Speaker
Description
In higher physics education, lab courses are an important part of the academic studies by providing hands-on practical experience and fostering essential technical and analytical skills. In this era of digital transformation, modernizing lab courses through digital integration is essential to meet evolving student expectations, support motivation and improve student’s preparation.
To address these needs, an online learning environment was designed to replace the script with digital material, allowing students to study at their own pace. The interactive structure allows students to choose the order of topics themselves creating individual learning paths. Different units cover the experimental procedures, an exercise to analyse example data and the necessary theory structured as interactive non-linear presentations. Here, after each slide with theoretical content, learners answer related questions to check their understanding. Wrong answers redirected them back to the theory slides. Afterwards they can independently select the next topic area. To avoid redundancy with previous lectures, the presentation incorporated a branching logic, that utilizes pre-testing. Students who correctly answer the questions can skip theory slides. Incorrect answers lead directly to the relevant theory. This individualized pacing respects the learner's pre-knowledge while ensuring all acquire the foundational understanding to begin the lab work. Furthermore, by bypassing theoretical slides students optimize their preparation time, ensuring that the workload represents the individual learning needs.
Qualitive evaluation of student feedback indicate a highly positive reception, with students enjoying the modernized lab preparation. From the tutor’s perspective during the experiments, student engagement with the course material increased, significantly reducing the need for verbal instructions. While these enhancements did not immediately translate into higher preparation quality, the results highlight a successful shift toward student autonomy and establish a solid foundation for future pedagogical refinements.