No abstract

No abstract

This article describes an attempt at the rational development of a laboratory mini-course which involved the application of research findings, consequent innovation, and successive stages of evaluation and improvement. It was necessarily short because of the time slot available, but it does provide an example which might contribute towards more effective developments for laboratory teaching in longer courses. Particular features are the considerable student involvement in the development of the experiments and the way in which each student chooses the experiments that he wishes to perform.

This paper begins by describing an attempt to attain various high level aims such as "training the mind" "developing judgement" "achieving independence" within the framework of a firstyear physics laboratory course. It goes on to describe successive evaluations of the course, and the effectiveness of consequent improvements.Staff in universities often voice the hope that their students will achieve rather general and high level aims while they are at university, and these are expressed in terms of such phrases as 'training the mind', "developing judgement' and 'achieving independence'. It is, however, rare, at least in the sciences, to find curricula which deliberately set out to achieve such aims within their disciplines. This paper describes: (i) an attempt by two of us (SMK and SOC) to make specific provision for this within the framework of a physics laboratory course, and (ii) the evaluation of this attempt by the third (PC). Some of the sections are therefore written by SMK and SOC, who refer to themselves as 'we', while others are written by PC, who refers to herself as T. Part A. The Course (SMK and SOC)Our re-design of the first-year physics laboratory course in 1974 was a consequence of the building of a new laboratory, which provided incentive, and the Nuffield-sponsored Higher Education Learning rather than a planned programme. We felt that the time had come for completely rethinking the aims, content and methodology of the practical work and its contribution to the physics degree course as a whole.The resulting innovation in physics teaching derived initially from two considerations:(1) Employers often complain that university graduates are ill-equipped for dealing with real experimental situations: those in which the problem is not well-defined, the method is new and untried or the outcomes are unknown.This, we believe, is because students are not taught experimental science as a subject, and are not given sufficient exposure to real experimental situations.(2) It is generally agreed that successful physicists have attributes such as being able to identify and solve problems and to adapt to unfamiliar situations, which are closely linked with the attributes desired in (1).It seemed to us possible to design a laboratory course whose main objective is to train students in experimental physics but which, at the same time, could incorporate, within a physics context, the means of acquiring such attributes which otherwise students are expected to pick up for themselves. In the light of these considerations, we formulated a set of aims for the course. This was stated as follows.Students should acquire a body of knowledge and skills appropriate to experimental physics and develop the ability to: learn independently, work independently where appropriate, work in groups where appropriate, make decisions, use knowledge and skills in unfamiliar situations, keep an open mind, solve problems, including:(a) identifying the nature of smaller problems contained in a larger problem, (b) evaluating critically differe...

No abstract