E-LEARNING EXPERIENCE IN THE LABORATORY OF PHYSICS

New communication and information technologies allow the physics teacher to solve problems in easier and cheaper ways than traditional methods. In particular, applications of video analysis to investigate the motion of objects have increased enormously in the past several years, and research has established that experience with video analysis enhances the understanding of kinematics concepts. Video analysis allows for a study of motions that cannot be easily measured by traditional lab setting. The advent of frame-grabbers and digitizing led to the development of point-and-click analysis tools such as VideoPointTM and Tracker. The latter is free Java software available from http://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/.
Today, the author of this work is involved in the development of a virtual physics laboratory based on video analysis. With this virtual learning environment we want to change the traditional way in which students learn basic physics at our university laboratories. We are creating a gallery of experiments to allow our students to directly measure physical variables from a sequence of images obtained from videos of simple experiments. The experiments in the gallery are shown in the web page of our course that includes a link to Tracker web. We use the Campus Virtual of the University of Málaga as e-learning platform. The experiments have been recorded with a CASIO Exilim high-speed camera (up to 1000 frames per second), a decent camera that is no longer unreachable at the consumer level and at university or high school level. The structure of these virtual laboratory experiments is totally different from the conventional one. We show the student a problem, and we offer as working material a video of the experiment and the video analysis software Tracker. It is a methodology for the autonomous learning, where student responsibility and implication in learning process has to be greater. To evaluate the students work, they have to prepare a research report structured like a research article, being presented in public orally to their class colleagues simulating the dynamics of a specialist congress. In this communication we present one of these experiments used as a virtual laboratory exercise for the course Physics I at the degree in Mechanical Engineering of the University of Málaga. The methodology proposed tries to stimulate proactive learning on the part of the students, by giving less emphasis to traditional laboratory methods of teaching and putting more emphasis on student participation and use of TIC technologies.