Abstract:

The National Indications, that are the guidelines of the high schools’ curricula in Italy, issued by the Minister of Education, emphasize the importance for students of an educational project that overcomes the barriers of classification in disciplines as it is traditionally established in the world of school.

The collaboration between the various fields of cultural training, such as schools, universities and research centers, is of fundamental importance in the construction of finished knowledge for students and in the production of proposals dedicated to training and professional refresh courses for in-service teachers to allow them an effective teaching activity in terms of methods, tools and collaboration in the preparation of scientific educational paths adhering to the most recent discoveries to offer students reading keys in step with the evolution of scientific research. The OCRA (Outreach Cosmic Ray Activities) Project was born in 2018 within the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) with the aim of collecting in a single container the many public engagement activities in the field of astroparticle physics already present at the local level in the various INFN centers in Italy and to disseminate them nationwide. In this macro container of didactic paths of experimental laboratories and research activities prepared by the INFN researchers, it has been decided to give ample space to the preparation of methodological and pedagogical tools so that teachers can make the best use of the materials available for an interdisciplinary didactic impact in a global learning vision.

The traditional didactic activity is integrated and implemented with the most advanced technology that allows, through cognitive stimuli deriving from the observation of the experiments both live with portable instrumentation and through the online reproduction of experimental observations, to capture the attention of students as they are involved in a didactic path through the solicitations of various learning areas linked to different sensory stimuli, light signals, sounds, graphics. With the most recent and sophisticated instruments, students are able to see and hear the invisible and mysterious world of astroparticle physics. Through the use of tools, the use of dedicated software and the analysis of data experienced in the first person, students experience immersive learning increased by the use of technologies, thanks to the specific skills of the various scientific disciplines such as Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry, Sciences proposed in the various curricular paths. In fact, essential topics are studied in depth to understand the experiments, themes that are usually developed in class only in a superficial way, such as statistics for data analysis, the Cartesian geometry of space to study the trajectory of the cosmic rays, the programming languages necessary to simulate the events recorded during the experiments, the notions of subatomic physics to understand the observed phenomena.

It therefore becomes essential for teachers to possess the skills both in terms of contents and teaching methodologies for an effective and conscious use of the tools made available in the OCRA platform so that they can play the role of mediators of knowledge in a constructivist methodological approach with which all the interdisciplinary paths in the exploration of astroparticle physics have been designed.

Acknowledgement:
Ilaria Veronesi for OCRA Collaboration

Keywords:

Teaching metodologies, immersive learning, technology enhanced learning, astroparticle physics, interdisciplinarity.