Abstract:

At the beginning of a bachelor's degree in science, the college lecturer often faces a challenging task in terms of organization or methodology. At the end of the semester, he wants to achieve the given goals of the subject and simultaneously get the students to approximately the same level of knowledge. However, their initial knowledge tends to be opposed - we will encounter excellent high school graduates and high school students with a small number of physics lessons. If our students complete the introductory course, ideally, they will be at the level of knowledge of an outstanding high school graduate. However, the level of knowledge of incoming students is constantly declining, and the stated goal is practically impossible to achieve in the allotted time. Therefore, several science universities have already implemented the so-called "zero" year. There we strive to achieve the goal described above during two semesters. One of the ways is the consistent application of MBL methods (Microcomputer-Based Laboratory) in the introductory course of college physics. MBL methods have been used successfully for many years in several science subjects at the primary and secondary school levels. Their implementation into higher education is relatively small, still dominated by "classical" lectures and computation exercises, although complemented by a diverse range of current multimedia technologies. This paper describes the experience with the implementation of an innovative introductory college physics course. Our goal was to develop and apply effective teaching methods increasing the knowledge and skill level of those students who had completed physics lessons only in the compulsory scope during secondary school studies. Our innovative introductory course involves modeling complex physics problems in a real technical context. The students created models of a flying ball, a cooling cup of tea, or a discharging capacitor. We try to move teaching from acquisition to participatory. Our work builds on P. Demkanin's research and uses a participatory teaching model. In this model, we regularly place our student in a position where he learns to examine carefully selected physical phenomena, situations, and objects. The student searches for the knowledge necessary for the mentioned research in the sources of information recommended by the teacher. We shift the focus of the activity to the student, and the teacher acts as a mentor. This paper presents several such activities that we tested on a small sample of university students in the first year of bachelor's study. Due to the sample size, we reached for a qualitative method of structured observation; we have obtained feelings and ideas of the involved students using questionnaires continuously administered during the winter semester in 2020 and 2021. Teaching methods were innovated based on experience gained in the first year of research and are further implemented and developed in collaboration with students currently attending our course. Research is still ongoing; preliminary results show a positive effect on the personal growth of a contemporary student whose life is firmly connected with advanced digital technologies. It turns out that students positively evaluate the shift from "chalk and talk" teaching to the active use of computer models in solving physics problems. At the end of the paper, we present further research perspectives.

Keywords:

Computer model, college physics, teaching, introductory course, inovative methods.