Researchers at University of Wisconsin-River Falls and at Henry Sibley High School in Mendota Heights, MN, are creating new high-quality and resource-rich videos for physics instruction, substantially adding to an existing library, so that the entire introductory mechanics curriculum is covered. The team is also creating detailed and ready-to-use curricular materials to support the videos so that other instructors will be able to easily incorporate our videos into their classes, expanding a web resource that hosts the video library, curricular materials and pedagogical support, and rigorously measuring the extent to which students who use these sets of abstracted and applied videos are able to apply their knowledge to new situations.
One particularly compelling aspect of these videos is the pairing between two types of videos: abstract and applied, the former referring to videos that show physics concepts at their most elemental level using traditional physics lab equipment, while the latter show real-world phenomena exhibiting in a similar concept but in a more complicated setting. This pairing allows the instructor and the students to spiral back over material for better retention and learning transfer. The project has strong potential for broader impact in the physics community and beyond because of the ease of dissemination via vetted and oft-used digital library collections such as SERC and ComPADRE, which have millions of visitors each year.
