Author(s)

P. Ramalingam

Abstract

By adopting the current conventional methods of teaching, an instructor will only be able to engage a select group of students in his/her class. In order to actively engage the class of students for the entire time period of the lecture and also to keep them motivated, the instructor can try to adopt a selection of different pedagogical methods such as the use of multimedia (Java applets) and also a classroom response pad or Clickers (Interactive Response System). For teaching some concepts in physics in a class, an instructor employs several demonstration equipment or display tools to ease in the learning. Utilizing commercially available or off the shelf demonstration equipment has been very expensive and time consuming and most often ineffective. Herein we try to intuit students to use available open source software to produce well designed Java applets. Designing applets or PhysletsTM have been used during lectures and have been further evaluated on the effectiveness of using them in our lectures. Results from this study have been very encouraging and subsequently it has created keen interest amongst the rest of the class of students to design similar applets. Such exercises will develop in them the necessary critical thinking and presentation skills. The paper will present a demonstration of some applets that can be adopted for the teaching to be more effective. Keywords: Java applets, clickers, class room response pads, Faraday’s Law, Physlets, teaching pedagogy.

Keywords

Java applets, clickers, class room response pads, Faraday’s Law, Physlets, teaching pedagogy