A PROPOSITION OF AN ALTERNATIVE TO PHYSICS PRACTICAL CLASSES FOR UNDER GRADUATE ENGG STUDENTS IN LOCKED DOWN SITUATION
Practical classes are where knowledge fuses into experience. Now, as physical reality is fabricated in accordance with inviolable laws that science is in search for, the attempts of students including all their wrongdoings in a real class eventually fortifies their scientific understanding and evaluation of the very reality.
In contrary, virtual experiments are based on a set of fabricated laws placed by some programmer and the same is not as robust and wide-ranging as natural laws. And here lies the flaws that can readily misguide students to some logical void between practice and conception.
Keeping the above comparison in mind we must cook up a balanced method of distance practical education. Evaluation of students’ technical skill is next to impossible in lockdown. A little bit of improvisation is possible for some of the students when they try using household items for makeshift experiments. But study of error as perfection, troubleshooting and post processing are possibilities we can venture. Let us see what is possible in this situation of crisis:
1. Students can do some experiments using ordinary household belongings using the measuring capabilities of their smart phones.
2. Some readymade data can be given to them for post processing like measuring with special methods, finding qualitative and quantitative errors, drawing graphs, calculating values etc.
3. Images and videos along with some text can be supplied to them for troubleshooting and viva.
4. And however, for some experiments, they can be provided with virtual experiment set ups where they must find out also the limitations of such artificial environments.
Following these possibilities we first need a practical bank of:
A. ideas
B. videos, still photographs, diagrams
C. experimental data pertaining to institutional experiments as well as data from any external source
D. composed multimedia works for recreating reality including video shoots for demonstration
E. apps and websites for virtual experiments
Now comes the question of communication. We can facilitate students’ access to the practical bank discussed above using some website. Now, each student can be given a task of
1. one fully physical experiment (demonstration should be there in the practical bank), 2 minutes video along with photos of paper works should be submitted by the student,
2. one completely virtual experiment (app or website should be given with demonstration), paper works should be submitted by the student,
3. one post processing (data, photograph, figures, drawing facilities etc. supplied), only soft text enough as submission and
4. one troubleshooting including viva (documents given), only soft text enough as submission
Submissions from students can be collected using Google forms. auto generated google sheets would then produce report of the endeavour.
The Practical Bank
Contribute to the Practical Bank
See the Content Sheet of the Practical Bank
Physics TMSL 