By Bianca Sala
The course, and what I’ve tried before
A big part of my role as a University Teacher involves teaching and assessing students on the Foundations of Physics course. We have a large cohort of students and they study physics as part of their Science and Engineering Foundation Year. The students I teach don’t have a very strong physics background, with some of them never having studied physics at A-level at all. This means that we cover a lot of basic physics concepts in our course, work to build up their confidence with physics and do a lot of step-by-step questions on the board.
For the past few years, I’ve tried it all when it comes to teaching materials. I had the slides, the scanned handwritten notes, typed up notes, links to Youtube videos and magazine articles and many more. I tried to make sure everyone had the type of material they liked the most, or could access the easiest if their internet connection was bad or didn’t have access to a laptop straightaway. However, a lot of the material was repeated across the different formats, it was getting a bit hard to keep on top of and update regularly, and I reached the point where it was too much.
After reading the student feedback, I realised that parts of the course needed an update and some material needed to be shuffled around. This was a pretty good chance to start again from scratch - not so much to reinvent the wheel but to pull all the different materials together
Guided notes
I decided to go with guided notes - booklets with chunks of theory, important concepts and examples, as well as space left for filling in proofs and working through questions. I made booklets for the two individual courses we covered in the autumn semester, and I’m now writing them for the three courses we do in the spring semester. The biggest booklet, for the mechanics course, is a 30 page google document. While 30 pages might sound like a lot, it includes all the theoretical material students need to know, with proofs and diagrams, as well as some questions to start revising from. I’ve also included the Intended Learning Outcomes at the beginning of the booklet, so students can easily refer back to it.
There’s a few things I’ve learned from the past semester using guided notes. They really did make my life easier. Making them in Google Docs means I can share the link on Blackboard, and if I have to make any edits I don’t need to delete and re-upload material. The full course can be made available from the very beginning, so students know what to expect.
They’ve helped me keep track of my lectures, and the questions were a good opportunity to let students work on them by themselves or with neighbours before doing them together on the board. Overall that’s really helped with engagement.
They do take time to write, and I was lucky to work with a GTA over the summer on one of the booklets. But they save a lot of time during the semester, and I could focus my time on better supporting students and finding interesting material to cement some of the harder concepts.
Still, I didn’t treat them as a 'set in stone' course. Where I felt we needed to, I found other questions to do in class or left some of the easier ones for students to look at in their own time if they were okay with those concepts but needed more time with others.
Overall, I’m a fan and will continue to use them in the future, with small updates from year to year when needed. If anyone wants to have a look at them, or chat about using them for their own teaching, I’m happy to have a chat.