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COMPUTER-BASED INSTRUCTION
BRINGSADVANCED-PLACEENTPHYSICS
TO GIFTED STUDENTS
Raymond Ravaglia, J. Acacio de Barros,
and Patrick Suppes
donnelly@siena.e u
380
Courses offered
Textbook
Chapter
2.1-2
Subject or
Title
Motion in one dimension. Velocity.
2.3-4
Since December 1992, we have of- 9020
Motion in one dimension. Acceleration.
9030
3.1-5
Motion in two or three dimensions. Vectors.
fered three sections of our
AP mechan9040
3.6-7
Relatwe Velocity and Projectile Motion.
ics course and one section of our AP
9050
3.7
Projectile Motion. Examples.
electricity and magnetism course. We
3.8
9060
Circular Motion.
will classi@ students who have taken
4.1-2
9070
Newton's Law I.
4.3-4
Newton's Law II.
9080
these courses into three groups, based
4.1-4
9090
Newton's Law. Examples.
on which exam they
took and when they
Forces. So What are They?
4.5
9100
took it.
How to solvephysics problems.
4.6
9110
The fvst group consists of those
9120
How to solve physics problems.
4.6
9130
who took Physics C: mechanics in the
Friction.
5.1
5.1
9140
Analysis ofCar's Motion.
1992-93 school year. This course was
5.2
Drag Forces.
9150
offered to all students who had taken
9160
5.3
Problems with morethan one object.
calculus with us in 1991 or 1992. All
5.4
9170
Pseudoforces.
those fromthe 1992 class chose to parWork and Energy.
6.1
9180
9190
Work and Energy. Example.
6.1
ticipate, and six (three boys and three
6.2
9200
Work Done by a Variable Force.
girls) of the 13 students from the 1991
9210
6.3
Work and Energyin Three Dimensions.
class accepted the invitation. We will
6.3
9220
The Dot Product.
refer to this group often students who
of Objects.
Work and Potential Energy for Systems
6.4
9230
Potential Energyand Work Done by a Conservative Force.
6.4
9240
took the AP exam in 1993 as Mech93.
Work, Energyand Equilibrium.
6.5
During the 1993-94 academic year, 9250
Conservation of Mechanical Energy.
6.6
9260
we offered two sections of mechanics.
9270
Conservation of Mechanical Energy-Examples.
6.6
The first section consisted of students
6.7-9
9280
Work-Energy Theorem with Non-conservative Forces.
whobegan the course in September
Conservation of Momentum.
7.1
9290
of Mass.
Subject or Title Motion of the Center
7.2
9300
1-993hoping to complete both the me9310
Conservation of Momentum.
7.3
chanics and the electricity and magnetThe Center of Mass Reference Frame.
7.4-5
9320
ism coursesduring the year. The second
Collisions in One Dimension.
7.6
9330
section began in January 1994 and con- 9340
Completely Inelastic Collisions.
7.6
sisted of students who plannedto take
Collisions in Three Dimensions.
7.7
9350
Impulse and Average Force.
7.8-9
9360
onlythemechanicsAPexarn.These
8.1
9370
Rotational Motion.
students were all required either
to have
Torque.
8.2
9380
completed a calculus course during the
8.2
9390
A RotatingPulley-Example.
previousyear or tobeenrolled in a
Rotational Kinetic Energy.
8.3-4
9400
9410
Angular Momentum.
8.5
calculus course concurrently with the
9420
Conservation of Angular Momentum.
8.5,8.7
physics. Because these eight students
all
Rolling Objects.
8.6
9430
took the AP exam together, for the
pur9440
8.8
Precession of A Gyroscope.
poses of this article we treat thesetwo
8.9'9.1-5 Static Equilibrium.
9450
9460
10.1
Gravitation.
sections as one group, which we will
10.2-3
Newton's Law of Gravity.
9470
call Mech94.
10.5
Moon Falling Towards
the Earth.
9480
The electricityandmagnetism
10.6
Gravitational Potential Energy.
9490
course was offered for the firsttime in
10.7,10.4 Gravitational Fieldof a Sphencal Shell.
9500
December 1993.The group of students
12.1
95 10
Oscillations.
12.2-8
Examples for Simple Harmonic Motion.
that took this course, which we will call 9520
EM94, comprised nine of the ten students who had been
in Mech93, together
instructors primarily by phone and electronic mail, though
with four students from Mech94.
l1 13 of these students
took
the PhysicsC: electricity and magnetism exam in May 1994. monthly review sessions at Stanford were open to them as well.
The main prerequisite for taking the physics courses with
EPGY was having
the appropriate mathematical background System requirements
for the course taken. We did not require that students first
The EPGY courseware consists of
a course driver comcomplete a conceptual-physics course such as AP Physics
B,
mon to all courses, together with course-specific files containand in fact onlytwo from Mech93 and five from Mech94 hadinglesson and lecturematerial. The course driver is
taken any physics before.
necessarily dependent ona particular architecture and operating system. However,
the lessons and lectures are machineAll these students ran the physics course
at home on
independent, andin principle canbe used on any machine to
personalcomputers.Theywere
in contactwithStanford
COMPUTERS IN PHYSICS, VOL. 9, NO. 4, JUL/AUG 1995
381
YSICS EDUCATION
L-
Figure 2. Formatted blackboard from mechanics lesson9050 has moreof the appearance of a
textbook.
382
The EPGY courses are completely computer-based, withthe computer delivering the
vast majority of the instructional material.
comOnlme course components include a
plete, interactive, multimedia exposition of
the curriculum material involving digitized
sound and graphics, an interactive problemsolving environment, mastery quizzes, problem sets, and databases of off-line problems.
Additionally, a derivation system using the
Maple symbolic computation system is available to students for doing computations. The
fundamentals of this derivation system are
also used m processing student answers so
that a wide variety of equivalent mathematical expressions canall be counted as correct.
Similar to their classroom counterparts,
our courses are dividedinto several lessons,
each of which corresponds to a topic in the
course being taught. These lessons have been
designed to mirror the form of the standard
university presentation of the material (see
"EPGY lessonsin Mechanics," p. 381; alist
of the EPGY lessonsin electricity and magnetism is available from the authors on request.)
A computer lesson usually begins with a
lecture, in which a student listens
to digitized
sound recordingswhile graphics tablet-writing (or formattedtext and graphics) appears
on the computer screenin real time, synchronized to the voice, so that theneteffect
closely resembles that of a teacher writing o
2
2
2
p
.
383
textbook5-for every lesson they complete online. Laboratory work is also required of students. Homework andlabs
will be discussed in
more detail below.
The reportfacility
Electronic communication between
the students andthe
human instructors plays animportant role in the EPGY
courses. Everytime a student is asked a question, his
or her
computer records thelength of time to answer the question,
whether the answer was correct or not, and the correct answer-if the student's response was incorrect. The computer
responds with a similar sequencefor subsequent askings of
the same question. This information
is stored in a report file,
384
385
sections into remote interactions. These courses will become courses whilestill in high school.
We also feel that our instructional model can
be adapted
truly computer-based and useful
to students who live
far away
to other groups of students.
With some success, we have used
f-om Stanford.
It should be evident
that the tutorialrole of the computer the same model to teach coursesin beginning algebra, intermediate algebra, and precalculus
to adult students at cornmuin EPGY courses is considerably more central than the role
nity college^.^ We have discovered that such students have
technology frequently plays in mathematicsor science edudifferent needs and require different pedagogical approaches.
cation. The computer in our program is no mere computaIdeally one shouldbe able to design a course that has several
tional aid, electronic textbook, or drill assistant. Rather, we
paths for students of different ability. In such a course the
have sought to exploit the technology fully
as as possibleto
performance ofthe student would determine the level
of the
produce stand-alone courses that capture and maintain stuto
dents' interest while efficiently teaching college-level subjectlectures received.In this way the course could adapt itself
fit the needs of the student. The result
would be a course that
matter. With the addition of
the virtual classroom, we hope
to
actively engaged students regardless their
of ability level. As
make university-level courses in physics widely available
to
we revise and improve our existing software, we hope to m
advanced students in secondary school. Finally, because
we
inthis direction.
have put the entlrety of the course online, our program makesprogress
it
possible to offer college-level physics instruction to students in
situations in which they usually would be unable to obtain it. About the software
Although we do not at present planto market our softAlthough the students described
in this articleall scored
ware as a stand-alone cornmercial product, we are happy
to
in the top 5% on the mathematics portion of the Scholastic
make arrangements with individuals or schoolsto use these
Aptitude Test, we believe that our courses
are probably sultoras
able for students scoring
in the top 20%. This group probably materialseitherascompleteinstructionalpackages
encompasses all students who are ready
to take the Physics C supplements to existing physics courses. For more information, contact the author bye-mailat
ravaglia@epgy.
stanford. edu or by post at the address given below.
A demonstration version of the program
is available from
the author. For a copy, send $10.00 to Demonstration Program, EPGY Ventura Hall, Stanford CA 94305-41 15. The
demo is also availablevia anonymous ftp from ep gy .st - an
ford .edu, as is additional information about EPGY. The
URL for the EPGY Web page is http ://kanpai. stanford .edu/epgy/pmphs/pamph.htrnl.
References