TELEMATIC DETECTION AND ACQUISITION OF PRIOR
KNOWLEDGE OF PHYSICS NECESSARY FOR ENGINEERING
STUDENTS
Zero Course
Pilar Martínez-Jiménez, Mª Carmen García, Gerardo Pedrós Pérez, Elena Varo Martinez
Marta Varo and David Muñoz Rodriguez
Department of Applied Physic, University of Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain
Keywords: Virtual Labs, e-Learning, Engineering.
Abstract: The Virtual Laboratory research group of Cordoba University has created a zero level course of physics in
which students will find an explanatory web guide with the problems, examples and simulations of the most
important themes dealt with in this subject. This is a computer tool which priority and fundamental
objective is to detect, in first instance, by means of questionnaires, those physics concepts which are
indispensable to the students of 1st year of engineering for a satisfactory command of the physical subjects
of that year but which, actually, are unknown to them. It was aimed to emphasize the basic and introductory
aspects of Physics as a basic science. In it the students can learn the concepts belonging to some of the
traditional disciplines of Physics, such as kinematics, dynamics, electricity, magnetism, etc. This way, it is
intended that the students, simply and intuitively with the aid of this portal, become familiarized with those
concepts which they have not studied at secondary school and which they should know at the beginning of
their engineering degree studies.
1 INTRODUCTION
Recent studies (Solbes et al., 2007) show a
diminution in the number of students taking science
subjects and, according to questionnaires and
interviews taken from secondary students, they
associate this decline to the negative opinion of
science possessed by these students (Lyons, J; Ebert,
C . 2005).
The PISA (Programme for International Student
Assessment) report of 2006 shows that Andalucía
has the lowest sciences yield in Spain with an index
of 474, the mean of Spain being 488 and that of the
OCDE (Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development) 491. The final result is that, for
example, the Physics knowledge of students entering
the Engineering schools in Spain is inadequate
(Covian et al., 2008).
After these devastating conclusions, it is not
surprising that most experts agree in pointing out
that the transition from secondary school to the
university is a stage laden with deficiencies in the
learning of certain subjects (Ellis, G.W. et al. 2005;
Richards, L.G. et al. 2007). In order to solve these
inadequacies, many Spanish universities have
prepared a series of actions, before the beginning of
the first academic year, to find out what the most
necessary knowledge is in each of the disciplines
taught, and, based on this information, to provide the
new student with, at least, a minimum of rudiments,
the so-called “zero course”.
These courses are levelling lessons given to
students entering university, either before they start
or in the first weeks of the academic year (Ziemian,
C.W. et al. 2008). The aim of these classes is to
facilitate the study of this subject in the first year of
the degree. They can thus go into the university
lessons with a better preparation. They generally
cover subjects typical of the technical studies, such
as physics, chemistry, mathematics or drawing,
although there are a great variety of preparatory
courses.
In the last four years, before the beginning of the
academic course, the students have been tested in
physics disciplines through an initial evaluation
where they have several basic questions about
383
Martínez-Jiménez P., García M., Pedrós Pérez G., Varo Martinez E., Varo M. and Muñoz Rodriguez D. (2010).
TELEMATIC DETECTION AND ACQUISITION OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF PHYSICS NECESSARY FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS - Zero Course.
In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 383-386
DOI: 10.5220/0002765703830386
Copyright
c
SciTePress
different aspects of the subject. The average marks
of this test were quite deficient (60% of new
students and 41% of repeating students). As a
consequence of these upsetting results a group of
university lecturers in collaboration with some
secondary school teachers have developed a
teaching research project which main objective is to
detect that knowledge that students consider to be
difficult to assimilate in order to set up strategies
permitting a better understanding of the necessary
concepts and their applications.
2 OBJECTIVES
The main objective of this project was to create an
interactive web portal of a zero course of Physics at
a university level, in which students find an
explanatory guide with problems, examples and
simulations of the most important themes taught in
this subject.
With the computer application proposed, it is
intended to fulfil the following objectives:
That students coming or not from the A-level
science syllabus and are going to take up
Engineering studies, become familiarized with the
themes and reinforce their knowledge of Physics.
Those students learn to do practical exercises
based on the knowledge acquired with the tutorial.
Therefore, the priority and fundamental
objectives of this zero course consist of introducing
students to the basic concepts in Physics in order to
address their corresponding university studies. This
course does not aim to begin any subject but only to
cover up the gaps that students might have had
during their education in secondary school. It is
aimed to dwell on the fundamental and introductory
aspects of Physics as a basic science. For this, and
on general lines, the students will be familiarized
with those concepts which they have not studied in
A-level courses and which they need to know before
studying a technical university career.
It has been attempted to create an agreeable,
attractive and easy-to-use programme; the software
also aims to be complete, so that the whole of the
events implicated can be assimilated.
The zero course requires the student to be
participative as the application offers some practical
modules such as the part of visualizations,
simulations, exercises resolved and proposed.
With this application it has been aimed to
achieve:
That the experiments and studies should be carried
out by animation, i.e. using multimedia tools.
That the simulations should be real, permitting the
factors to be altered to see the different results.
That the student should understand and find out
without any difficulty the use and working of the
zero course for which s/he will have an instruction
manual.
That the system should be prepared to respond to
any situation that the student may propose.
That a clear, concise explanation of each of the
topics should be accompanied by a catalogue of
interactive images to permit students to give a
visual image of the problem and to understand the
related theoretical-practical concepts.
That students should be permitted to carry out a
series of exercises to assess themselves in what
they have learnt in the themes dealt with in the
zero course.
3 DESCRIPTION OF THE
PROJECT
The project has been realized in three stages:
* Research, documentation and preparation. In this
stage, all the didactic documentation needed for the
zero course was collected, in this case on
Mathematics tools and mathematical methods
applied to physics and another of the themes which
will be mentioned is work and energy, including
items such as work concept, kinetic energy, potential
energy, conservative forces, and the Theorem of
energy conservation.
* Creation of platform and language. In this stage,
the web portal already previously designed was
edited and a section established from which the zero
course portal is accessed.
* Implementation. Once the two previous stages
were concluded the code needed for the
implementation of the project was generated. It has
been attempted to obtain a simple, attractive and
operative interface.
3.1 Description of the Software
The software developed consists of the following
parts:
3.1.1 Tutorial
In this module it was aimed for the student to be
supplied with all the theory necessary and
convenient in relation to the mathematical tool and
work and energy themes in order to acquire adequate
CSEDU 2010 - 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
384
knowledge to begin the academic year, and that this
should be interactive, amusing, concise and with
animations (Figure 1). This tutorial can be supplied
in a pdf format and downloaded for its subsequent
printing out and study.
Figure 1: Tutorial.
3.1.2 Exercises Resolved and Proposed
This module shows a series of exercises to help
students to understand the theoretical concepts
shown in the tutorial part better. There are two types
of exercises, the resolved ones which are solved step
by step and with animations, and the proposed ones,
which incorporate the solution so that the student
can do them and then check the results obtained.
3.1.3 Questionnaires
This module permits the student to evaluate the
knowledge acquired both in the web portal and in
the theory classes. For this the programme is used by
means of a link available on the web page
http://rabfis15.uco.es/portalfisica/ , of the server
rabfis15.uco.es of the Department of Applied
Physics.
When the course begins the lecturer will enrol
students in this programme and they will register
themselves in it. The teacher will incorporate
questionnaires into it which the programme itself
corrects as a function of the lecturer’s replies (Figure
2).
3.1.4 Curiosities and Animations
This module helps the student to become
familiarized with the physical basis of different real
phenomena.
Figure 2: Self evaluation questionnaires.
3.2 Material and Methods
In order to develop properly the computer tool, it
was taken in consideration, not just the
programming environment, so the people who was
going to be using it and their knowledge level. The
hardware environment in which it would be installed
and executed should be mentioned too.
Software Environment. The solution found to solve
the problem of the “Development of Zero Course”
which we were faced with initially was that of
setting up a web application. This application can be
installed and subsequently executed in any computer
possessing a Web Internet Information server of 5.0
or over. The only requirement for using the
application from a different computer to the one in
which the software is installed is to have a web
browser from which to access to the URL
referencing the application.
User Environment. It is foreseen that the users of
the application will be the teaching staff of the
Physics Department at Córdoba University, as
“Teacher” type users, and the Student type users will
correspond to new students entering their studies at
Córdoba University, specially Engineering studies,
either technical or advanced.
TELEMATIC DETECTION AND ACQUISITION OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE OF PHYSICS NECESSARY FOR
ENGINEERING STUDENTS - Zero Course
385
4 USEFULNESS
The web portal for the levelling of knowledge, i.e.
the zero course, has only recently been implemented
in the web server so that it has not been used by
students. However, some pilot validation tests have
been conducted with different users taken at random
and from different educational levels and they have
all reported two important aspects of this
application; on one hand, that it is easy to use, and,
in the other, that it has helped them to improve
concepts. In addition, one section which has greatly
interested them is the one corresponding to
curiosities, in which the reasons for certain facts
observed by the students in their daily lives are
explained to them.
In a second stage of the project, this tool will be
implemented for the newly arrived students and the
results obtained in teaching them will be studied.
This software application is specially directed at
the Physics Department of Córdoba University
(UCO). It was developed from thinking about the
needs of that department, but, due to its portability,
it can be installed in a server of any department of
that university since the title of the portal can even
be changed. This, for the want of any other, is called
Introduction Course to Physics.
Finally, and in spite of being an application
exclusively developed for a specific department, it
has been attempted to make the software as portable
as possible so that, if necessary, it can be used for
something more than one single department.
5 CONCLUSIONS
The main objective pursued with the development of
this project has been fulfilled in the creation of a
virtual learning course of initiation which permits
the student to be introduced to basic concepts of
physics in order to tackle his/her corresponding
university studies.
A highly educational application has been
obtained to allow the student to overcome a series of
conceptual lacks. For that purpose, an extensive
tutorial of theoretical-practical concepts has been
included as well as a module of practical exercises
with answers, with a section containing
questionnaires to evaluate the students’ knowledge,
and there is also a chapter of curiosities to answer
everyday questions on the application of physics.
Thirdly, this software can be executed in a
multiplatform environment. Its users, with the sole
means of a browser, can employ the application
regardless of their operative system or of the
characteristics of their computer system.
The portal is accessible to any user who wishes
to employ it by connecting to the server
http://rabfis15.uco.es/cursocero/.
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