Abstract:

The spectacular development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has affected all aspects of university life. New resources for teaching have modified the methodology for giving classes and evaluation methods. Continuous evaluation, even in large groups has prevailed over the traditional methodology, among other factors for being more attractive to the students. The work presented here is based on this process of modernization of pedagogical techniques. A laboratory in experimental subjects seems to have been forgotten by this great innovative spirit, especially when they have many students. One of the reasons could be the intrinsic difficulty of integrating an online working platform like Moodle. Here, we propose a new methodology of teaching a laboratory class. This new way of teaching has been applied this year at a first attempt. Therefore, the main objective of the project is which is based this work, is about the starting up of the new official titles of grade and in particular to be a significant improvement in the teaching of physics laboratory classes in first year course compare with a traditional methodology
Below, we explain the key features of the proposal. A week before the laboratory practice takes place, students may enter Moodle platform and download a manual which will indicate the theory and experimental procedure of the practice and the score sheets they must fulfill during the lab session. This manual can be viewed also carrying out the practice where all students have a Wi-Fi connected netbook for each one.
Practices can be made by pairs, trying to foster a spirit of teamwork, but each student must use his Moodle account and complete a questionnaire indicating first his location number in the lab. The lab is designed in a way that all students doing the same practice will measure different values depending on the position they are. Based on this post number, Moodle will redirect the student to a page where he will find the score sheets adapted to his practice. This will prevent some students of sharing data between them. This questionnaire will be corrected automatically by the platform and will represent the 60% of the lab note. The rest of the note will be obtained answering, within four days after the completion of practice, another survey with questions of right or wrong about the measures they have taken, the lab procedure, the theory and the laboratory instruments.
The main evaluation factor of this work is the student satisfaction with the used methodology, so we have made a satisfaction survey to students with questions about how educational, useful, interesting, satisfactory, former, or dynamic they have found the methodology, and to compare it with a traditional lab. Their answers will help us in our educational tasks. We will also analyze the statistics about learning results, but their relevance will be less, because usually only a few students fail the labs.
As mentioned above this is a first attempt so is always difficult to remedy all the difficulties and prepare all materials for the project to put into effect the intended success. We will present all the progress and results of the development in this work.