Multimedia in Austrian Physics Education
Leopold Mathelitsch, Inst. f. Theor. Physics, Univ. Graz, Austria
Examples are given about the use of multimedia in teaching physics at Austrian universities.
In addition, the role of multimedia is discussed with regard to the education of physics
teachers and to Austrian school-physics in general.
Let me start at the top of physics in Austria, namely at the Austrian Physical Society. The
society has several branches, one of it is concerned with Nuclear and Particle Physics. This
branch has been maintaining a homepage for the last five years with the main purpose to be of
service to the general public [1]. It includes, for example, current news, like information on
the recent Nobel prize, or a column “Head of the Month”, where a (young) Austrian physicist
gets the opportunity to present him/herself and his/her work (this news are then stored in
chronological order). The main part of the web site, however, consists of a collection of
articles, information on topics of nuclear and particle physics, starting ´Beyond Space and
Time´, then covering the universe, galaxies and stars, the earth, man and environment,
molecules, atoms, nuclei and elementary particles.
The number of visitors of this page can be estimated by the average rate of 40 hits per day.
This hit rate increased considerably as the address of the page was changed from a lengthy to
a handy one with a self-explaining title [1]. Fig. 1 shows the hit rate since the middle of
December 2001: The minima are related to vacations, the maxima to the award of the Nobel
prize, and to a broadcast program where this homepage was cited.
running hit rate of last 30 days
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
1
54 107 160 213 266 319 372 425 478 531 584 637
days since 12/15/01
Fig. 1: Running hit rate (summation of the hits of the respective last 30 days) of the homepage
of the Nuclear and Particle Group of the Austrian Physical Society [1].
This web site is a representative example and several physics departments and even working
groups provide for such an outreach of their field. Very often the presentations have links to
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other institutions and research centres, therefore establishing a global network of
information on a particular field of physics.
With regard to multimedia products of single persons, I want to give special emphasis to one
example, namely the visualization and animation of quantum mechanics. Bernd Thaller
from the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Graz translated information on complex
functions of quantum mechanics into spatial pictures and animations where the use of colours
allows for the presentation of an additional parameter ([2], see fig. 2). This program received
the European Academic Software Award 2000 based on the following arguments: “Visual
Quantum Mechanics is a systematic effort to use computer generated animations in order to
push the teaching of theoretical quantum mechanics to an even higher level. This goal is
reached because the visualisation makes complicated results more understandable and motivates the inclusion of topics that are often ignored or mystified. One consequence of this
approach is a shift in emphasis towards the dynamics of quantum systems.” [3]
Fig. 2: Two stationary states of an electron in the field of a proton, i.e. electronic states of the
hydrogen atom [2].
The next examples show how multimedia are used to extend, enrich or build up entire
university courses on specific topics in physics. The first one is by Franz Vesely (Institute of
Experimental Physics, Univ. of Vienna), the author calls it web tutorial [4]. Vesely created
two courses, one on Statistical Physics and one on Computational Physics. For the statistical physics course he got the “Innovation in Teaching Award 2002” from the University of
Vienna. The courses are free to the public, that means that every teacher who finds this
material useful can implement the entire tutorial or just part of it in his or her course.
According to Vesely, “…the conditions for download and modification of text and Java
applets are as usual: cite the original source, don´t hold me responsible for errors, yours and
mine. Feedback is welcome but not necessary.”
This course about statistical physics has been translated also into English, and is being used
as a teaching tool to second-year university students. Statistical physics is covered from the
very beginning to rather demanding topics with the following chapters: Why Water is Wet;
Elements of Kinetic Theory; Phase Space; Statistical Thermodynamics; Statistical Quantum
Mechanics. The text is supported by applets, one example is shown in fig. 3. Exercises and
problems are given at the end of each chapter; the use of the applets is needed to answer some
of the questions.
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Fig. 3: Snapshot of an applet which shows the time evolution of the movement of 36 particles
undergoing 2000 collisions. Statistical data of the simulation are compared with the exact
result, which is a Gaussian distribution for one component of the velocity and a MaxwellBoltzmann distribution for the absolute value of the velocity. [5]
Vesely commented his experiences with this web tutorial as follows: Evaluations by
anonymous questionnaires gave very positive results – the tutorial is seen by the students as a
useful tool supporting the understanding of the topic. The tutorial was used not so much
during the course but intensively before the exams. The (subjective) impression by Vesely is
that the students had a better comprehension of the content compared to prior years when the
tutorial had not been available.
Before introducing the next example I would like to make a small side step: About ten years
ago, the Austrian educational system was extended, and a new type of organization called
“Fachhochschule” was created. It works parallel to universities (the entrance requirements
are very similar) and lasts for three or four years. The main difference to a university study is
that the organization is much more stringent, more school-like than university-like. And the
education is aimed at specific jobs, something which is needed by industry and society.
Therefore there is also more sponsoring by private companies and local communities than
compared to universities. I know that such institutions have been in existence for long in other
countries, it is rather new in Austria. But this new installation brought also with it that, in the
average, new, young lecturers have been employed. And these persons were often more
willing to test modern means and methods of education.
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One tool, which was accepted and used more frequently by teachers of the Fachhochschulen
than by university teachers so far, are so called learning environments. These are open
systems which offer several services:
- They allow a handling of documents in an easy way; teachers as well as students can
up- and down-load material to mutual use.
- They offer several communication tools, like chatroom, notice board, mail system.
- A user administration is included.
An important aspect of these learning environments aims at a more active involvement of the
students. The students should interact with the material of the course, with the teacher and
with their fellow students.
One commercial learning environment is WebCT [6], but there exist several similar products
on the market. One of these Fachhochschulen [7] used this tool for many of its courses
(naturally, most of the courses were not in physics), the experiences are published in a book
[8]. I want to emphasize just one point of this publication, namely the communication
aspect. This is a new feature in e-learning that students can be activated, and even be forced,
to communicate and to cooperate. This was done in some of the above mentioned courses and
especially this aspect was seen as very positive, both by teachers and students.
There is one big disadvantage of these learning environment systems – they are very expensive. Just to name a number – to get a license for one year may cost some thousands of
Euro up to ten thousands of Euros (depending on the number of students).
Since teachers are the keystones for applying new technologies, the question arises how to
“persuade” them to test a product or to use it. This point is related to another question, namely
how to train the teachers. Also here an initiative was put forward at the Fachhochschule in
order to train the trainers [9]. Several lectures (mainly off-line courses with usually just one
day of presence) were collected in some modules. The user (teachers from Fachhochschulen
and universities) could choose freely among the offer, and this system has been widely
accepted and most of the courses were booked out.
Let´s come back to physics. A colleague of mine at the university of Graz, Christian Lang,
together with his son Thomas, created a learning environment which they called electure
[10]. This system includes many of the features of other, commercial products. The
implementation of documents can be done in an even more structured way, that means it is
easier to create a course in a sequence of steps. But it also includes a user administration and
several communication tools (fig. 4). But, most important, this is a free software and anybody
is allowed and invited to download electure and to use it as a learning environment for his/her
own courses.
Information
Check
Counter:
Notice
Office
Board
my
Post
Forum Discussions
Fig. 4: Meeting place of the learning environment electure [10].
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File Depot
Two courses have been prepared with electure with regard to physics so far at the University
of Graz, one about quantum mechanics [11], the other about introductory computational
physics [12]. Right now courses are also developed at the level of school physics: This
material could be used in addition to the regular teaching, for instance during the preparation
of students for exams or for projects.
Before continuing the discussion of multimedia products for teaching physics at schools I
would like to add an example concerning the interface between university and school. An
institute of the Technical University of Graz, the Institute of Electrical Engineering, does
research on electromagnetic tools and equipments, like power lines, household items or
mobile phones. The outcome of this research is important and interesting also for the general
public, but to bring these results of research to the public is not easy, it needs time and special
skills. A physics teacher should have at least some of this skills, namely how to explain and
communicate physics. So a cooperation was formed between persons at universities and at
schools; an important part of the work was done by prospective teachers using this topic for
their diploma thesis.
One outcome was a CD-ROM [13] where an interesting overview is given about electromagnetic fields and waves in our daily life. Part of the CD-ROM can be used interactively,
where, for example, students can walk within a typical surrounding (fig. 5), zoom in onto
different parts and switch on/off a visualisation of the electric and magnetic fields. This
project was also supported by the Austrian Ministry of Education.
Fig. 5: A typical electromagnetic environment [13].
Another outcome of several diploma theses of physics teacher students is the so called
PhysicBox at the university of Graz [14]. This box is a collection of different items: talks,
seminar works, entire lectures, proposals for low-cost experiments, but also presentations of
self-developed experimental tools. A speciality is a virtual museum: It shows photos from old
instruments in the store of the Institute of Experimental Physics (see, e.g., fig. 6), which have
been restored, together with information on origin and function of these apparatuses.
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Fig. 6: Wooden model, made in 1863, visualizing the superposition of transverse waves.
Last, but not least, let me finish with a homepage made by physics teachers for physics
teachers. The homepage is called PhysicsNet and has been maintained by Andrea Mayer
since 1998 [15]. This site contains a huge amount of information: It addresses the daily school
business – for example, learning units are offered which can be used directly by the teachers,
i.e., the student can work with the unit being connected to PhysicsNet. Information about
ongoing events is given, national as well as international ones. Links to other sites are
collected, a very good one gets the award as “link of the month”.
I hope to have given some insight into the scenery of the use of multimedia in Austrian
physics teaching. I tried to show different facets, of course, presenting a subjective selection
of examples. I apologize to those colleagues who produced multimedia products that would
have been worth mentioning here but were left out.
References:
[1] http://www.teilchen.at
[2] http://www.uni-graz.at/imawww/vqm/ ; B. Thaller “Visual Quantum Mechanics” ,
Springer Verlag, New York, Heidelberg, 2000.
[3] http://www2000.easa-award.net/comp/winners2000/vqm.html
[4] http://www.ap.univie.ac.at/users/Franz.Vesely/
[5] http://www.ap.univie.ac.at/users/Franz.Vesely/sp_english/sp/node9.html
[6] http://www.webct.com/
[7] http://zml.fh-joanneum.at/
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[8] J. Pauschenwein, M. Jandl, A, Koubek (Eds.) „Telelernen an österreichischen
Fachhochschulen“, WUV Universitaetsverlag, Wien 2001.
[9] http://train-the-trainer.fh-joanneum.at/
[10] http://physik.uni-graz.at/~cbl/electure
[11] http://physik.uni-graz.at/~cbl/QM/
[12] http://physik.uni-graz.at/~cbl/C+P/
[13] http://www.emf.tugraz.at
[14] http://physicbox.uni-graz.at/
[15] http://www.physicsnet.at/
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