Abstract:

Nowadays, an academic institution faces the challenge of a not negligible number of undergraduates who drop out [1]. To organise welcome sessions for the new students who are going to get into university appears to be effective in increasing their persistence [2].

For several years Politecnico di Milano has provided a Physics refresher course to its new freshmen, which is part of a much broader pedagogical project consisting in offering a blended course which integrates this face to face activity with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), delivered through Politecnico di Milano MOOCs portal [3]. Held in September and terminating prior to the beginning of the students’ academic programme, this two-week course has focused on classical Physics. Freshmen are arranged in some different sections depending on their own free choice.

In the last edition of the Physics refresher course, held in September 2018, an ad hoc multiple-choice test was administered to the new freshmen during the first lesson. Submitted through the on-line portal Socrative [4], this test enables the teacher to evaluate the students’ level of understanding rather than their knowledge in basic Physics and allows for the freshmen’s self-assessment. Furthermore, it should foster a more and more renewed interest in this discipline. Considering the positive results of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) strategy [5], the students were highly encouraged to use their own electronic devices to take the multiple-choice test.

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the Physics refresher course, the students who got involved in the test and took the classes were monitored closely with relation to their findings in the undergraduate basic Physics course, which they attended during their first academic year.

Thanks to the significant bulk of data collected, the outcomes show that the performance of these freshmen in the final exam of their own academic Physics course is significant. On the one hand, the average score achieved by these students is higher than the mark attained by the overall freshmen who attended a university Physics course at Politecnico di Milano. On the other hand, also their success rate is higher.

On balance, not only does the Physics refresher course appear to be effective in increasing the new freshmen initial level of knowledge in Physics, but at the same time it is likely to grow the attentiveness to this discipline.

References:
[1] V. Tinto (2006-2007), “Research and practice of student retention: what next?”, J. Student College Retention, 8 (1), 1-19
[2] D. Koutsoubakis (1999), “A test of the effectiveness of a one-term freshman orientation program at the foreign campus of an accredited private American university”, Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition, 11 (2), 33-58
[3] J. Raffaghelli, M. Bozzi, M. Zani et al. (2018), “Integrating MOOCs in physics preliminary undergraduate education: beyond large size lectures”, Educational Media International, 55 (4), 301-316
[4] Tretinjak M. F. et alter (2015), Interactive teaching with Socrative, MIPRO, 848-851
[5] Méndez-Coca D., Slisko J. (2013), "Software Socrative and smartphone as tools for implementetion of basic processes of active physics learning in classroom: An initial feasibility study with prospective teachers", EJPE, 4 (2), 17-24

Keywords:

Bring Your Own Device, MOOC, Learning effectiveness, Self-assessment.