A Post Participation Review of the University of Virginia’s On-line Graduate Credit Physics Course for TeachersPHY 605: How Things Work Iby Kelly PearsonDepartment of Physics, State University of New York - Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo, NY, 14222 <[email protected]>Abstract:The University of Virginia (UVa) physics department offers a series of on-line graduate credit courses intended for physics teachers who are pursuing their master’s degree, or who want to expand their physics content knowledge as part of their professional development. Here I present a post participation review of PHY605: How Things Work I, which I took in Fall 2005 for credit towards my M.S.Ed. (Physics) degree from Buffalo State College [Ref 1]. I found PHY605 very worthwhile in both increasing my Physics content knowledge and teaching me simple and relevant demonstrations and concepts that I could directly use in my own HS Physics classroom. This on-line course requires some computer knowledge as well as some physics content background; some elementary school teachers without a physics background who took this course found it to be very challenging. Acknowledgements: This manuscript was prepared as part of requirements for PHY690: Master's Project at SUNY Buffalo StateCollege, and was informed by comments from Dr. Richard Lindgren and Dr. Dan MacIsaac.Article:In Fall 2005, I was teaching both High School Regents and General Physics classes in Rochester, New York,and working towards obtaining my M.S.Ed. (Physics) from SUNY- Buffalo State College [Ref 1], which satisfies the masters' degree requirement for my NY professional teacher certification. The ninety minute commute from Rochester to Buffalo for evening classes was fairly discouraging during the school year (particularly in winter), so I chose to take PHY605 from the University of Virginia (UVa) on-line offerings. It is important to get prior approval if you wish to transfer online credit from UVa or any other school towards a degree program, and I was given permission to do so.I had a couple of courses to choose from and I chose PHY605: How Things Work I for a variety of reasons. In my General Physics class I felt that it was particularly important to connect what the students do in class to real life experiences and I thought that this course would help me make more of those connections. I also chose this course because I had heard of the text How Things Work before. This was a very popular book and I figured that something this popular was probably worthwhile. The University of Virginia Department of Physics course PHY605: How Things Work I was described in thedepartment online literature [Ref 2] as:“. . . a practical introduction to physics and science in everyday life. The course considers objects from our daily environment (baseballs, frisbees, roller coasters, vacuum cleaners, rockets, clocks and much more!) and focuses on their principles of operation, histories,and relationships to one another. This course emphasizes motion, mechanics, liquids, heat, gases, and sound. The demonstrator and lecturer is professor Lou Bloomfield, who has originated and developed the courses How Things Work I and II at UVa.” [Ref 2]Half of all students taking these online UVa graduate physics courses for teachers [Ref 2] find out about them by searching online; courses with similar intentions are also offered through the NTEN network [Ref 3]. At the UVa website there are pages offering detailed information about each course that UVa offers, as well as links to each course’s home page, and explanation for how to register for courses. Course prerequisites are a four-year degree and a teaching license; however this information is not verified when registering for the course. [Ref 2]My total cost for the three credit PHY605 as an out of state student in Fall 2005 was just over $900. In statestudents received a price break of $300. In addition, the textbook How Things Work: the Physics of Everyday Life [Ref 4] by Louis Bloomfield of UVa physics costs about $80. After registration, I received access to the UVa Blackboard Learning System, WebAssign (an online homework system), the Horizon Wimba Audio Chat Room (hereafter referred to as chat room), and a UVa e-mail address. [REF 5,6,7] Students also received by mail ten CDs of videotaped lectures by Professor Louis Bloomfield teaching his undergraduate “How Things Work I” course. These were shipped upon registration for the course and reached most students in two weeks, however some students received their CDs late because they registered late for the course.To succeed in this course you needed a fairly modern computer with internet access, an e-mail account, Acrobat Reader, and RealPlayer (to watch the CD lectures). It was also helpful to have a DSL, cable modem or other fast internet connection (dialup is too slow), computer speakers and a computer microphone for the chat room. The instructions to get to everything else you need for the course were available on the course web page and the instructor e-mailed separate, more detailed, access instructions to each student.There were several components to the course including biweekly reading and homework assignments, the ten discs worth of lectures to watch, and thee exams plus a final. The first two exams were multiple choice and the final was multiple-choice, however the third exam was different. Instead of answering multiple choice questions, students were asked to write multiple choice questions that were then graded on a rubric. As an option students could also participate in an asynchronous online BlackBoard forum which students could post questions or ask other students questions about the course. Once a week there was also audio/ internet help sessions led by the instructor using Horizon Wimba Chat Room. My instructor of record for the course was Dr. Richard Lindgren, (not Prof. Bloomfield the CD lecturer). The instructor wrote the homework work assignments, tests, and led the on-line chat room. There were on average three hours worth of CD lectures to watch each week, plus about fifty pages of textbook reading. Atypical homework assignment consisted of three demanding conceptual questions with six parts each such as the following question: “Two identical toboggans leave the top of a steep hill at the same time. Imagine that you are inone of them, by yourself. The other is occupied by six
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