Animated Interactive Web Tutorial for Introduction to Physics

Performance of US students in mathematics and physics has been limited, partly because the traditional pedagogy relies on logical and linguistic methods of teaching, and students are primarily assessed on fact knowledge and discrete skills. Recent achievements in computer science provide revolutionary means for educational reform. Thus, use of the World Wide Web and Java - a package of a new object oriented language and networking environment will allow for unification of non-traditional (audiovisual, animated, interactive) and traditional teaching tools in one educational module. Tech-X Corporation proposes to build a tutorial for introduction to physics for non-science college students. It will introduce the main categories of physics, show the language and tools of science, illustrate the main principles and ideas of physics in animated demonstrations. The tutorial will be written in Hypertext Markup Language and Java and placed on an http server, so the students can view it from any location, on campus or at home, where they have an access to a viewer, such as Netscape. The use of the tutorial will be interactive, multidirectional and multilevel. In Phase I, a tutorial for introduction to ¿Sound and Music¿ will be developed and tested. The goal of Phase II will be to complete the development of an extensive set of demonstrations, simulations and problems which prove to be the most efficient, and to extend the course to other interdisciplinary introductions: ¿Light and Color and Energy and Motion.¿