From time to time UPSCALE staff disseminate information that we have learned about the use of computing technology in undergraduate education, particularly in Physics education. This page lists our more major publications and provides electronic access to some of them: the listing is in reverse chronological order.
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This paper uses the taxonomy of encapsulated information to examine the role of information delivery in the educational process. Encapsulated information has only a few "quanta" of information and, perhaps most importantly, that information exists in an already known context.
We shall examine how this classification can be used to aid us in finding effective methods for delivery of information both via the web and in the classroom. This in turn will lead to some conclusions about how the web and the classroom can complement each other in the educational process.
I argue that whether or not information is encapsulated determines whether it can be most effectively be on a computer screen or instead should be printed and read in hardcopy. This, in turn, determines the most appropriate format of a web document that is to be delivered to students.
The analysis is then used to examine the educational process that is occurring in the classroom. The process is certainly not one of simple information delivery. Instead issues of hand-eye-brain coordination and context appear to be crucial. The way in which our visual systems scan for information is also relevant and is discussed.
The consequences of these conclusions include an avoidance of overhead projectors and PowerPoint® presentations in the classroom. These results also paint a negative picture of the possibilities of distance education as a replacement of the traditional classroom.
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We have been using information technology in our undergraduate program for over twenty years. Over that span of time, we have had some successes and many failures. In this paper we examine both. The measurement of `success' and `failure' is fairly simple: if students use a system when not required it is a success, otherwise it is a failure.
We have had universal failures in attempting to either construct or use other people's self-paced tutorials and similar traditional Computer Assisted Instruction or Computer Based Instruction tools. We have also had failures in bulletin board systems that allow students to interact with each other as well as with teaching staff. Successes center on delivery of encapsulated information, such as laboratory instrument specifications or the results of fitting a dataset to a line. We have also had great success with delivery of materials over the network which the student can then use on-screen or print themselves.
One of the big pitfalls is that too often the staff developing computer materials devote great resources to an application for little reason other than it is technologically possible to do it. This resonates with pressure from administrators, colleagues and the students themselves for a program to be perceived as modern and up to date.
The common denominator in our successes seems to be applications that do not require large quantities of information and/or the context of that information to be read on a screen.
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We have been using a series of computer-based problem sets on the physical pendulum in our third year undergraduate course in classical mechanics for three years. The problem sets investigate the physics of this system in ways not easily accessible without this technology, and explore various algorithms for solving mechanics problems in a Hamiltonian formulation. We shall describe some of our successes and failures in developing this package.
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