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Impulse-momentum theorem is a basic matter of the mechanics. A zero cost experiment can be used in
the classroom, without any apparatus, in order to verify the fundamental relationship between an
impulsive force and the linear momentum variation. Usi…

We measure the vertical velocities of elevators, pedestrians climbing stairs, and drones (flying
unmanned aerial vehicles), by means of smartphone pressure sensors. The barometric pressure obtained
with the smartphone is related to the altitude of th…

In this paper, we present a teaching module about stellar structure, functioning and evolution.
Drawing from literature in astronomy education, we designed the activities around three key ideas:
spectral analysis, mechanical and thermal equilibrium, …

The classical brachistochrone problem asks for the path on which a mobile point M just driven by its
own gravity will travel in the shortest possible time between two given points A and B . The
resulting curve, the cycloid, will also be the tautochro…

This paper gives an account of an experiment in which thirty-three high school students of ages
17–19 developed spreadsheet numerical models of satellite and space probe motion. The models are
free to download. A survey was carried out to find out …

This paper reports on the result of a research into the utilisation of a smartphone for the study of
magnetostatics on the basis of experiments. The use of such a device gives great measurement result
and thus it can replace magnetic sensor tools tha…

Where does gravitational potential energy reside when a ball is in the air? The perfectly correct
answer is that it is located in the ball-Earth system. Still, mechanical energy conservation
problems are routinely solved by assigning a potential ener…

In this article, we present results of our endeavours as physics educators to facilitate and support
pedagogical change and development in the educational system of a developing country, the
Philippines. We have discovered that the interaction of jun…

The lifetimes of the photoluminescent compounds contained in the coating of fluorescent compact
lamps are usually measured using specialised instruments, including pulsed lasers and/or
spectrofluorometers. Here we discuss how some low cost apparatuse…

This paper describes a small-scale piece of research using concept mapping to elicit A level
students’ understandings of particle physics. Fifty-nine year 12 (16- and 17 year-old) students from
two London schools participated. The exercise took pla…

There are many video recordings of experiments available on the web that look like magic tricks.
These experiments can be very attractive for pupils. However, their explanation can be missing,
wrong or may lead to misconceptions. One of these is a vi…

We describe a simple experiment about sliding friction of an object moving with non-constant speed
along an inclined plane. This experiment can be used to study the entire dynamical process of force
and motion in various ways, depending on the mathem…

Distance education is expanding in all continents, and the use of video has dominated internet. Synchronous Video Communication (SVC) has not been an option thoroughly investigated and practitioners, who use and design synchronous learning scenarios, are in urgent need of guidance. Distant learners face many barriers, and as a result, they drop out more frequently than on-campus students. Educators seem to be equally affected by the “transactional distance” and the new digital literacies needed for facilitating online learning. This study explores the educators’ perspective on how SVC could offer alternative educational forms and possibilities for distance learning. Findings had indicated that the use of visual communication and human to human contact (prosopogonosia: seeing faces) could have a strong impact on learning and teaching, therefore, a theory called Tele-proximity was formulated. Tele-proximity is defined as online embodiment that explains how instructors and students are connected in synchronous networked environment via tele-operations. SVC creates a sense of place or a stage where online identities perform and highlights recent research on audio-visual signals in communication and team work (Pentland, 2012, 2008).  The theory can be seen as an extension of the Community of Inquiry Model (Garrison, Anderson & Archer, 2000) and a theoretical framework according to which learning objectives could be designed. Transactional distance could be minimized and may be implemented to facilitate more synchronous, visual, and humane options in distance education.

The prediction and classification of student performance has always been a central concern within higher education institutions. It is therefore natural for higher education institutions to harvest and analyse student data to inform decisions on educat…

Scores of studies have established that when learning online, students must be equipped with different sets of strategies and skills than in a physical classroom setting (Anderson, 2003; Broadbent & Poon, 2015; Coiro, 2007; Leu et al., 2007; Michinov, Brunot, Le Bohec, Juhel, & Delaval, 2011; Salmon, 2013).  The present study, by virtue of exploring foreign language learners’ online reading experience, aimed to identify the reading strategies that learners would use when engaged in online reading activities in the target foreign languages.  Thirty-two foreign language learners whose native language was English participated in the study.  The Online Survey of Reading Strategies (OSORS) designed by Anderson (2003) was administered to investigate the following four research questions: (1) What are the strategies that language learners would or would not use when reading online in foreign languages? (2) Would foreign language learners use some of the online reading strategies more frequently than other strategies? (3) Would different levels of foreign language proficiencies influence language learners’ use of the strategies?  (4) What could foreign language teachers do in their instruction to help students acquire and broaden their repertoire of online reading strategies?  Data analysis demonstrated the most and least frequently used strategies of the foreign language learners and uncovered a significant difference in the frequency of use among the strategies.  However, there was no significant difference found between the use of online reading strategies and learners’ foreign language proficiencies.  Implications and suggestions for future research and practice were proposed accordingly.      

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) were initiated in the early 2000s by certain leading American and European universities. An integral part of the MOOC philosophy has been to provide open access to online learning. Despite their potential advantages …

Quality Assurance (QA) concepts and applications in Higher Education (HE) emerge from evolving meanings related to HE’s dynamic relationship with social, economic, cultural, and technological developments.  The latter has been redefined by the growth spurred by the forms distance and online education acquired during the last decades.  Creating a roadmap with clearly articulated meanings of quality and consistent key actions fills a need for the involved communities to reground the research, policy-making, and the related discourse.  Our current work consists of a thorough meta-analysis on all available research in every identified pertinent field. It is a qualitative review of the concepts, definitions, and approaches about quality in general, but also specifically, in e-learning in HE, as they have globally appeared in peer-reviewed journals, government reports, and web pages.  As we left no stone unturned in enquiring regarding the meanings, uses, evolution, and applicability of the revealed variables it is our hope that the roadmap we provide here will guide future research and support policy-making in the field. The present study is part of the research project e-learning Quality Assurance Design Standards in Higher Education (e-QADeSHE), which was funded by Laureate International Universities as the winning research project for the International David Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (2015 edition).

This study explored whether learning-related anxiety would negatively affect intention to persist with e-learning among students with visual impairment, and examined the roles of three online interactions in the relationship between learning-related an…

The constant technological development in education, and the potentiality of the resources offered by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), are challenges faced by teaching institutions in Brazil, especially by those institutions, which by…

As social media is widely adopted in collaborative learning, which places teams in a virtual environment, it is critical for teams to identify and leverage the knowledge of their members. Yet little is known about how social media influences teams to coordinate their knowledge and collaborate effectively. In this research, we explore the roles of two kinds of social media activity – information processing and social connection in teamwork – by applying communication and transactive memory systems (TMSs) as the mechanisms of explicit and implicit coordination respectively. We test this model using partial least squares (PLS) method by treating team as the unit of analysis. Drawing on the data from a study that involves 40 teams of graduate students performing a complex research report over eight weeks, we find that both TMSs and communication can significantly improve teamwork outcomes, and communication can help teams to better coordinate implicitly. With regard to social media activities, the results reveal that both information processing and social connection can enhance the level of TMSs; however, only social connection is positively related to communication. Unfortunately, information processing cannot significantly strengthen communication quality. The possible reasons are discussed and some theoretical and practical implications are also put forward.

Open Assessment of Learning (OAoL) is an emerging educational concept derived from the incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to education and is related with the Open Education Movement. In order to improve understanding of …

This study aimed to investigate and classify faculty members’ instructional priorities for adopting OER. In-depth interview data were collected from 10 faculty members from different regions and analyzed with NVivo 10. The original supposition was that the well-established instructional priorities, effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal would apply. However, it was found that in adopting OER, these faculty members had four instructional priorities: effectiveness, efficiency, appeal, and extension. Effectiveness was the most important consideration, followed by extension, appeal, and efficiency. Regional differences were also apparent. These findings were drawn upon to propose an elaborated model of instructional priorities for adopting OER.

This study investigated the impact of face-to-face contact sessions and online discussion forums on the academic performance of students at an Open Distance Learning (ODL) university (N = 1,015). t-Tests for independent samples indicated that students …

A great deal of research has documented that interactions among students or between students and instructors are key to student success in an online learning setting. However, very little research has been statistically and systematically conducted to examine online instructors’ conscious and effortful use of scaffolding strategies to promote interactions in online courses. The purpose of this research was to develop a scale assessing online instructors’ use of scaffolding strategies to promote interactions. We employed a scale development method for the study. Exploratory factor analysis revealed one factor structure associated with instructors’ use of scaffolding strategies to promote interactions in online settings. Confirmatory factor analysis conducted with a different group of online students indicated that the one-factor model fits the data well. In addition, significant correlations with social presence and classroom learning community scales further demonstrated convergent validity. The new scale of online instructors’ use of scaffolding strategies to promote interactions demonstrated psychometrically sound validity and reliability.

The paper explores the change process that university teachers need to go through in order to become fluent with Open Education approaches. Based on a literature review and a set of interviews with a number of leading experts in the field of Open Educational Resources and Open Education, the paper puts forward an original definition of Open Educator which takes into account all the components of teachers’ work: learning design, teaching resources, pedagogical approaches and assessment methods- of teachers’ activities. Subsequently, to help the development of teachers’ openness capacity, the definition is further developed into a holistic framework for teachers, which takes into account all the dimensions of openness included in the definition and which provides teachers with self-development paths along each dimension. By working on the definition and on the framework with the interviewed experts, the paper concludes that a strong relation exists between the use of open approaches and the networking and collaboration attitude of university teachers, and that in order to overcome the technical and cultural barriers that hinder the use of open approaches in Higher Education, it is important to work on the transition phases – in terms of awareness and of capacity building – that teachers have to go through in their journey towards openness.

Open Educational Resources (OER) have the potential to replace traditional textbooks in higher education.  Previous studies indicate that use of OER results in high student and faculty satisfaction, lower costs, and similar or better educational outcomes. In this case study, we compared students using traditional textbooks with those using OER at Tidewater Community College to compare their performance on what we call course throughput rates, which is an aggregate of three variables – drop rates, withdrawal rates, and C or better rates. Two self-selecting cohorts were compared over four semesters, with statistically significant results. The study found that, subject to the limitations discussed, students who use OER perform significantly better on the course throughput rate than their peers who use traditional textbooks, in both face-to-face and online courses that use OER. This suggests that OER are a promising avenue for reducing the costs of higher education while increasing academic success.

The Schrödinger equation for a particle moving in a square well potential with BenDaniel–Duke
boundary conditions is solved. Using algebraic approximations for trigonometric functions, the
transcendental equations of the bound states energy are tr…

The bead on a rotating hoop is a typical problem in mechanics, frequently posed to junior science
and engineering students in basic physics courses. Although this system has a rich dynamics, it is
usually not analysed beyond the point particle approx…

We present an elementary discussion of the momentum transferred to a conducting sheet by an
electromagnetic wave propagating in a linear homogeneous polarisable medium. We show that
conservation of momentum is consistent with Minkowski’s expression…

The subject of electrical impedance is on the syllabi of most undergraduate courses in physics and
electrical engineering. For example, Richard Feynman in his famous undergraduate text Lectures on
Physics shows how to calculate the impedance of an in…

The Schrödinger equation for a particle moving in a square well potential with BenDaniel–Duke
boundary conditions is solved. Using algebraic approximations for trigonometric functions, the
transcendental equations of the bound states energy are tr…

We present an elementary discussion of the momentum transferred to a conducting sheet by an
electromagnetic wave propagating in a linear homogeneous polarisable medium. We show that
conservation of momentum is consistent with Minkowski’s expression…

The subject of electrical impedance is on the syllabi of most undergraduate courses in physics and
electrical engineering. For example, Richard Feynman in his famous undergraduate text Lectures on
Physics shows how to calculate the impedance of an in…

The bead on a rotating hoop is a typical problem in mechanics, frequently posed to junior science
and engineering students in basic physics courses. Although this system has a rich dynamics, it is
usually not analysed beyond the point particle approx…

The discovery of electromagnetic induction in the early part of the 19th century is one of the
greatest scientific achievements of all time, and it has had tremendous technological consequences.
The credit for this discovery rightfully goes to the gr…