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

 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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