Integrated Introductory Physics Laboratory Course Online

Abstract

Introductory engineering physics has traditionally included some laboratory work either as own laboratory course or as a part of theory courses. Generally, students are interested in active doing in laboratory, but calculations and reporting are often seen as laborious and demanding. Since 2015, challenges with reporting have been tackled in a bachelor level engineering education by offering an integrated course "Basics of measuring and reporting", in which Physics-, Mathematics- and Communications teachers work together. The key idea of the course is to bring all necessary basic skills the student needs for measuring and reporting to one single integrated course. In spring 2019 an online pilot version of the integrated course was planned and implemented, followed by another in autumn 2019. Costly laboratory facilities are not necessary in the online implementations. Laboratory tasks, that are used as a basis of reporting, are possible to organize in such a way that equipment is available either at home or from local grocery store. In this way the course is also easy to offer in open university nationwide. The online course itself, challenges and solutions of the online implementation are described. Students' experience of online laboratory course is also reported, using student feedback data. The pros and cons from the teacher teams of the implementations was collected and reported. The results promising, so there are several online implementations running now on yearly basis.