New Initiative: Status Report on Use of MM in the Physics Teaching and Learning in Europe

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New Initiative Status Report onUse of MM in
the Physics Teaching and Learning in Europe

• B. Eckert, F. Schweickert, H. J. Jodl
• Dept. of Physics, TU Kaiserslautern
• Universiteit van Amsterdam
• Berlin October 5-7 2005

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Content

• History
• Aims Concept
• Content andStructure of Database
• Examples
• Outlook

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History

• Status Reports each year at MPTL workshops
• About
• United Kingdom in 2005 (Berlin) Richard Bacon
• France in 2004 (Graz) Nathalie Lebrun
• Austria in 2003 (Prague) Leopold Mathelitsch
• Greece and Italy in 2002 (Parma)
• Germany in 2001 (Ghent) Frank Schweickert
• Other countries earlier

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Why status reports?

• Overview
• Projects activities
• 40 countries x 20 projects or activities
• Developments
• Techniques
• Didactics
• Not re-inventing the wheel

• Experiences
• Teaching learning
• From evaluation reports recommendations
• New trends
• e.g. distance learning, blended learning
• Increasing importance of MM
• Different cultural approaches

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Disadvantages
of old procedure if planned as book via
EUPEN

• Very singular
• only 1-2 countries per workshop
• compares to 20-30 countries in Europe
• Quickly out of date
• project duration 1-2 years
• annual MPTL workshops
• No general overview on European level

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Aims Concept

• Annual reports of whats going on in Europe at
  future MPTL workshops
• Each country should have one responsible, who
  has to
• watch, collect activities
• describe most relevant projects
• update before annual workshop
• give a report at the workshop (as a summary
  identifying trends, filtering, evaluating, )
• ? Database MMPhys for the community

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Project Description

• Structure
• Project title or activities
• Homepage (link)
• Location(s) and/or institution(s)
• Short description (e.g. aims, target group,
  methods, financial support)
• Duration period
• Contact person(s)
• Additional information (papers, links, logo)

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Example of Project Page
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Database MMPhys

• General Structure
• Project pages are accessible through two main
  categories
• Country
• Category
• or by a search for keywords
• Technical Basis MediaWiki like Wikipedia

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MMPhys main page
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Countries

• Projects by countries
• Austria
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Italy

• The Netherlands
• United Kingdom
• International projects
• (Predefined up to now acc. to previous and
  current reports)

• Other countries are easily introduced ?
  to be completed in 2006

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Countries
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Example Germany

• Organizations
• National workshop (MM workshop of didactics
  group of DPG)
• Big projects
• INGMEDIA
• Physics 2000
• Physik multimedial
• Examples from Kaiserslautern
• FiPS (distance learning)
• Remote controlled laboratory (RCL)

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Example Germany
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Categories

• Categories (up to now)
• Distance Education
• International projects
• Organizations
• Secondary school
• University

• New categories are easily introduced, e.g.
• Methods
• Evaluation
• Physics Topic (Optics, Mechanics, )
• Data bases (e.g. MERLOT)
• ? should be discussed (in MMPhys Wiki)

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Categories
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Advantages of new initiative / database

• Usage
• Easy to access
• Easy to use
• Easy to maintain

• Quality
• International
• Open source
• Open end

• Allows peer review

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Outlook

• Community is enabled to
• complete, add, contribute, edit information
• update information across the database
• not only on big projects but also on little
  projects or single activities
• Responsible for each country
• has to divide up minor or poor activities from
  relevant ones etc. ( should act as peer
  reviewer)
• has to create such Project Pages

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What to do

• What to do now list of those responsible ?
  discussion
• Take home message completing MMPhys database in
  2006

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MMPhys in Internet

• http//www.natsim.net/wiki/mmphys/index.php/