In the few months that education has become a largely virtual experience, teachers and students have learned that some courses move more easily online than others. Classes that require hands-on or physical experiences, for example, face a different set of challenges – but also present opportunities to get creative.
That was the conundrum facing Oglethorpe University physics instructor Daniel Howard when he thought about teaching two summer physics courses with multiple lab assignments. Having to come up with a solution to an unprecedented challenge was nothing new: Before he began teaching last year, the Buckhead resident spent 40 years as a telecommunications engineer and launched three start-ups. “I’m used to looking at problems and solving them,” he said.
Howard also had some data to work with after teaching the same course in the spring and being forced to finish it online.
“I saw that students weren’t engaging,” he said. “They weren’t able to figure out critical concepts like the uncertainty of a result. I also didn’t have the usual three to four students at a station with specialized equipment.”
Howard also knew that trying to have students run experiments with materials found in their homes presented another problem: Would all students have access to the same items? Howard came up with a solution.
“I designed experiments that could be done with elements I found on Amazon and at Home Depot and Lowe’s, and tried them out at home,” he said. “As an engineer, I like to build stuff, and I have a workshop in my basement. I also had my division chair help me cut out some wooden discs. Then I physically assembled and mailed out 31 kits for the first course and 24 for the second.”
The kits, paid for by the usual lab fees, came with materials for experiments to measure the acceleration of gravity, centripetal force, inertia and the conservation of momentum, to name a few. The necessary tools included a Hot Wheels car, an aluminum track, a steel ball, nylon and cotton string, a yardstick and more.
Howard also rewrote the directions using smartphones for setting timers and taking measurements. Each student conducted experiments individually then jumped on a video call to discuss results, and Howard was with them to answer questions.
“Normally, we do group projects with teams of three or four, but that wasn’t going to happen in the online environment,” he said. “So they put their results into a formal report as if they were independent researchers.
‘I also realized that having them do that meant no one could hide behind a more capable lab partner, which they sometimes do when face-to-face. In a survey I did at the end, a lot of students made a point of saying that was a good thing,” said Howard.
Rising senior Kris Bass admits he was initially skeptical about doing the experiments on his own.
“I didn’t expect to be able to run the lab in my living room,” said the Austell resident. “But the kit had what I needed, and Professor Howard explained it well and showed us how to set it up. And he was on Zoom while we set it up to make sure we did it properly. It ran a lot smoother than I expected. I’ve had other labs that were simulations, but for this, we actually did the experiments, and that was by far the best.”
Howard recently assembled 80 kits for his remote, fall semester students, and whenever classes do resume on campus, he intends to make some changes.
“I’ll make more copies of the kits or push for budgets that allow fewer students per station so everyone has to contribute throughout the process,” he said. “The key is to match the existing experiments to easily obtained materials, not rework the entire curriculum. And I know we can figure out low-cost ways to that.”
Information about Oglethorpe University is online at Oglethorpe.edu.
SEND US YOUR STORIES. Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
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