We are interested in creating interactive learning objects that engage students as they prepare for lab. To this end, we have created and tested some Flash activities designed to get students manipulating lab equipment even before they get to the lab room. Check out an example.

We are currently working on making the lab videos and website accessible to as many students as possible. This will ulitimately involve closed-captioning and audio description tracks, and making the site and embedded Flash objects tabbable. We're exploring the use of interactive transcripts in making the videos most usable to students. Check out an interactive transcript demo!

The goal for the academic year 2012-13 would be to complete, at a rate of one per week, undergraduate-oriented educational objects for Physics 103 with a typical enrollment 625 students and for Physics 207 with a typical enrollment 250 students. These two courses are the first semester parts of the two course sequences we have addressed this year. Additional courses with a laboratory component I hope we might ultimately address include Physics 201 and Physics 202 (calculus physics for engineers with a typical enrollment of 480 students), Physics 247 and 248 (accelerated physics for physics majors and astronomy majors with a typical enrollment of 60 students), and the intermediate and advanced laboratory courses 307, 208, 321, and 407 with enrollments of order 50 students.