The Creation of Networked Interactive Tools for Teaching Astronomy and Physics

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The project, operated as a collaborative grant between the University of Oregon and the University of Arizona, is developing interactive experiments and delivering them over the Internet. Most of these experiments are executed using the JAVA programming language extension to HTML document structure. Others use the VRML extension to HTML, which allows 3D representations of complex spatial relationships. These tools will be integrated into a fully-featured World Wide Web site which will act as a virtual classroom for about 5400 students per year at the University of Oregon and the University of Arizona. The Web site will have an electronic textbook, research databases, supercomputer simulations, and animations. There is a critical need to engage introductory science students in an experimentation mode that will lead to student-driven inquiry. This project aims (1) to allow students to use active experimentation to learn abstract topics, (2) to incorporate scientifically realistic modes of inquiry into instructional technology, (3) to build a library of experiments that is adaptable to any curriculum, and (4) to construct a Web site that can be customized for use by any instructor. Instructional technology can be a very cost-effective means of achieving our main pedagogical goal: teaching science as a discovery process that relies heavily on experimental results, not memorized facts and figures. The project also has distance education dimensions, involves the cooperation of institutions for curriculum development, and uses emerging technologies to engage the students in this new learning mode. The potential audience for these tools extends to the 500,000 physics and astronomy students at two and four year colleges nationwide and more students at the high school level. The work builds on an already highly successful implementation of hypertext based course material, in which professional data, scientific animation, and links to other resources are all organized into a network textbook that beco mes the lecture and learning tool that students see in class and access out of class. Building more interactivity into this curriculum is both the next logical and most critical step.