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Revision of prerequisites: ICT tools.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This is a report on the use of ICT tools to encourage subject matter revision of prerequisites for Science students. As part of a program of Teaching Networks at our University, we have developed a project to help students of Introductory Physics with the prerequisites in Physics and Mathematics (for Chemistry and Biology majors). We use a digital platform to provide periodically tests which the students must take before certain deadlines. Both multiple choice and open answer questions are posted. Encouraging results of the project in terms of students' learning and prospects for the future are discussed.

1. Introduction

In teaching undergraduate Physics one finds routinely that the students do not seem to know, or have forgotten, very basic concepts, definitions, formulae, etc., of Physics and Mathematics. This lack of basic knowledge has certainly been addressed in previous High School or even undergraduate courses, and is necessary for a good understanding of the current subject. This situation cannot be dealt with some extra material put into the regular lectures, due to rather dense syllabi. And the process of updating and catching up with a previous knowledge base has to develop during the semester(s) that the course lasts. This project aims to bridge this gap. We have undertaken a research program that takes pedagogical advantage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in our teaching-learning environment as tools to encourage subject-matter revision and updating of prerequisites in Physics and Mathematics.

The project was prompted by a newly introduced scheme in the University of Alacant that set up a number of Research and Training Teaching Networks (RTTN) on Campus. An RTTN is a community of University teaching staff (usually with 5 to 10 members) set up for the analysis, reflection and discussion of some aspects of their teaching and tutorial practices, with the objective of improving the quality of student's learning (Day, 2002). There are many examples of the use of computers in education (Linn, 1998). Inspiration for the project came also from a web site with a pre-diagnosis test of Mathematics for Physics students (Forinash, 2002). Recent articles on ICT issues in Education have recently appeared in AEQ: Burkle and Sayed (2002) and Leon-Rojas et al. (2002).

The following section deals with the project background, in terms of students' needs. Sect.3 describes the project, and results and analysis are given in Sect.4. We finish up with some conclusions and a few proposals for future action.

2. Students' background

We decided to set up an RTTN in order to address various problems detected over the years while teaching Physics for students majoring in Chemistry or Biology. First, students' failure rate in many courses, including ours,...