This project is developing web-based activities with interactive videos to inspire undergraduates in physics and engineering toward work in the advanced lab, to build confidence in handling the technical aspects encountered in the lab, and to enhance the teaching of contemporary topics across multiple courses. Although the role of advanced physics laboratories can vary significantly from one institution to another, in each environment a successful lab experience should strive for creative student experiences that are both educational and inspiring. The activities in this project provide an interactive video environment where students are introduced to important topic areas in the advanced lab and empowered to interactively control test parameters. Then students can begin the experiments in the laboratory having familiarity with both the physics and the equipment involved.
The activities are designed to provide an interactive lab-like environment that focuses on the essence of the lab topic, but is stripped of many of the complexities of the true lab experience. The activities are designed to enrich learning and student enthusiasm in the advanced lab topics, provide a solid introductory framework to the physics, and lead to more meaningful experiences inside the actual laboratory. Results of the project are being measured by instructors and students, and they depend on (a) deeper student understanding of the physics and technology involved in the experiments; (b) enhanced student attitudes toward the lab as a learning environment; and (c) better student facility with the experiment and the equipment involved in it. The work in this project focuses on three contemporary and engaging topic areas that have been the foundation to various student projects in the Bethel University physics department: (1) compressible fluid mechanics, (2) atomic molecular and optical (AMO) physics, and (3) plasmonics and nano-optics.
Intellectual Merit: Web-based resources are already available for physics education in a variety of forms including online lectures, applets and online simulations, and web-based homework. Video vignettes are also being developed which provide an online environment that combines narration, real-world video, and analysis tools. The work here differs from these other ongoing projects by emphasizing web-based simulations in which the user interacts with video from advanced laboratory experiments. Consequently, user interactions with the web-based video are designed in a fashion that provide a window into real advanced laboratory experiments and provide a stimulus for learning, creativity, and further engagement in the lab. The participating BU faculty have extensive experience teaching in the advanced laboratory and bring research expertise in the areas of fluid mechanics, AMO physics, and plasmonics and nano-optics. The collaborators from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) have been leaders in the physics education community with their work in interactive video analysis. The analysis software is being developed using best practices of software engineering.
Broader Impacts: Activities produced in this project are openly available at ComPADRE.org. Additionally, the software is being made available as open source along with complete documentation, enabling other institutions to build activities based on their own advanced labs and undergraduate research and opening the doors of the advanced laboratory community to a broader audience. The activities from each of the topic areas are to be accessible to adopters and potential adopters in a workshop at the 2014 AAPT conference, and at other conferences and workshops (such as the ALPhA Laboratory Immersions).
