tobias)
Physics education research has documented the
fact that many students come to introductory physics classes with
deeply ingrained pre-conceptions and poor mathematical and
reasoning skills. Research also shows that with traditional
instruction students change very little. This statement is true
even for honors students. Some students are clever enough to
develop algorithms to perform well on problem-based tests without
digesting the underlying physics. They do not make the connection
between theory and the real world, and often fail to answer
conceptual questions that are relatively simple. The physics
course they "successfully" complete does not alter
their pre-conceptions about the physics of phenomena such as
motion, heat, or optics.
A variety of techniques are currently being
tried to remedy the situation. Some of these are hi-tech, some
low-tech. Most involve the "active learner" approach.
Students work in groups, they discuss scenarios, make mistakes,
try again. The best known of these are Eric Mazur's Peer
Instruction, Priscilla Laws' Workshop Physics, Alan Van
Heuvelen's Case Study Physics with Active Learner Problem Sets,
David Hestenes' Modeling Approach, Richard Hake's Socratic Method
Labs, and Jack Wilson's CUPLE software. Recently, A. L.
Ellermeijer and colleagues in the Netherlands, who are
collaborating with Robert Fuller of the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, have reported notable gains in students'
conceptual understanding of mechanics in a course that includes
an interactive video and microcomputer-based laboratory.
The requirement that the student make an
observation, take the time to notice and record the result of the
observation, and then think about it and discuss it seems to be
the "active ingredient" in these approaches. It is in
fact a generalization of the idea of a laboratory exercise. After
all, a laboratory exercise in the physics curriculum has at least
three purposes: to let the student critically observe and
experience a natural phenomenon, to relate the real world to the
abstract theoretical concepts that have been presented to the
student, and to teach experimental methods and techniques.
Letting the students explore at their own pace is time consuming,
difficult to structure and keep under control and, therefore,
practically absent in many contemporary classrooms.
A talking-head lecture not only fails to engage
students in a meaningful dialog, it poorly reflects the
professional activity of most physicists. A recent study found
that 90% of all experimental and 50% of all theoretical research
required the use of computers. A productive professional life
requires solving problems numerically using realistic
assumptions, communicating with colleagues using email, searching
for and retrieving data from the net, registering for conferences
electronically and, most of all, writing. Unlike the modern
engineering curriculum, which requires students to use
professional tools such as PSpice throughout their undergraduate
career, the traditional physics curriculum's emphasis on analytic
solutions to known problems does little to build a sense of
professional competence.
The advent of interactive World Wide Web (WWW)
networking with the HyperText Transmission Protocol (HTTP) offers
an opportunity to develop a new type of curricular material that
does not tie up class time, is available around the clock, and
fosters collaborative exploratory learning experiences across
college boundaries. HTTP protocol now permits platform
independent delivery of hypertext, pictures, movies and
sounds. Students can view and manipulate hyperlinked movies and
pictures. They can analyze these images qualitatively and
quantitatively. They can work with assorted multiple choice
formats (check one option only, check all that apply, etc.). The
protocol also permits submission of free form text responses.
Much of what we now do in class-demonstration, tutorial, or
discussion-can be done beforehand or as a follow-up.
Demonstrations can be filmed, digitized, and placed on the web.
Practice tests, remedial work, and drill exercise can be written
to give students immediate feedback. And finally, students can be
empowered to publish their own work. The WebPhysics project was
established by the authors in 1995 in order to develop, adapt,
and test this paradigm.
The first WebPhysics servers were established
by Dr. Novak at Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis
(IUPUI) and by Dr. Christian at Davidson College (see fig 1). Dr.
Novak's efforts have been directed toward the use of multimedia
in introductory calculus-based courses, while Dr. Christian's
efforts have been in simulation and modeling. Examples of
mainstream curricular material available on these servers will be
presented in the following section. Subsequent sections will
discuss how this material is being used to rewrite the
introductory course at the United States Air Force Academy and
how Davidson College has used the web to provide a computer rich
environment that impacts the entire physics curriculum.
Figure 1 Caption: Welcome page for Davidson
WebPhysics server with hyperlinks to local resources and other
WebPhysics servers.
WebPhysics servers demonstrate many of the
mainstream applications for which computers are well suited,
albeit with an original WWW-based graphical user interface. The
web pages provide a new channel for old information: homework
assignments, test schedules, syllabi, etc. They also convey the
sort of information usually included in classroom announcements,
e.g., changes to the schedule, test results, inclement weather
policy, etc.
Figure 2 Caption: A weekly posting of course
related material for the IUPUI non-calculus physics course.
More importantly, the web pages provide a
channel for information that might once have been ignored for
lack of class time. For instance, Dr. Novak used the web to keep
students updated on the appearance of comet Hyakutake. The
"What is Physics Good For" display in IUPUI's This
Week in Physics 152 often included information which is
important and useful to students of science and engineering, yet
is often not treated because it is not "fundamental."
This includes descriptions of state-of-the-art experiments, such
as scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and links to NASA space
flights, as shown in figure 2.
The web also provides a channel for students to
send information back to the instructors in an informal setting.
Examples include requests for help on particularly difficult
subjects, criticism of the lecture's pace, content and style,
puzzle answers (hopefully signed), and the occasional word of
thanks for a job well done.
Figure 3 Caption: Database search of the
Davidson physics video-clip library.
An important component of WebPhysics is the
development of databases for curricular development. Most physics
departments maintain collections of demonstrations, test
problems, and multimedia resources. Information about these
resources is often stored in flat-text data files either on paper
or in electronic format. Web-aware databases allow this material
to be retrieved not only on the basis of subject matter, but also
on the basis of other criteria such as common physics
misconceptions and copyright restrictions, as shown in figure 3.
Databases enhance the reuse of existing material. For example,
the Air Force Academy's Cockpit Physics material links almost
10,000 separate files into HTML documents, and few instructors
would guess that a multimedia activity-complete with NASA video
clips dealing with payload transfer in Earth orbit-is available.
Commercial web technologies are now sufficiently flexible that
they allow the delivery instrument to be separated from the
physics content, thus allowing resources to be used in diverse
academic communities.
Figure 4 Caption: HTML lesson map constructed
from material stored in the databases for the Cockpit Physics
course. Notice the grouping into theory, explorations,
applications, and quizzes.
The Cockpit Physics project at the US Air Force
Academy was started when Dr. Novak was a visiting at the Academy
during the 1994/95 academic year and the summers preceding and
following that academic year. It is a complete set of WWW-based
interactive lessons with some server side logic and was conceived
as a way to motivate USAF Academy cadets to become more
interested in basic physics. The product resulting from the
project is a set of 32 introductory physics lessons, delivered as
HTML multimedia documents, as shown in figure 4. The present size
of the set is 450 MB, consisting of thousands of small resource
modules and HTML text files. The course has a substantial
hands-on component, including standard table-top laboratory
exercises. The delivery of the material, however, is entirely
HTML-based.
The Cockpit Physics classroom consists of
twelve student workstations, one Windows NT file server and a
Macintosh web server running WebStar. The web server contains the
logic engine that analyzes student responses and provides
individualized student feedback. The logic engine draws on a
database of multiple choice questions and other instructional
resources such as diagrams, spreadsheet files, etc. The logic
engine and the database are in HyperCard format and the
communication between HyperCard and the web server is via apple
events.
During the hour-long interactive session, beginning physics students are guided along a branching path, which allows them to explore different facets of the day's subject at their own pace. The lessons include simple illustrations of the assigned reading, interactive screens in which the students may vary parameters in an equation under study to experience the resulting effects, or even be directed through an intricate lab where the data is automatically collected by the computer. All of this interaction is closely monitored by the instructor, who will be available to answer questions not covered in the computer lesson or to provide supplemental material.
Figure 5 Caption: The screen displayed by the
Mac web server in the classroom during a Cockpit Physics lesson.
Figure 5 shows an example of the screen
displayed by the Mac web server in the classroom for each lesson.
This system has been designed to provide immediate feedback to
the instructors, to record the information in ways that are
useful both in the classroom and for later educational research,
and to be easy to update and modify. The interface is a HyperCard
stack, which contains a different card for each of the 32 lessons
in the curriculum. In addition, the stack contains a card for
each multiple choice quiz given in the course, since it is the
Mac in the classroom which responds to the student submissions.
The buttons on the left hand side of figure 5 represent the 12
student stations in the classroom. Across the top are symbols
representing each of the student response items in the particular
lesson. The squares represent "text areas" into which
students type responses to questions and problems posed in the
HTML documents. The circles represent multiple choice quiz items;
each circle represents its own quiz question. The names of these
text areas and quiz items appear on the instructor’s screen
when the mouse is dragged over the top row of items to help keep
track of items in the lesson. On the right hand side, running
percentages on quiz items appear by station. The end-of-lesson
quizzes are averaged together and displayed in the first box, and
the beginning-of-lesson homework quiz (usually just one question)
score appears in the second box.
Information organized by quiz question is displayed at the bottom
of the instructor’s screen, and the current number of
responses, number of correct responses, and percent correct is
displayed for each quiz in the lesson. This display allows the
instructor to quickly and easily assess the class' understanding
and trouble-spots as a whole and to take note of
questions/concepts which need to be stressed or revisited later
in the lesson.
As the students begin responding to text area and quiz input
requests, the appropriate boxes and circles turn black. For
example, if station #4 submits a response to the third text area
in the lesson, this box turns black. This feature helps
instructors to gauge the students' progress through the lesson,
simply by looking at the placement and quantity of black symbols.
This particular screen shot illustrates how the real-time display
might look part way through the lesson. We can see from the
display that several stations have already responded to the first
text area item. To see how the students are responding to that
question, the instructor can click on the first item in the top
row and a field containing a chronological list of station
responses to this item appears. The responses are tagged with the
station numbers and the time of the response, in addition to the
actual text of the response. A quick glance at this field allows
the instructor to see if the students are responding correctly to
a question. For example, figure 5 shows that :
Students who use the team #8 approach or are doing nothing are
easily identified and the can intervene as appropriate and if
necessary. What has been learned is that teams that appear to be
doing nothing are sometimes actually browsing the quiz questions
first, not attempting to answer them. They then proceed through
the lesson, keeping in mind the kinds of questions they are
expected to be able to answer when they finish. This is often a
very successful strategy.
An interesting outcome of this progress-indicator and monitor
system was that students were interested in seeing the
instructor’s display. As soon as students realized that the
instructors had easy access to real-time monitoring of each
station's progress, they began coming to the front of the room to
look at the display themselves, to compare their progress with
that of others in the class, and to compare their quiz scores.
This response was not anticipated, but the availability of this
information served as an additional motivator for the students to
progress through the lessons and to do well on the quizzes. When
a particular section (class) has finished the day's lesson, all
of the responses are written to summary files which can be
accessed later by instructors or those of us wishing to do
educational research. The "lesson card" is then
initialized and cleared, ready for the next class of students.
Cockpit Physics requires new techniques and skills of the
instructor. Proper class management and use of real-time feedback
about student progress is crucial to the success of such a
learning environment. The instructor does not disappear or become
less important in such a setting, but rather becomes more
involved in each student's learning process. Selected lessons of
Cockpit Physics were taught during the Fall 1995 semester, and
the course was fully implemented in 4 trial sections during the
Spring 1996 semester. During the Spring 1996 semester, the
Cockpit Physics course received the highest course rating among
the regular introductory physics sections. Formal assessments are
currently underway, and preliminary assessment information is now
becoming available. Cockpit Physics is designed for in-classroom
use in the "studio-physics" mode and selected parts of
it have been repackaged and used at IUPUI in the traditional
lecture-recitation-lab setting.
The Cockpit Physics developers are working on client-side
interactivity via JavaScript. During the 1996/97 school year, the
newly converted JavaScripted lessons will be tested at USAFA and
at IUPUI. The assignments will extend the web activities beyond
the classroom to the student dorms at USAFA and to campus wide
computer labs (and homes for the students with network access) at
IUPUI. As they mature, the new instructional materials will be
posted on WebPhysics servers. WebPhysics servers will be the
virtual drawing boards where instructors can jointly develop new
materials and share teaching experiences.
The purpose of undergraduate research is not
the research itself, but the growth and self-confidence of the
undergraduate scientist. (Dwight Neuenschwander)
The Davidson College Physics Department
approached the use of the web differently from the Air Force
Academy. No single course has been rewritten using HTML, but the
web has supplemented existing courses. Formal training in the use
of computers is concentrated in the first two years of the
undergraduate program. Commercial computer applications (Quattro,
Netscape Navigator, Word, etc.) together with selected
simulations (Electric Field Hockey, Logal Optics, CUPS, etc.) are
used in almost all introductory laboratories. Two additional
lower division courses, Mathematical Methods for Scientists
(Py201) and Computational Physics (Py200), incorporate computers
as an integral part of the major. These courses are required.
Students are then free to use-or not to use-computer tools in
their upper level courses.
Since students have different skills and career
goals, physics instruction at an undergraduate liberal arts
college must be flexible. Some students write well; other
students have good graphical design skills; and other students
have mathematical ability. Most students will not major in
physics and many will not major in science. Computational
physics, however, has broad appeal since it is an effective way
to develop problem solving skills and to become computer
literate. It provides the foundation for computer use throughout
the curriculum. Students perceive that they are not well-educated
without a good understanding of a computer's power and its
limitations. Learning to design an HTML document that
communicates an idea can be part of the educational process; so
can downloading information via the World Wide Web, FTP-ing
homework, getting help from Computer Services, and emailing other
students or the instructor.
Some students need considerable one-on-one
instruction during their first encounter with a computer while
other students are ready to work independently. Davidson
introductory laboratories are ideal for this diverse population
since our labs are small (16 students maximum), long (3 hours),
and taught by the faculty member teaching the regular lecture
(not a graduate student). Each laboratory bench is equipped with
a networked computer and MBL data acquisition card. Class
syllabi, homework, and handouts have been rewritten in HTML and
can be viewed on any networked campus computer. Many laboratories
currently require that a student complete a pre-laboratory before
beginning the experiment. These pre-labs usually require that
students perform some analytical exercise related to the weekly
experiment. The intent of the pre-lab is to help the students
make the connection between the real world they are about to
measure and the theory presented in lecture. Completion of the
laboratories requires basic computer literacy including a working
knowledge of the Internet, browsers, spreadsheets, image
analysis, and selected simulations. Experience has shown that
former students continue to drop by the Physics Department to use
the computer tools even after they have declared majors in other
fields of study.
Math Methods, Py 200, covers traditional topics
such as vector operators and linear algebra using a symbolic
algebra package, Mathematica, while Computational Physics, Py
201, emphasizes simulation and modeling using a compiled
language, Pascal. Both courses stress visualization and plotting
and the computational physics course requires that the students
choose and program a final project. These final projects are, in
fact, undergraduate research as defined by Dwight Neuenschwander.
The use of computers to explore real scientific problems early in
an undergraduate program was pioneered by the M.U.P.P.E.T. team
at the University of Maryland. Anecdotal evidence suggests that
this approach has helped attract physics majors who would
otherwise be attracted to computer science, engineering, or
applied mathematics. Many of our students have developed
exceptionally strong skills and have won awards in the annual
Computers in Physics software competition, and have been able to
combine fields and study and have gone on to graduate school in
computer science or engineering.
Figure 6 Caption: Davidson junior lab report
posted from a students home page.
Students wishing to continue their training in
computational physics can enroll in independent study/research
courses. Laboratories, independent study projects, and student
theses are always written with the aid of a word processor and
are often posted on the web to encourage interaction between
upper and lower division students. Students quickly learn that
publishing on the Internet requires careful attention to detail.
Presentations must be rethought to make effective use of
hyperlinks. Graphics and layout become important, and clear
writing is essential. Many junior lab projects are team projects,
and students are encouraged to learn electronic publishing skills
from each other. Student home pages on the Davidson server have
been remarkably active and receive hundreds of hits per month.
Research groups-usually graduate students-download files and send
email to the student authors thereby providing the undergraduate
students with a sense belonging to a larger community. Search
engines such as Lycos or Yahoo are democratic; keywords such as
"Paul Trap" are as likely to turn up a Davidson honor's
thesis as a research paper at a major university. And, of course,
it is the quality of the work and not the credentials of the
author that matter.
One of the differences that I noticed
between physics and humanities faculty was that humanities
teachers expected students to have read the material beforehand.
Physics professors did not. (Bob Ehrlich commenting on the
Old Dogs program at George Mason University)
A unique feature of the pilot phase of the
WebPhysics project has been the greatly different student test
populations. Davidson College is a small (enrollment ~1600),
select (SAT ~1250), residential, liberal arts college in rural
North Carolina while IUPUI is a large (enrollment ~29,000), urban
state university, serving mostly commuter and non-traditional
students. The United States Air Force Academy is a
highly-structured institution whose mission is to educate
military officers. Nevertheless, the challenges faced by the
faculty at all three institutions were remarkably similar. The
web allows students to develop their own personal learning
experience, working independently at their own rate and level of
competence. The web component enhanced the science experience for
both physics majors and for students with little or no previous
science or laboratory training. In addition, the web helped them
learn how advanced communication technologies can impact
professional productivity.
The success of WebPhysics depended to some
extent on the availability of affordable technology. Multimedia
computers capable of running WebPhysics material can now be
purchased for under $2,000 (about the cost of an oscilloscope and
an air track for introductory laboratory) while tuition, books,
room, and board costs ~$10,000/year at a public university and
considerably more at a private college. The IEEE reports that 50%
of American households currently have computers and 18% have
Internet connectivity. Most campuses have computer clusters and
many have or will shortly install network connectivity to dorm
rooms. Improved user interfaces have resulted in a shallow
learning curve and increased computer literacy among the
population. Access to the required technology has not been a
barrier for our students.
The original basis for the WebPhysics project
was to have hands-on activities constructed around digitized
videos of real life events which could then be individualized
with the network providing electronic links between the
instructor and individual students and between groups of
students. The project took its cues from published educational
research results and promising network technology. If this
synthesis finds acceptance by students and faculty, it will
constitute a new pedagogical tool.
The traditional pedagogical resources available
to students are live teachers or tutors, textbooks, hands-on
labs, practice workbooks, and discussion groups. Multimedia and
communications technologies permit the development of an
individualized interactive environment available
around-the-clock. Both traditional and non-traditional students
benefit. Traditional students gain another learning resource.
Perhaps more importantly, the new electronic technologies enable
physics faculty to better serve the non-traditional students who
attend school under time or space constraints (distance
education), as well as students who might find it easier to work
in a virtual lab rather than a real lab (e.g., handicapped
students or students who need extra time to digest an idea).
Lastly, network technologies open up a collaborative environment
between schools that are separated geographically but follow
similar curricula and are committed to high quality education
that serves the needs of today's heterogeneous physics students.
It is a pleasure to thank Dr. Laurence S. Cain
for many helpful suggestions and the Davidson Physics Department
and the Davidson College Faculty Study and Research Committee for
providing a seed grant and travel assistance for development of
WebPhysics.