Abstract:

Technology-enhanced learning opens up new exciting opportunities in education. At Ryerson University, we are constantly searching for various educational tools that can provide our students with the opportunities to engage in an active learning. Activity-based hands-on approach and real-life connections are particularly important for engineering and science students. Video Analysis (VA) is the technique of extracting and analyzing data from recorded digital videos. It has become an established tool in teaching introductory physics1,2,3. In VA, the staged experiments or real-life events involving any types of motion (or any other visible changes) are digitally recorded and analyzed using commonly available commercial or open source software packages. A camcorder or a webcam connected directly to the computer captures the event in real time. In addition to photographs, most modern digital cameras and even cell phones allow the recording of short video clips that can be later downloaded to a computer. In addition, today many relevant videos that can be used for VA assignments can be found on YouTube. The software allows obtaining motion data (both time and position) from each time frame (30 frames per second for a typical camera). VA offers feasible, cost effective alternative to live experiments when the measuring equipment is unavailable, visible changes are too fast to observe with the naked eye, or the events of interest take place outside of the classroom. Based on our experience with VA, it has enormous potential to captivate and engage the students. VA can be used to turn traditional lectures into more interactive environment, and even to extend student learning beyond the classroom by creating meaningful homework assignments based on live classroom demonstrations. This is particularly important for the introductory science courses that do not have a formal practical/ lab component. Case studies of using VA in two large introductory physics classes for the students in Engineering and Sciences Programs will be presented. The examples of classroom and homework activities based on the movies recorded by the instructor and the students will be demonstrated. In addition, VA can be a very attractive option for the distance education courses delivered entirely on-line. Different ways of using VA for in-class demonstrations, in-class laboratories, homework assignments, as well as for distant education, will be discussed.

One of the authors (T.A.) would like to thank the staff of the Activity Based Physics Faculty Institute http://www.uoregon.edu/~sokoloff/abpi.htm for introducing her to Video Based Motion Analysis.

1. Antimirova, T. and Milner-Bolotin, M. (2009). "A Brief Introduction to Video Analysis." Physics in Canada 65 (April-May): 74.
2.Teese, R, LivePhoto Physics Project http://livephoto.rit.edu/. http://livephoto.rit.edu/wiki/
3. Cooney, P. J, Making Movies for Video-Based Motion Analysis
http://muweb.millersville.edu/~pjcooney/making-movies/

Keywords:

video analysis.