Speaker
Description
Since the pandemic forced everything online, there have been rapid and significant changes to the way many of us have been teaching and learning. As more options for in-person activities become available again, we need to consider which elements of learning in the online environment benefit students and are worth keeping. Beginning in Fall 2020, we distributed anonymous online surveys (Fall and Winter) related to students’ interests, motivations and preparedness to all students taking introductory level physics courses at McMaster University. These students are taking physics courses which are aimed at either physical science students, life sciences students, or engineering students. While there is significant overlap in the content of these courses, the student cohorts differ by stream. Comparing results across years and between cohorts, can provide us with insight into our students’ experiences under different learning conditions.
With the shift to online learning, lab kits containing simple, affordable equipment were made to replace the previous in-person labs for our Physics for Life Sciences course. In these home labs, students can perform the experiments and collect their own data independently, and are able to learn about data analysis, graphing and different physics concepts. With most labs now back in person, this year, we took the opportunity to compare the two lab modalities. All students completed two different labs on the same theme (kinematics), one at-home and one in our on-campus labs. Students were then asked (anonymously) about their experiences in the two different labs: what they liked, how they felt they learned, and any challenges they encountered.
I will share some of our results from these surveys as well as some of our plans going forward based on what we have learned so far.
| Keyword-1 | introductory physics |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | labs |
| Keyword-3 | student perceptions |
