A Multimedia Learning System for Selected Topics of Physics
Chapter One
Aims and Objectives
This Thesis aims to tackle the above-mentioned problems associated with the design and implementation of learning systems in general and for topics of physics in particular of which Newtonian Mechanics is our topic of choice, to meet the active learning preferences for learners. This topic was chosen because in most introductory physics courses mechanics usually is the first area of physics that is discussed. Newton’s laws of motion, which describe how massive objects respond to forces, are central to the study of mechanics. Newton arrived at his three laws of motion from an extensive study of empirical data including many astronomical observations. An active learning approach to physics instruction is very useful since as the famous adage says, “I see and I forget, I hear and I remember, I do and I understand.” The approach will be used as a supporting tool for active learning not only for physics topics, but can also be implemented for other related courses. It focuses on the following issues;
- Detailed literature study of “state of the art” in learning systems for science education and physics in
- Brief background on the usage of computers in physics
- Problems associated with the design of a Multimedia Learning System for selected topics of Physics with emphasis on Newtonian
- Proposal of a better Multimedia Learning System for Newtonian Mechanics
Chapter Two
Brief Review of the State of Physics Education in the 21st Century.
Since this work cuts across two major disciplines which are Physics and Computer Science hence making it interdisciplinary in nature it behooves us to provide a brief review of the state of Physics Education in the 21st Century for a better understanding on our work flow.
Background
Introductory level physics taught at the Undergraduate level of every University constitutes the bedrock or foundation in the educational life as well as professional career of every Science and Engineering major. As a norm, students enrolled on any Science degree track such as Physics, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology, and even Medicine are mandated to take a minimum of two general or introductory level physics courses, (with the exception of Physics majors who take other higher level courses during the course of their program) one in the first semester and other in the second semester. Often these general level physics courses are centered on Newton’s laws of motion, work and energy, one-particle dynamics, pulley systems, inclined planes and so on. Generally these courses provide the students with a broad foundation as to the basic applications of physics within the context of their everyday lives. For example why an object thrown up in free space will always come down and not keep going up or how ships and planes with their seemingly huge sizes can be used to transport a lot of goods and great numbers of people by water and air respectively without sinking or come crashing down. They also provide salient concepts upon which the students build concrete understanding during their years of specialization.
However, the methods employed in teaching these courses to such a diverse group of learners with different learning preferences are not the best. Only the most inspiring and dedicated teachers are able to get the students to feel not only the creativity that the field possesses but also that they themselves can actually perform innovative investigative physics. This has often left many beginning students feeling dry and poorly motivated. The end results have often amounted to a significant number of students taking these courses for re-sits two or more times before finally validating them. Some resort to changing majors after a year or more of failing to validate these introductory courses while others even spend an extra year because of these courses. Many faculty have begun to question themselves as to whether the students actually finally learn the core concepts of physics after finally succeeding introductory courses. The answer to this question in some cases has been a strong feeling of failure. International comparison tests in some countries have shown how their students, coming from theoretically more advanced countries, perform worse than the average. But what has really contributed in raising the eye brows of many in the community has been the long-lasting decline on the figures of enrollment of physics majors [8]. Fewer physics Ph.D.’s are granted today than two decades ago. In the following sub-section, we go on to advance a couple of reasons for this decline as revealed by the literature.
Reasons for decline in enrollment of Physics Majors.
Problems with the traditional Physics curriculum.
A common observable trend in some Universities today reveals that there is a lack in the robustness of the school curricular to keep up to speed with the ever-growing and advancing trends in technology, research and innovation being witnessed globally today. Ground breaking discoveries are made in various disciplines on a daily basis hence pushing the frontiers of formal education which need to conform to these new standards thus enabling our students to be at the forefront, riding on the waves of discovery in this digital age. However, this most at times turns out not to be the case. Some Universities continue to use outdated curricular prepared twenty to thirty years back and blended with the traditional “chalk and talk” approaches to instruct today’s students. How can that be? Some University lecturers even go ahead to boast to their students about their lecture notes which happened to be their own notes taken at that particular level when they were still in school. Failing to develop robust curricular which are being updated as the time advances often leads to the production of graduates who are completely clueless as to where the “knowledge puck” has been, where it is at the moment and where next it will be headed to. It also fails to groom young scientists and researchers who will push the frontiers of research making earth-shattering contributions of new knowledge which is an essential ingredient to the growth of any economy.
This might not be a problem actually if physics was a static field. But as you would have it, it is not. In the past thirty years, we have seen an explosion in a variety of subfields of physics ranging from mesoscopic physics which deals with materials of an intermediate length scale to the clustering of galaxies. We are also seeing a lot of work being done in Quantum mechanics towards the creation of the world’s first Quantum Computer. There are also major breakthroughs in fields long thought to be understood. Current developments in Newtonian Mechanics are evolving into a theory of non-linear systems and chaotic behaviour that may produce profound changes in the way we think of physics. A critical element in the study of physics both experimental and theoretical is about “getting the physics right”. Physics is not an exact Science but rather a science in which we believe in the accuracy of our approximations [5]. Because introductory students often come with the notion that they are working with laws and problems that have exact answers, they often fall on the wrong side of the divide and miss the fundamental aspect of the discipline.
Change in the overall perception as regarding the usefulness of Physics.
Today there is a general perception in a good number of communities that studying Physics is a major waste of time, energy and money. In fact some categorically call it, “a bad investment”. This has also been a major contributor to the growing disinterest in physics and to make matters worse apart from the general public views even the scientifically educated public, no longer perceive physics as a vital discipline making ground-breaking discoveries. Also, Industries driven by global competition, and governments inspired by the change in global political situation and the more stable state of the oil industry have undertaken big cuts in basic research programs on which physics played an important role [9].
Chapter Three
State of the Art of Learning Systems for Physics Education in General and Newtonian Mechanics in Particular.
As described in section 2.2, the onset of the computer revolution also ushered in a lot of changes in the way teaching and learning began to be carried out in the classroom. It brought about a change in the curricular of many Institutions of learning and the introduction of various technologies to aid in the dissemination of knowledge. This change in curricular and methods of dissemination of knowledge coupled with technological advances resulted in the creation of specialized kinds of instruction vehicles or knowledge portals called Integrated Learning Systems (ILS) used for educational purposes. These systems play an important role in enhancing the learning experience for students of physics who by nature tend to have more active and collaborative learning preferences.
Several models have been developed which make use of the increasing role Information and Communication Technologies play in the instruction of physics to introductory university students. In an attempt to give an overview of these related works, we will provide a rough classification of these learning systems according to their principles of use.
Tools for Data Acquisition and Manipulation
This is one of the most known conventional methods of instruction in Physics education. Spread Sheets and other information gathering tools were used in collecting data from various sources for analysis e.g. laboratory experiments carried out by the students and later the data was analyzed using computer programs. From the simulations the behaviour of the systems were studied and graphs were plotted. In this way the learner got a “hands-on” experience as they went through the experiments by themselves with close supervision for the first two trials from their lecturers. Simulations especially for a course perceived to be difficult like Physics provides a means for learners to get a more comprehensive view of the concepts being taught and most importantly understanding the underlying Physics behind them. Students were sometimes required to learn programming languages like MATLAB, FORTRAN for courses which required some basic programming skills like Computational Physics. They wrote programs for example to simulate fluid flow through a hose, or use the Navier-Stokes equations in the numerical modeling of wakes when studying the aerodynamics of wind turbines. This approach to learning has it merits also in that it provides the learners with deep analytical thinking skills as they go through the process of observation, data collection, analysis and drawing conclusions.
Chapter Four
Problem Statement: How does one effectively motivate students (African) to study Physics?
In Chapter 3, we reviewed the literature as concerns the state of the art for Multimedia Learning Systems for Physics Instruction. This work seeks to address the problems associated with Multimedia Learning System design and the motivation of the African Student towards the study of Physics which is often perceived as abstract, difficult and worse still boring. It is assumed that learner’s success in improving factual knowledge and deeper understanding not only depends on the mode of presentation and the degree of self-regulation but also on the learner’s motivation [11]. Learners not only need to know which steps are right to take to be successful in the learning process, it also requires motivation to be a successful learner. We saw in the previous chapters, that one of the major reasons for the decline in the enrollment of students at the University for degrees in Physics was because of the traditional methods employed in the instruction of Physics which were mostly teacher-centered than student-centered. This resulted in a great lack of motivation on the part of the student towards the study of Physics. The question therefore that remains to be answered is, “How do we effectively motivate students (especially of African descent) in areas which lack even the most basic laboratories to study Physics and do the approaches previously presented in Chapter 3 not suffice to answer this research question?”
This Chapter is divided into three main sections. Firstly, we will restate and briefly discuss the main research question (as given in section 1.3) that this thesis intends to answer. Secondly, we will provide our justification by direct reference to Chapter 3, to show that the question previously posed still remains unanswered and also that we are not re-inventing the wheel. And finally we conclude this Chapter with discussions on the importance of answering this question and demonstration of its worth.
Chapter Five
A new approach to Physics Instruction: A Multimedia Learning System for Newtonian Mechanics.
Why a Multimedia Learning System for Newtonian Mechanics?
Before choosing Newtonian Mechanics as the topic to be studied in this work, a small survey was conducted on a group of students who had read Physics at the Undergraduate level and earned their bachelor’s degrees in record time from the University in Buea in Cameroon. When asked the question, “If you were to retake your Bachelor’s degree all over again, and this time for your introductory level courses a system provided to help in visualizing those concepts which seemed very abstract to you, what three topics (listed in order of preference) will be your choice for this activity as a freshman or freshwoman
The results were indeed amazing. Feelings of excitement were poured out over the development of such a system that would enhance the learning process for introductory level Physics students as well as past feelings of disgruntlement were expressed over those courses which they felt were validated with no proper understanding of the concepts due to the lack of laboratories and poor teaching methodologies. The survey registered the percentages for the following three topics in order of preference;
Total number of people interviewed- 60 people
- Newtonian Mechanics-80%
- Electromagnetism-15%
- Wave and Optics-5%
Chapter Six
Conclusion
Summary of work and results
The overall research has been conducted in a well-organized way as defined in chapter 5. Research questions 1 and 2 defined in chapter 1, sections 1.3 are answered through Chapters 4 and 5. Research question 3 is answered in Chapter 2, sub-section 2.1.1.1.
In this work, we have proposed a Multimedia Learning System for selected topics of Physics with a first implementation on an introductory Newtonian Mechanics course which happens to be the first area of Physics that is discussed at that level. The system is portable, web-based enabled, machine-independent and easy-to-use. The interface is a rather intuitive one and help menus are provided for guidance on how to use components. It can be used as a stand-alone application or run as an applet in any one of the major web-browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and Google Chrome.
Our Environment supports interactive and collaborative learning in the Newtonian Mechanics course. It can also be used for other courses such as thermodynamics, waves and optics and electromagnetism. It meets the learner preferences of Physics learners which are mostly active, visual, sensing and reflective. Being java based, our MLS can also be integrated with third party applications and Learning Management Systems such as MOODLE.
Challenges
We faced the following challenges in the course of this work;
- The Newton’s 2ndLaw simulator was a bit of a hassle and indeed received more attention than had originally been anticipated, being the most important component of our MLS. More coding hours were spent on it that would have been given to the development of one other component for the visual
- Due to the fact that we finished course work a little later than expected, the scope of our work and time limitations added a lot of stress that would probably have been significantly reduced had we started on time. It also resulted in us being unable to do a second stage evaluation (statistical) to evaluate the effect of our MLS on student performance.
- Some important research material could not be accessed while others were no longer available in print or
- Persistent power outages on campus greatly affected project timelines and
Future Work
In the future work, we plan to enhance our visual tools by adding more features and more visual examples as shown in our initial prototype in the appendix section. We also plan to do a second stage statistical evaluation of our MLS in two Universities, one in Nigeria and the other in Cameroon. We will add more exercises for better performance evaluation as well as an online chatting tool which we left out due to time constraint. The chat tool will enhance online collaborative learning amongst students in discussing questions and solving exercises in real- time. We are also developing other simulators for example a Newton’s Third Law (N3) simulator to simulate other physical phenomena such as action and reaction which is a much widely misunderstood concept amongst introductory level University students. We are also planning on developing a mobile version of the tools that can run on devices such as mobile phones, and tablet PCs which are becoming increasingly popular amongst students today.
References
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