Introduction
This is an attempt to briefly summarize some of the pedagogical projects and ideas my collaborators and I have had over the past 30 years. Here is a list of related publications (see the pedagogy sections) with links to most of the papers we have written and talks given on this subject.
I owe a great deal of thanks to my colleagues Ray Wisman, Bill Rumsey and Wolfgang Christian without whose support none of this would have been possible. Most of the ideas presented here represent true collaboration where ideas flow freely and credit is shared.
In the education world we are still using the web mainly as a one way communication tool, simply making it a bit more convenient for students in a conventional course to receive the same or similar material which previously was handed out in class. But the Internet can be used as a two way communication tool where students are actively engaged in manipulating course material, controlling both simulations and live experiments, collaborating with other students and interacting with the instructor. Many of these activities can be done in a laboratory setting as an integral part of a regularly scheduled course, performed asynchronously as homework assignments or completed as a component of a new hybrid kind of distance learning course. This presentation will explore some of these options, most of which we have tried at IUS in one form or the other over the past 30 years. I am no longer actively maintaining this site so some links may be dead.