Robert G. Fuller, Vicki L. Plano Clark,
Christopher J. Moore, and Mark W. Plano Clark
Research in Physics Education Group
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Project Summary
It is our purpose to develop and deliver a multimedia general physics curriculum
for the next generation of college students. Here is what we mean by:
* Multimedia - each lesson will include interactive video/audio,
computer-based learning, and hands-on physics activities. In addition, the
physics concepts will be accessed from a large electronic database instead
of a textbook. This curriculum will use electronic data from the Physics
InfoMall CD-ROM as its fundamental source of physics information.
Learning to access and understand information from this vast physics database
will be an important feature of this curriculum.
* General Physics - this curriculum will offer
lessons for the concepts typically learned in college and university general
physics courses: mechanics, heat, sound, light, electricity, magnetism,
and modern physics. This curriculum proposes to bring multimedia technologies
and every-day examples to the service of helping most students develop an
interest in and learn general physics.
* The Next Generation of College Students - According to the
new national science education standards, ALL students will learn
science. The curriculum will be designed to appeal to 60 to 80% of students
rather than just the small percentage that presently take physics. This
emphasis on inclusiveness implies offering a wide variety of learning activities
in each lesson to match the interests and abilities of a broad range of
students. Potentially any student interested in any kind of post-secondary
education will find topics of interest in this curriculum.
Research in Physics Education Group
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
1. Results from Prior NSF Support that have implications
for the teaching of undergraduate physics courses (note: single spaced to
save space for the project narrative).
Bridges, Bicycles, and Traffic - Thematic Physical Science Lessons MDR-8954771
November, 1989 to August, 31, 1993 $114,825
Co-PIs: Robert G. Fuller, UNL and Dean A. Zollman, KSU
Thematic Physical Science Lessons related to Bridges, Bicycles, and Traffic
were created from a unification of Physics Curriculum Development Project
of the Netherlands (PLON) units, interactive physics lessons of the USA,
and the Netherlands Scientific and Technological Open Learning Environment
(STOLE) micro-computer based laboratory (MBL) equipment and activities.
Lessons were created by a bi-national committee of physics educators from
both the USA and the Netherlands. Lessons were designed for use by teachers
and students up through introductory college physics courses in the USA
and by 13-17 year olds in the Netherlands. These materials served as the
basis for the multimedia general physics laboratories being developed and
used at UNL. The evaluation of these materials in Dutch schools was reported
by Ellermeijer, et. al.(1992)
Every Physics Teacher's CD-ROM Toolkit MDR-9054923
April 1, 1991 to December 31, 1996 $1,921,458
Co-PIs: Robert G. Fuller, UNL and Dean A. Zollman, KSU
Creation of a Compact Disc-Read Only Memory with a large database and retrieval
software to provide a means to meet a national need for physics teaching
information and ways to manage and navigate through this information. This
CD-ROM will provide teachers with a vastly increased amount of information
which will be available to them at their home sites. The Physics InfoMall
CD-ROM is now available and a guidebook for its use is in preparation. It
includes material useful up through a calculus-based modern physics course.
This project has been reported numerous times in invited and contributed
papers at AAPT meetings (Fuller, 1991; Tuska and Fuller, 1991; Patterson
and Fuller, 1992; Chaudhury and Zollman, 1992; Beightol and Greiner, 1992;
Spears and Enger, 1992; Fuller and Zollman, 1993; Fuller and Zollman, 1994,
Jantan, Zollman and Spears, 1994; Zollman and Grabhorn, 1994; and V. Plano
Clark and Fuller, 1994).
Transforming Physics Laboratories Using New Technologies USE-9150295
September 1, 1991 to February 28, 1994 $29,946
Co-PIs: Gregor Novak, IUPUI, Linda McDonald, Park College, Doyle Davis,
NHTC and Robert G. Fuller, UNL
The new interactive, computer-based technologies make it possible to combine
the quantitative and qualitative aspects of physics into integrated laboratory
experiences of real world events. Four innovative, prototype interactive
video physics laboratory exercises were developed by the members of the
project team and evaluated at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This work
has been reported by Novak(1992) and Novak, et. al., continue to offer faculty
workshops at AAPT meetings.
Using New Technologies to Teach Physics USE-9154281
November 1, 1991 to April 30, 1993 $98,995
Co-PIs: Robert G. Fuller, UNL and Glenn A. Sowell, UNO
A two-week workshop for 38 physics faculty was held from June 14 to June
26, 1992 at the U.S. Air Force Academy. The workshop participants created
more than twenty-six new physics lessons for use in their college classrooms.
They led several local and regional workshops. They offered presentations
at the national American Association of Physics Teachers meeting in Orono,
Maine in August of 1992. There were 38 participants from 25 states or provinces.
They included four women and three minority persons.
Teaching Physics Using Interactive Digitized Media DUE-9353965
January 1, 1994 to June 30, 1996 $165,137
Co-PIs: Robert G. Fuller, UNL and Evelyn T. Patterson, USAFA
This project will offer an undergraduate faculty enhancement workshop for
each of two summers, 1994 through 1995. Each workshop will:
i) foster a discussion and formulation of new strategies for the teaching
of physics using the capabilities of interactive digitized media;
ii) enable 30 physics professors to become skilled in the use of interactive
digitized media for teaching physics courses for undergraduates;
iii) help physicists develop lessons that change the present physics content
using existing interactive digitized media software and technologies.
iv) prepare the participants to lead local, regional, or national workshops
on new science content using interactive digitized media technologies; and
v) make the interactive digitized media lessons developed by the workshop
participants available to physics educators throughout the country.
Multimedia Mathematics: DUE-9456043
Across the Curriculum and Across the Nation
August, 1994 - February, 1995 $49,688
Co-PIs: Steven R. Dunbar, UNL; Benny Evans, OSU; Bruce Crauder, OSU; and
Robert G. Fuller, UNL
This was a proposal planning grant. The ultimate goals of the project are:
cooperative course development activities by at least 144 faculty in mathematics
and non-mathematics departments in at least eight colleges and universities
in Nebraska and Oklahoma. These activities will bring together the best
features of the mathematics reform and the multimedia activities in all
of the consortium colleges. A final proposal is in preparation for submission
to the NSF.
Research and Development in Hypermedia for Knowing Physics GER-9452801
September 15, 1994 - August 31, 1995 $112,500 per year for five years
PI: Robert G. Fuller, UNL
A five year grant under the Innovation in Teaching and Learning focus of
the graduate research traineeship program of the National Science Foundation.
The traineeship will support five full time graduate students for five years
to obtain M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics at UNL with a special emphasis
on research and development in using hypermedia for knowing physics. There
are now two graduate students at UNL in this program. They will be conducting
research projects on using multimedia to teach physics concepts.
2. Problem: Meeting the Needs of the Next Generation
In recent years, there has been a massive influx of multimedia technology
into students' homes and classrooms. Recent figures show that seventy-five
percent of K-12 public schools have computers (Broadcasting & Cable,
1995). Clearly the learning and experiences of today's Nintendo generation
(Soloway, 1991) are affecting students' expectations of and preparations
for the university course environment. Unfortunately, since no major physics
curriculum exists that makes wise and effective use of all current multimedia
technology, most classroom applications tend to be quick add-ons that are
often poorly implemented and make little change to the students' overall
learning. The next generation of students will expect more from a class
than a textbook reference. They will need a fully integrated curriculum
that builds on their expectations and interests while developing their scientific
problem-solving skills when using multimedia as a tool, not just as entertainment.
To meet the needs of ALL students of the Nintendo generation, the next generation
of physics courses must lend themselves to flexible use with a multicultural
student body. Today many general physics courses are taught by a linear
lecture/ demonstration method which carefully follows the topics in a standard
textbook accompanied by "cook-book" laboratory activities. Consequently,
most students are turned aside. Great numbers of second tier students are
turned-off to physics (Tobias, 1990) and in particular, female students
are largely absent from physics courses, discouraged by a variety of educational
practices (Sadker and Sadker, 1994). The increasingly diverse student population
in the post secondary educational institutions of the U.S.A. needs a contemporary
physics curriculum that will be accessible to a wide variety of students.
We are fundamentally committed to a vision of physics as a mental activity
that all people do. Unfortunately, a number of
social and cultural factors cause children and adults to bury the physicist
within them. This curriculum is intended to motivate and nurture the hidden
physicist within each student. It will take student preconceptions seriously
and gently lead students past the shadows of their fears of numbers and
algebra. It will feature many examples of real-world and technological applications
of physics. It will, in fact, seek to be a physics curriculum for all students,
for all seasons.
The next generation of general physics courses must embody the best that
we know of multimedia and physics education. Multimedia materials that are
based on a large physics database and effectively combine interactive video
with hands-on experiments and computer-based learning activities can comprise
a physics course that will be attractive to most students. Such a course
will not be textbook based, but will grow out of the variety of activities
that the students can do to learn a single concept. This variety enables
the students to experience the effective, yet not boring, redundancy necessary
for them to learn a concept before proceeding to the next lesson.
3. Goals and Objectives: It is our purpose to
develop and deliver a multimedia general physics curriculum for the next
generation of college students. Here is what we mean by:
* Multimedia - each lesson will include interactive video/audio,
computer-based learning, and hands-on physics activities (Fuller, 1993).
In addition, the physics concepts will be accessed from a large electronic
database instead of a textbook.
* General Physics - this curriculum will offer
lessons for the concepts typically learned in college and university general
physics courses: mechanics, heat, sound, light, electricity, magnetism,
and modern physics. The results of physics education research will form
the basis of concept development. This curriculum does not propose to offer
different or radical physics content. It rather proposes to bring multimedia
technologies and every-day examples to the service of helping most students
develop an interest in and learn general physics. The pedagogical approach
of this project will combine the learning cycle of Karplus (1977) with the
intrinsically motivating instruction concepts of Malone (1981).
* The Next Generation of College Students - According to the
1994 version of the National Science Education Standards for preparing the
next generation of students, all students will learn science (National Academic
of Sciences, 1994). For these students learning science will be an active
process in which the teachers will serve to guide and facilitate learning.
According to these standards, the next generation of students will develop
their abilities to conduct scientific inquiry. A new approach to general
physics for all post-secondary students is required by the national science
education standards. Information technology promises to be the key of life
in the 21st century. This curriculum will use electronic data from the Physics
InfoMall CD-ROM as its fundamental source of physics information.
Learning to access and understand information from this vast physics database
will be an important feature of this curriculum. This curriculum will also
rely on a wide variety of video images of physical phenomena. In the beginning
these images will be analog signals from videodiscs, but by the end of the
project it is anticipated that a variety of digital video sequences will
be available on CD-ROMs, such as Multimedia Motion from the
Cambridge Science Group (1994) and the one being prepared by Ztek Co. which
will feature digital video images from the Physics: Cinema Classics
videodiscs (Ztek Co., 1994). In addition, activities will be built
into the curriculum allowing students to use computers for simulations and
for data acquisition and analysis. These activities will enable students
to learn to properly manipulate, analyze, and interpret digital images and
computer-acquired data to understand physics concepts.
4. Potential Impact and Significance: Almost
from the beginning of the modern era of physics teaching in colleges and
universities in the U.S.A., a physics textbook has been the main source
of information about physics concepts for the students. The arrangement
of topics in the selected textbook usually is the same sequence followed
by the professor. In fact, physics teaching for the past fifty years has
been dominated by the standard physics textbooks.
This project intends to offer an alternative to the traditional textbook
to physics faculty and students. This project will bring together a large
electronic database, the Physics InfoMall CD-ROM, which contains
the information equivalent to about 35,000 pages of text and 10,000 graphics,
with video images and interactive lessons. These materials will be usable
in a wide variety of contexts to meet the needs of a diverse student population.
The curriculum will be designed to appeal to the majority of students rather
than just the small percentage that presently take physics. This emphasis
on inclusiveness implies offering a wide variety of learning activities
in each lesson to match the interests and abilities of a broad range of
students. Potentially any student interested in any kind of post-secondary
education will find topics of interest in this curriculum.
To facilitate access to the vast amount of physics information in this curriculum,
it will be delivered in electronic forms, i.e. CD-ROMs, diskettes, and videodiscs,
to faculty and students. Hence, it can be used very flexibly, from add-on
exercises in a traditional lecture/recitation course to a complete self-paced
course. Furthermore, the materials that are basic to the curriculum of this
project can be delivered to students in a variety of ways, according to
the local campus needs and capabilities. A traditional approach will be
for the faculty member to print out, or order from one of the distributors,
a vast amount of paper materials, perhaps in the format of a special textbook,
to sell to students through a bookstore. Another way will be for the faculty
to distribute the materials via diskettes, or CD-ROMs, from a bookstore.
A third way will be for the faculty to make the course completely available
over a campus-wide electronic network. These materials will lend themselves
for use in a variety of distance education modes.
The timeline of history seems clearly pointed to the eventual development
of a variety of multimedia courses for use in higher education. Now seems
an appropriate time to begin the work on such a course for general physics.
The Research in Physics Education Group at the University of Nebraska -
Lincoln seems well positioned to lead such an effort.
5. Procedure and Methods: a. Historical Perspective. The multimedia resources
to build an activity-centered curriculum in physics now exist (Fuller, 1993).
In order to successfully impact student learning, these resources now need
to be built into a strong pedagogical framework and integrated around the
important concepts of physics based upon the research in physics education
of Arons, McDermott and Minstrell (Arons, 1981, McDermott, 1991, and Minstrell,
1992). Hands-on, activity-based physics courses for non-science students
at both the high school and college level have been taught for many years.
Although this has long been considered an effective method for teaching
science, its use has declined in time due to the increasing cost of materials
and the length of preparation time (Hoffer, Radke, and Russell, 1992). Such
courses must become coordinated with multimedia resources to bring a wider
range of prepared opportunities to the service of professors. With the simple
addition of a videodisc player and a set of videodiscs even a large lecture-based
course can begin to require student-centered projects based on the vast
variety of concepts covered with this resource. Results have shown that
students perform better with self-paced, individualized instruction than
in a traditional course (Putt, 1977; Austin and Gilbert, 1973). With a carefully
developed multimedia curriculum that stresses student-centered activities,
students can benefit from an increased responsibility for their own learning.
The available multimedia resources have the flexibility to include a broad
range of activities which can appeal and motivate the increasingly diverse
student body. In addition, multimedia activities which allow students to
learn a concept by studying it in many different situations and from different
perspectives have been shown to be more effective for a wide variety of
students (Borsook and Higginbotham-Wheat, 1992). Many nontraditional students
who typically decide to either not pursue or are unsuccessful in science
courses have been shown to succeed and have increased positive attitudes
toward science with the implementation of multimedia activities (Louie,
Sweatt, Gresham, and Smith, 1991; Savenye and Strand, 1989). This proposal
grows out of the Bridges, Bicycles, Traffic and Sports (BBTS): Thematic
Physical Science Lessons (NSF MDR-8954771) and National Interactive Media
(U.S. D. of Ed. R168D90059) projects. The first physics materials that unified
interactive video and microcomputer-based labs were developed with the support
of those grants. Those materials unified microcomputer-based laboratory
activities around themes illustrated on videodiscs and described in the
thematic PLON science lessons originally developed in The Netherlands. Enough
materials to cover about one-third of a semester were developed during the
BBTS project. Those lessons were tested with students in The Netherlands
and were also demonstrated to several educators and curriculum development
professionals from which positive responses were received. The students
showed increased learning and more positive attitudes toward physics (Ellermeijer,
Landheer, and Molenaar, 1992). These results showed us that the BBTS materials
were the kind needed to unify the different uses of interactive technologies
for physics classrooms. The BBTS modules became the prototype for us to
develop the multimedia lessons for a physics laboratory curriculum currently
used at UNL (Plano, Fuller, Lang, and Moore, 1994). The American Association
of Physics Teachers through its Instructional Materials Center at UNL developed
the Physics: Cinema Classics set of three double-sided videodiscs
to preserve valued classic physics films and film loops such as those from
Encyclopedia Britannica , Project Physics, Ealing/Phoenix film loops, and
the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) of MIT. Each videodisc offers
a collection of physics scenes to create interactive-video sequences to
motivate and enhance learning. The 245 individual chapters on the videodiscs
originated from 37 PSSC films, 16 EBEC films, 74 Phoenix film loops, a North
American Philips film, a McGraw-Hill film, 2 Newton's Apple (PBS) television
show videos, and the Visual Almanac (Apple Computer Co.) video. New audio
tracks with narration and sound effects were added as necessary. The value
of this work can be measured by the very positive response to the Physics:
Cinema Classics videodiscs. The videodiscs were offered in a pre-commercial
version for four months in the spring of 1992 and more than 1400 sets were
sold. In addition to the Physics: Cinema Classics videodiscs,
we will use others such as The Puzzle of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Collapse, Studies in Motion, Skylab Physics,
Physics of Sports, Physics and Automobile Collisions, and Energy
Transformations Featuring the Bicycle , and digital images found
on CD-ROMs such as Multimedia Motion. The visual images of
real situations on such discs can be used interactively to help students
learn the major concepts in a general physics course. A large physics database
on a CD-ROM, under the product name of Physics InfoMall, which
consists of a large text and graphics database for teaching physics will
be available in the Summer, 1995. The Physics InfoMall contains
several levels of general physics textbooks including: Eric Rogers' book
Physics for the Inquiring Mind; a conceptual physics textbook,
The Fascination of Physics by Spears and Zollman; algebra-based
textbooks, including An Introduction to the Meaning and Structure
of Physics by Leon Cooper; and a calculus-based text Physics
for Science and Engineering by Williams and Spangler. (see the complete
list below). The Physics InfoMall also includes collections
of problems and exercises, physics demonstrations, laboratory activities
(both high-technology and string-and-sticky-tape varieties), and biographies
of famous scientists. The Physics InfoMall contains materials
not found in traditional physics books such as M. B. Oglivie's book, Women
in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, and V. Weisskopf's
Knowledge and Wonder. The nineteen textbooks included on the
Physics InfoMall are listed on the next page: Textbooks included
on the Physics InfoMall :
TITLE AUTHOR PUBLISHER YEAR
Conceptual Physics
The Fascination of Physics Spears & Zollman Addison-Wesley 1985
Pre-algebra Physics
Foundations of Modern Physical Science Holton, G. & Addison-Wesley 1958
Roller, D.
Household Physics Avery, Madalyn Macmillan 1955
Physical Science, Its Structure and Kemble, E. C. MIT Press 1966
Development
Algebra-based Physics
An Introduction to the Meaning and Cooper, Leon Harper & Row 1968
Structure of Physics
Atomic Age Physics Semat & White Holt, Rinehart 1959
and Winston
Elementary Radiation Physics Hurst & Turner John Wiley & Sons 1970
Energy: Insights from Physics DiLavore, Phil John Wiley & Sons 1984
Modern College Physics White, Harvey Litton 1972
Physics for the Inquiring Mind Rogers, Eric Princeton Univ. 1960
Physics Foundations and Frontiers Gamow & Prentice-Hall 1960
Cleveland
Physics Including Human Applications Fuller, Fuller Harper & Row 1978
and Fuller
Physics: The Excitement of Discovery Greenwood, Wadsworth 1983
Margaret Publishing Co.
Physics in the Real World Lockett, K. Cambridge Univ. 1990
Press
Introductory Physics: A Model Approach Karplus, Robert Benjamin, Inc. 1969
The New Physics, A Spiral Approach Baez, Albert Freeman 1967
Calculus-based Physics
Elementary Modern Physics Tipler, Paul Worth Pub. Co. 1992
Spacetime Physics: Introduction to Taylor & Wheeler W.H. Freeman and 1992
Special Relativity Co.
Physics for Science and Engineering Williams & Van Nostrand 1981
Spangler
The Physics InfoMall will be used to provide the content support for all of the topics in this multimedia general physics course while providing a breadth of standard and special topics to appeal to most students. For example, the Physics InfoMall includes more than 3,000 articles and abstracts from physics periodicals on such topics as the physics of dance, of punting a football and of shooting a basketball. The Physics InfoMall has been recognized as an extremely powerful resource whose use can go far beyond its initially intended high school audience. Under Dr. Fuller's leadership, the Physics InfoMall will serve as the sole physics reference source for a special calculus-based physics course at the United States Air Force Academy during the 1995-1996 academic year. This field-test experience will prove invaluable in the successful development of lessons for this curriculum project. For this project we will produce student-centered lessons based upon the Physics InfoMall and integrated with interactive video, computer-based learning, and hands-on activities. The computer-based learning activities will make use of both the simulation and the real-time data acquisition (MBL) capabilities of computer technology. Computers can offer a broad range of student-centered projects to capture the differing interests of all students. Projects involving common software packages such as Interactive Physics, f(g) Scholar, Graphs and Tracks, Electric Field Hockey , and Guilty or Innocent? will be incorporated in this curriculum. A computer-based learning station consists of a microcomputer with an interface box and a collection of transducers that allow the students to quantitatively measure different properties of a system and display the results on the computer monitor. The common transducers measure distance, force, temperature, light intensity, or electric and magnetic field values. New transducers, or probeware, are being developed to match the increasing power of the new generations of microcomputers. The microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) work in physics was started many years ago by Bob Tinker of TERC (Tinker, 1981). Hence, MBL probes and software are also compatible with many of the old generations of computers. We have already developed a microcomputer-based laboratory for beginning students at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (UNL) as a part of a Howard Hughes Medical Institutes grant (Plano, Moore, Fuller, and Lang, 1994). These UNL MBL multimedia lab activities are based on the pioneering MBL work of Priscilla Laws, Dickinson College, Ron Thornton, Tufts University, and David Sokoloff, Oregon State University (Laws, 1991, Thornton and Sokoloff, 1990). From our experience with these MBL activities, we will develop additional MBL activities and integrate them into a multimedia general physics curriculum. Our work on the BBTS modules and our growing experiences with the Physics: Cinema Classics videodiscs and the Physics InfoMall CD-ROM convinced us that we have developed enough resource materials in electronic form to span a wide variety of general physics courses using these materials rather than traditional textbooks. Furthermore, we have developed strong working relationships with other major physics curriculum projects and resources including Workshop Physics of P. Laws, Tools for Scientific Thinking of R. Thornton, Real Time Physics of D. Sokoloff, CUPLE of J. Wilson, and Physics Academic Software of J. Risley. We will borrow ideas and approaches from their work. We are convinced that we can fashion a complete, multimedia general physics course with relatively little additional cost. This project is based upon the activities done through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with previous funded support of the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and other sources for the following projects, shown with their approximate levels of support: Bridges, Bicycles, Traffic and Sports, materials development (NSF) $115,000 Physics: Cinema Classics, a set of six videodiscs (D of Ed) $590,000 Studies in Motion, and Energy Transformations Featuring the Bicycle 2 videodiscs (Annenberg/CPB) $30,000 The Puzzle of the Tacoma Narrow Bridge Collapse, videodisc (NSF) $60,000 Physics InfoMall, a CD-ROM Toolkit product (NSF) $1,920,000 Grand Total $2,715,000 With a further investment of only about one-third of the previous total expenditures, multimedia physics lessons can be made for use in a variety of general physics courses in colleges and universities by the fall of 1999. b. Curriculum Setting: Multimedia general physics materials can be adapted to many different student audiences. This project will offer four different "complete" general physics courses as examples of useful curricula. For the purposes of this proposal, these four different physics courses are called: 1) Just-in-Time Physics: a conceptual, case study, non-mathematical approach to general physics that will use various every day events, e.g. auto accidents and sporting events, to introduce physics concepts to students. This course is intended to serve as an example of the variety of case-study courses that can be developed from these materials, such as car-owner's physics, laser physics, stereo physics, camera physics, physics of music, etc. courses that can be of particular interest to technical and two-year college students. 2) Pre-service Teachers Physics: a hands-on course that uses simple materials to enable the students who are pre-service elementary education majors to develop their understanding of physics concepts in an active learning environment that they will replicate in an elementary school classroom. This course is intended to serve as an example of how workshop physics courses, ala Priscilla Laws (1991), can be developed from these materials. 3) Life Science physics: an algebra-based course intended for students who are planning to have a career in medicine, an allied health profession, or a life science. This course is intended to serve as an example of how algebra-based college physics courses can be developed from these materials to fit the needs of life-science students. 4) Engineering Physics: a calculus-based course intended for students who are planning to major in physics, chemistry, or an engineering discipline. This course stresses the use of mathematical and quantitative reasoning with interesting examples from physics and engineering. This course is intended to serve as an example of how calculus-based university physics courses can be developed from these materials to fit the needs of students with strong backgrounds in mathematics. A sample lesson that might be developed for these courses is shown in Appendix A. Due to the innovative nature of the curriculum materials to be developed in this project, a consortium of non-traditional publishers of physics materials will be a part of the national steering committee of the project. It seems likely that the results of this project will not be available in large quantities of new printed materials. Rather the curriculum will be distributed primarily on CD-ROMs, videodiscs, and magnetic diskettes with accompanying computer-based learning equipment, as required. Hence, The Learning Team of Armonk, NY, Vernier Software of Portland, OR, and the Ztek Co. of Louisville, KY, will be part of this curriculum effort. Clearly new methods of distribution and evaluation must be a part of the development of this project. This will be the first almost completely non-print based general physics curriculum in the U.S.A. We believe many subsequent electronic curricula will be developed in other sciences and mathematics. It will be very important to keep a careful record of all aspects of this project and share those records with the future projects that seek to develop almost paperless curricula. Finally, this project will be completed by offering a number of undergraduate faculty enhancement summer workshops. At the present time, Dr. Fuller is funded through the summer of 1995 to offer faculty enhancement workshops on the use of interactive digitized media to teach physics. After this project is funded, it is the intention of this project staff to seek NSF undergraduate faculty enhancement funds to lead summer workshops to help physics faculty members learn how to use the multimedia materials from this project to fashion a variety of physics courses for their unique campus needs. c. Specific Lessons: The curriculum will consist of up to 45 weekly lessons covering all of the topics in a general physics course. Lessons for four different versions of general physics courses will be developed, i.e. Just-in-Time Physics, Pre-service Teachers Physics, Life Science Physics, and Engineering Physics. Each complete lesson will be designed to occupy about one week of instruction and will be adaptable to the variety of traditional course structures that are typical of post-secondary institutions nationwide. Lessons can be easily adapted to local conditions by omitting a specific component if necessary, e.g. interactive video, hands-on laboratory, or computer-based learning activities. Each lesson will consist of six components: 1. Exploration, open-ended activities to introduce concepts Each lesson begins with an activity designed to introduce all of the students to the underlying physics concept of the lesson . In general, these will be open-ended, exploration activities leading to a qualitative discussion of natural phenomena. These activities could include interactive lecture demonstrations or experimental activities referenced from the Physics InfoMall. Following the model of Malone(1981), these explorations will be embedded in a scenario designed to attract the interest of the students. 2. Interactive-video activities Each lesson includes an activity in which the students will work in small groups at an interactive-video learning center. This activity will be designed to occur after the students have completed the exploration activity. The students will control the video sequence and will analyze the video images. These activities offer real-life situations for analysis that cannot be done in a classroom, such as dropping a flare from an airplane, and that cannot be done completely because of the speed with which an event occurs, such as a car crash or shooting an arrow. The stop-frame capability of interactive video enables students to perform analyses of complex systems (Zollman and Fuller, 1994). At the present time, most interactive-video activities use analog video signals from videodiscs or videotapes. Multimedia Motion (1994) is a collection of digital images of moving objects for quantitative analysis by students. Ztek Co. of Kentucky has received a Small Business Innovative Research grant from the NSF to produce an interactive physics CD-ROM featuring digital video images from the Physics: Cinema Classics videodiscs. Such products, as they become available, can be readily incorporated into this project. Furthermore, a great variety of digital images are becoming more and more accessible using world wide web (WWW) sites on the Internet. 3. Computer-based learning activities Each lesson includes an activity in which the students will work in small groups at a computer-based learning center. This activity will be designed to occur after the students have completed the exploration activity. Many of these activities will be MBL laboratory activities based upon the experiments developed by Laws, Sokoloff, and Thornton. In addition, there will be many student projects using software such as Interactive Physics, or Graphs and Tracks, or Electric Field Hockey, or Guilty or Innocent ? to build students' understanding of specific phenomena. The students will learn to use computers to collect and analyze scientific data and complete careful studies of physical situations. 4. Hands-on laboratory experiments Each lesson includes an activity in which the students will work in small groups with physics laboratory equipment at a hands-on learning center. This activity will be designed to occur after the students have completed the exploration activity. Many of these activities will be based upon equipment that colleges already have in their physics storerooms or there will be "string and sticky tape" alternatives which will be referenced from the Physics InfoMall. During the hands-on activities the students will be directly involved with natural phenomena that they can manipulate and observe. The students will develop scientific laboratory data collection and graphing skills during these activities. 5. Student assignments Each lesson includes assignments in which the students will work individually or in small groups to understand the experiences they have had in the physics classroom. The first such assignment may be given after the students have completed the exploration activity. Many of these activities will be based upon the contents of the Physics InfoMall CD-ROM and will reflect student interests. These assignments will help the students develop basic problem-solving skills, their scientific thinking skills and their oral and written communication skills by using the physics concept being studied to better understand topics of their interest. 6. Student assessments Each lesson will include assessment activities. They will be designed to enable the instructor and the students to judge how well the students have grasped the fundamental physics concepts of the lesson and how well they are able to relate those concepts to events that occur outside of the physics classroom. An instructor can put together a collection of such activities for examinations and end-of-the-term tests. A sample lesson is shown in Appendix A illustrating how these multimedia resources can be used to develop a variety of courses, e.g. a just-in-time, case study physics course, or a hands-on laboratory-based course for pre-service elementary education majors, or a pre-medical students algebra-based physics course, or a calculus-based course for engineering students. Each lesson will be designed according to the late Robert Karplus' Learning Cycle instructional strategy (Karplus, 1977). In addition, the insights of Thomas Malone's theory of motivating instruction will be used to design lessons that will interest and motivate the students (Malone, 1981). These two instructional design features, coupled with today's young people's interest in MTV and computer games, offer us a chance to create multimedia general physics courses that will attract students of all kinds. Project Staff: The Research in Physics Education Group at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is nationally known within the physics teaching community. The group is associated in the minds of physicists with effective, practical physics materials for classroom use. The group has contacts in all parts of the U.S.A. and a large number and variety of cohorts who are willing to work with them on innovative, educational projects. The project staff is committed to equity and inclusiveness, both within the physics classroom and within the curriculum. In their various professional tasks they have all developed physics activities to interest a broad audience of students. Their individual descriptions and project tasks are as follows: Robert Fuller (Ph.D., experimental condensed matter physics, University of Illinois, 1965), the 1992 recipient of the Robert A. Millikan medal for outstanding contributions to the teaching of physics from the American Association of Physics Teachers, is Professor of Physics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has written physics research articles, textbooks, produced videodiscs, co-authored prize winning software and published articles on multimedia and physics teaching (Fuller, 1993). He has led faculty development workshops at national meetings and on a number of different college campuses. These have ranged in content from using spreadsheets to do physics to the NSF-AAAS Chautauqua Short Course on College Teaching and the Development of Reasoning. He has directed four undergraduate faculty enhancement workshops on the use of new technologies for teaching physics and received funding to continue these workshops in 1995. In 1993 he was awarded the Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award by the University of Nebraska. He recently co-authored a set of videodiscs, Physics: Cinema Classics (AAPT, 1992) of which more than 2000 sets have been sold. Dr. Fuller will be a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the physics department of the U.S. Air Force Academy during 1995-96 to work on a faculty team to develop and teach a completely electronic version of the Academy's calculus-based, core physics course. Dr. Fuller, who is the co-director of the Physics InfoMall CD-ROM project, will direct this project and supervise the creation of the general physics curricula and the inclusion of the Physics InfoMall as the main content resource. Dr. Fuller's teaching assignments at UNL will be dedicated to using these materials with university support. Vicki Plano Clark (M.S., experimental atomic physics, Michigan State University, 1993) is the Physics Laboratory Manager at UNL. She has served as a physics content consultant on the Physics InfoMall CD-ROM project and has developed a collection of software templates using Interactive Physics to complement the College Physics text by V. Coletta. She is responsible for updating the introductory physics lab sequences including the implementation of microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL) and interactive video exercises. She also supervises the training and performance of the graduate teaching assistants in the introductory physics lab courses. Furthermore, she has led a workshop on Developing Multimedia General Physics Laboratories for high school and college instructors. Ms. Plano Clark is the Vice President of the Nebraska Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers. She will participate in the development of the general physics activities as well as field test the materials in the introductory physics laboratories and the pre-service elementary education course at UNL. The use of the project materials in UNL laboratory courses will be supervised by Ms. Plano Clark and supported by UNL funds. Christopher Moore (M.S., experimental condensed matter physics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1992) is a Research Associate working on multimedia laboratories for teaching physics. He is involved with the research, development, and implementation of multimedia activities in the algebra-based physics labs at UNL which include the use of computers and interactive videodiscs. He has also taught a non science majors course on using computers to solve problems to develop students' critical thinking and will teach Liberal Arts Physics at UNL in the Fall, 1995. Fluent in Spanish, Mr. Moore is also interested in bilingual education. He will assist in the development of the general physics curriculum and in the overall integration of all lesson activities. Mark W. Plano Clark (Ph.D., experimental atomic physics, University of North Carolina, 1988) is a visiting assistant professor of physics at UNL. He has been using innovative technologies in his introductory physics courses and corresponding laboratory courses for pre-medical, architectural, and first-year, non-science students. He has also used Piagetian-based questionnaires to assess student reasoning (Plano Clark and Fuller, 1994). In both his courses and his research, Dr. Clark has made use of spreadsheets and algebraic manipulation packages (Mathematica and Maple) to enhance students' computer skills and to improve their understanding of a wide variety of fundamental physics concepts. In addition, he has developed a collection of software templates using f(g) Scholar to complement the College Physics text by V. Coletta. He will assist with lesson development as well as field test the materials in his algebra-based physics courses at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Half of Dr. Plano Clark's teaching activities will be dedicated to classroom use of the project materials supported by UNL. National Steering Committee: The project will be guided by a national steering committee of twelve members. The committee will consist of three university professors, two college professors, a technical college professor, a technical education professional, a software expert, a project evaluation professional, and three ex officio members who are chief executive officers of corporations which will be assisting in the project dissemination activities. The national steering committee will meet two times a year, usually in conjunction with meetings of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). The committee will provide direction for the project staff and assist as much as possible in field testing the materials as they become available. Members of the National Steering Committee include: University professors: Evelyn Tuska Patterson, Assistant Professor of Physics, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO, John Risley, Physics Professor, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, Dean Zollman, Professor of Physics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS. College Professors: Priscilla Laws, Physics Professor, Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA. David Winch, Physics Professor, Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI Technical College Professor: Doyle Davis, Physics Professor, New Hampshire Technical College, Berlin, NH Technical Education Professional: John Souders, Jr., Center for Occupational Research and Development, Waco, TX Software Expert: Scott M. Stevens, Project Leader, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA Evaluation Professional: Roger Bruning, Center for Language Cognition and Instruction, UNL. Ex Officio Members G. Maxwell Kurtz, President, Ztek Company, Louisville, KY Tom Laster, President, The Learning Team, Armonk, NY David L. Vernier, President, Vernier Software Company, Portland, OR The biographical information on the national steering committee members is included in the biographic sketch portion of the proposal. d. Integration into Institutional Physics Programs: The flexibility of electronic media is one of its strongest features. The materials that form the backbone of this project are inherently adaptable to a variety of institutional settings. The project will develop four prototype courses and offer faculty enhancement workshops to let faculty members discover how they might best incorporate the features of multimedia general physics courses into their institutional settings. The project staff will offer a variety of models for implementation based upon their experiences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Air Force Academy, Michigan State University, Kalamazoo College, University of Nevada Reno, and Nebraska Wesleyan University. The products of this project will be useful from one curriculum extreme to the other, from complete electronically-delivered courses to add-on projects for a traditional lecture/recitation course. The project staff and members of the national steering committee will demonstrate the adaptability of the project materials by using them in a variety of physics courses in several different educational settings. e. Impact on Students: A practical approach to physics concepts unified with a wide variety of physics learning activities are an essential part of this project. These are the aspects of physics courses that have been used to attract non-physics students to physics courses. Hence, these materials can be used to offer courses of special interest to groups of students, a majority of whom are female, such as elementary education majors. In addition, a department or faculty member will be able to adapt these materials to meet the special needs of underrepresented students or students with handicaps. The possibility of delivering physics instruction in a variety of modes using these materials enhances the ability of a professor to offer a physics course that responds to the real needs of students. Rather than being a slave to physics content, a professor will be able to choose from a variety of practical, interesting physics examples to maximize the teaching and learning of physics by all students. 6. Anticipated Results: This project will result in the first non-textbook based general physics course to receive national attention in the U.S.A. The process of developing this multimedia curriculum will be well documented by the project staff, reported at national meetings of physics teachers, and made available to other persons working on multimedia projects. It is expected that this pioneering effort will serve as a basis of information about this new kind of curriculum development in all of the sciences, not only for college levels, but also for pre-college course development as well. The project is intended to provide a complete multimedia general physics curriculum with a minimum of printed supporting documentation. This curriculum can be offered by physics departments in a variety of ways, from the traditional lecture/recitation mode to a distance learning electronic mail mode. Hence, this project is seen as the beginning of the next generation of physics courses. 7. Evaluation: During the project, UNL and the experienced physics faculty who are colleagues of the national steering committee members will be asked to field test the materials. As the various lessons are developed they will be provided as field test versions to a broad spectrum of physics faculty as well as directly tested at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln by the project staff. A careful scheme of data collection will be developed to insure that the project staff benefits from the use of the materials by the field test physicists. Specifically at UNL, the project staff has regular teaching duties in all four versions of general physics as described in this proposal. The staff will commit half of their academic year time, supported by UNL funds, to developing, field testing and revising these materials in a variety of classroom contexts. The actual details of the field testing activities, the data to be collected, and the feedback to be provided will be under the oversight of the project professional evaluator, Dr. Roger Bruning. He will serve on the national steering committee and provide direction for all of the field testing and evaluation activities of the project. Dr. Bruning is Co-Director of the Center for Language, Cognition, and Instruction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Bruning has extensive experience in evaluating projects combining science and information search. He has served as evaluator for major projects funded by the U. S. Department of Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, and the National Science Foundation. His center currently serves as the primary evaluator for the $12M Nebraska State Systemic Initiative in Mathematics and Science, funded by the National Science Foundation. At the end of the project, he will provide an independent and summative review of the lessons learned in the project. Dr. Bruning's evaluation plan consists of two major dimensions: (1) project activity, including field testing, monitoring and (2) formative and summative strategies for evaluating the effectiveness of interactive multimedia lessons in helping students learn physics concepts and develop reasoning skills. Project activity monitoring is designed to assess ongoing implementation of scheduled activities. It will provide feedback on project progress and will be conducted by the project staff under the direction of Dr. Fuller. Activity completion, slippages, and changes in activities will be assessed and reported to the Dr. Bruning on a quarterly basis. Dr. Bruning will be primarily responsible for advising project staff on data collection methods and for providing formative and summative feedback on the implementation of the overall objectives of the project. In the early stages of the project, formative evaluation will predominate as the Dr. Bruning provides ongoing feedback to the project team on the effectiveness of the design of the multimedia lessons, how they are being implemented in the various classroom contexts, and how successful the lessons are in helping students achieve the goals of the project, continuing to be interested in physics and becoming better problem-solvers and decision-makers. Dr. Bruning will meet regularly with the project team through stages of planning, design, creation, testing, and revision of the multimedia products and provide regular feedback on their development. Formative evaluation will draw heavily on qualitative data gathered by an evaluation team and project staff. Data gathering methods may include (1) critiques of proposed designs of multimedia products, (2) observation and videotaping of student use of the products, (3) structured interviews tapping the learning strategies used by students before, during, and after multimedia experiences, (4) focus groups of students and professors in field testing courses, and (5) analysis of protocols of student course work and reasoning. Results from evaluation of selected dimensions of these data will provide ongoing feedback for materials development, modification, and implementation. Summative evaluation will include both qualitative and quantitative measures and will yield information on change in target students and their professors and will provide a comparison of the search strategies and reasoning of target students with a matched sample of their peers. Qualitative approaches to summative evaluation will include one or more case studies of implementation of the project in a subsample of field test courses. The quantitative measures will be used in all field test courses to measure student science skills, reasoning, and motivation, and to gather professors reactions to the multimedia materials and their classroom uses. In addition, since this project is likely to be a forerunner of many more multimedia curriculum development projects both at the college and pre-college level, a detailed evaluation of the whole curriculum process will be prepared by Dr. Bruning and made available as a separate treatise to other multimedia curriculum developers. 8. Dissemination of Results:Dr. Fuller was successful in using a nationwide team of field testers to help in the dissemination of a physics videodisc product. Using such a plan and their contacts within the American Association of Physics Teachers, they took a videodisc product, Physics: Cinema Classics, which had an estimated market of 250 copies, and sold 1400 sets in only a four month period. The product was then turned over for commercial distribution to Ztek Co. of Louisville, KY, the nation's largest distributor of videodiscs for physics education. The field testing, evaluation, and dissemination plans for this project are based upon the plans used for the amazing success of the Physics: Cinema Classics project. Their ability to respond to the need for faculty development in the use of electronic media for teaching physics is a strength of this project team. They have led a number of workshops for physics faculty on the use of new technology in teaching physics. It is the intention of the team to develop undergraduate faculty enhancement workshops based upon the materials of this project and offer them to faculty beginning in the summer of 1997. Such workshops are also an excellent dissemination activity. The workshop participants will be required to lead follow-up workshops in their states and regions. In addition to following the successful model of the Physics: Cinema Classics distribution, a special feature is being added to the dissemination plan for this general physics curriculum - three presidents of corporations that specialize in the distribution of non-traditional, non-print educational materials are members of the national steering committee. From the beginning of the project, dissemination issues will be a part of the discussions of the steering committee. Project Timeline:
Time Event
Dec. 1995 NSF program manager calls co-PIs to negotiate the budget, indicates a
likelihood of funding. The co-PIs get in touch with the national
steering committee members and indicate a May, 1996, initial meeting.
Jan 1996 Official notification of award.
Spring, 1996 Prepare a proposal for an Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement project to
be submitted to the NSF to lead faculty workshops on the courses
developed in this project for three summers, 1997-99.
May, 1996 Initial meeting of the national steering committee in Lincoln, NE.
Presentation of the preliminary project materials plans. Identify a
few faculty members to test the preliminary materials during 1996-97.
Summer, 1996 Completion of preliminary versions of the materials for the first
semester by project staff.
August, 1996 Second meeting of the national steering committee in conjunction with
the AAPT meeting, College Park, MD. Review of first semester lessons
and plans and training for field tests in the fall.
Fall, 1996 Assume funding for Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement workshops.
Academic First semester materials field tested by some faculty members.
yr.,
1996-97
January, Third meeting of the national steering committee in conjunction with
1997 the AAPT meeting. Obtain feedback about the first semester materials
and make revisions in the project plans. Review of plans for second
semester materials and for additional field tests in the spring.
Spring, 1997 Completion of revised versions of the materials for the first semester
by project staff.
June, 1997 Offer the first undergraduate faculty enhancement workshop using the
materials from this project.
Summer, 1997 Completion of the revised first semester material and new second
semester materials by the project staff.
August, 1997 Fourth meeting of the national steering committee. Reports from all
users and development of detailed plans for additional revisions and
field testing.
Academic Extensive testing of the revised materials by the physics teachers.
yr.,
1997-98
January, Fifth meeting of the national steering committee.
1998
June, 1998 Offer the second undergraduate faculty enhancement workshop using the
materials from this project.
Summer, 1998 Final revisions of the first two semesters of materials and
preparation of the third semester materials.
Academic Extensive use of all materials by the physics teachers.
yr.,
1998-99
January, Sixth meeting of the national steering committee. Detailed plans for
1999 dissemination are completed.
June, 1999 Offer the third undergraduate faculty enhancement workshop using the
materials from this project.
August, 1999 Final meeting of national steering committee. Final report of the
project NSF funds.
Academic National distribution using The Learning Team, Vernier Software, and
yr., Ztek Co. with a continuing process of revision and renewal of the
1999-2000 materials.
Bibliography of Pertinent Literature and Media Arons, A. (1981), Thinking, reasoning and understanding in introductory physics courses, The Physics Teacher 19, 166-172. Austin, Sam M. and Gilbert, K. E. (1973), Student Performance in a Keller-Plan Course in Introductory Electricity and Magnetism, Am. J. Phys. 41(1), 12-18. Borsook, Terry K. and Higginbotham-Wheat, Nancy (1992), A psychology of hypermedia: A conceptual framework for R&D, FICHE Document: ED 345 697. Broadcasting & Cable, (1995) How Wired is K-12?, 2/13/1995, p. 51 Cambridge Science Media, Multimedia Motion (1994), a CD-ROM. Ellermeijer, A.L., Landheer, B. and Molenaar, P.P.M. (1992), Physics Lessons in a Realistic Thematic Context: Use of Interactive Video and Microcomputer-based Laboratory in a Dutch Secondary School, AAPT Announcer 22(2), 51. Fuller, Robert G.(1993), Millikan Lecture 1992: Hypermedia and the knowing of physics: Standing upon the shoulders of giants. Am. J. Phys 61(4), 300-304. Fuller, Robert G.(1991), A CD-ROM for Physics Teachers, AAPT Announcer 21(2), 46. Fuller, R. G. and Zollman, Dean (1993), Every Physics Teacher's CD-ROM Toolkit, The Vision and the Reality: A Hands-on Look at the Physics InfoMall, AAPT Announcer 23(4), 64. Fuller, Robert G. and Zollman, Dean (1994), Physics InfoMall: A CD-ROM for All Seasons, AAPT Announcer 24(2), 114. Hoffer, T.; Radke, J.; Lord, R., (1992), Qualitative/quantitative study of the effectiveness of computer-assisted interactive video instruction, J. of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, (11), 3-12. Jantan, J., Zollman, D., and Spears, J. D., (1994), Physics Educators' Information-Seeking and Exploration Strategies from the Physics InfoMall, AAPT Announcer 24(2), 114. Karplus, Robert (1977), Science Teaching and the Development of Reasoning, Journal of Research in Science Teaching 14, (2), 169-175. Laws, Priscilla W. (1991), Calculus-based Physics Without Lectures, Physics Today 44(12), 24-30. Louie, Ray; Sweatt, Shelley; Gresham, Reba; and Smith, Laura, (1991) Interactive video: Disseminating vital science and math information, Media & Methods (27), 22-23. s Malone, Thomas W., (1981), Toward a Theory of Intrinsically Motivating Instruction, Cognitive Science 4, 333-369. McDermott, Lillian C., (1991), Millikan Lecture 1990: What we teach and what is learned - Closing the gap, American Journal of Physics 59(4), 301-315. Minstrell, Jim (1992), Facets of students' knowledge and relevant instruction, Research in Physics Learning: Theoretical Issues and Empirical Studies, 110-126. National Academic of Sciences (1994), National Science Education Standards, Sections I-6, I-7, II-9, V-124, and V-127. Novak, Gregor M. (1992) Using Interactive Video in Introductory Physics Labs, AAPT Announcer 22(2), 60. Plano, Vicki L, Fuller, Robert G., Lang, Charles R., and Moore, Christopher, (1994) Developing Multimedia General Physics Laboratories, AAPT Announcer 24(1), 52. Plano, Vicki L, Moore, Christopher, Fuller, Robert G., and Lang, Charles R. (1994), Multimedia College Physics Laboratory I, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, Iowa. Plano Clark, Mark W. and Fuller, R. G. (1994), Using Reasoning Puzzles in an Introductory College Physics Course, AAPT Announcer 24 (4), 84. Plano Clark, Vicki and Fuller, R. G. (1994), A Guidebook for the Physics InfoMall CD-ROM, AAPT Announcer 24 (4), 99. Putt, Graeme D. (1977), Testing the mastery concept of self-paced learning in physics, Am. J. Phys. 45(5), 472-475. Sadker, M. and Sadker, D. (1994), Failing at Fairness: How America's School Cheat Girls, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York. Savenye, Wilhelmina C.; and Strand, Elizabeth (1989), Teaching science using interactive videodisc: Results of the pilot year evaluation of the TLTG project, FICHE Document: ED 308 838. Soloway, Elliot (1991) How the Nintendo generation learns, Communications of the ACM 34 (9) 23-26,95. Tinker, Robert F. (1981), Microcomputers in the teaching lab, The Physics Teacher, 19(2) 94-105. Tobias, S. (1990), They're not dumb, they're different: Stalking the second tier. Research Corporation, Tucson. Thornton, Ronald K. and Sokoloff, David R, (1990), Learning motion concepts using real-time microcomputer-based laboratory tools, Am. J. Phys. 58(9), 858-866. Tuska, Evelyn B. and Fuller, Robert G.(1991), Building a Physics Thesaurus for High School Teachers, AAPT Announcer 21(4), 52. Wagner, David (1994), Using Digitized Video for Motion Analysis, The Physics Teacher, 32(4) 240-243. Wilson, Jack M. and Redish, Edward F. (1992), The Comprehensive Unified Physics Learning Environment: Part I. Background and System Operation & Part II. The Basis for Integrated Studies, Computers in Physics 6(2) 202-209 & 6(3) 282-286. Zollman, Dean A. and Fuller, Robert G. (1994), Teaching and Learning Physics With Interactive Video, Physics Today, 47(9), 41-47. Zollman, Dean A. and Grabhorn, Bob (1994) Invited Panel on Using the Physics InfoMall, AAPT Announcer 24(2), 114. Ztek, Co., Inc. (1994), Interactive Physics CD-ROM, a small business innovation research project to develop digital video CD-ROMs for teaching physics, NSF grant no. SBIR III-9361792