DICIEMBRE 17 DEL AÑO

of the resources if possible.

Finally, practical work was found to be a valuable tool in motivating students, so this should also be included in the design of the resources. To make it more useful, pre- and post-lab activities should be included, as well as suggesting more realistic experiments and presenting the experiment notes without too much unnecessary information.

Naturally, it would be very difficult to incorporate all these design elements into a limited set of resources. It is hoped that if a full set of resources across all topics of physics were developed that the majority of these suggestions would be included somewhere within the resources.

3.2.2

The physical design

The rationale for the physical presentation of the resources is described in this section. The resource design is considered in light of the findings of Chapter 2, conversations with ASI and from knowledge obtained in the course SCOM8012 (“Design and Process for the WWW”, which I took in Semester 1, 2008 at The Australian National University).

In Chapter 2 the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the resource design was discussed. It was found that teachers preferred their resources to be in print format, that the resources should be modifiable, that they should contain a suitable level of language for the students, and not require the use of ICT. As well as this, it was found that including images of female scientists was beneficial to female students. ASI indicated that the resources should be a collection of stand-alone exercises or activities, rather than a textbook chapter on the chosen topic.

The physical design of the resources is undertaken with the knowledge gained from SCOM8012. This includes incorporating plenty of white space to create and uncluttered look, the use of colour to separate out sections and make the resources visually appealing (but including the ability for the resources to be used either in colour or black and white), general consistency across pages in terms of fonts, titles and design elements, and the facility for the resources to be placed in anything from a website to a full colour book.

3.3

Limitations of this approach

A limitation of this approach to designing the resources is that it requires many different elements to be incorporated into a small set of activities. The way to overcome this difficulty is to assume that over the full set of physics resources, all these elements would

3.4. Conclusion Chapter 3. Research Design

be accounted for somewhere.

The limitations of the ‘nuts and bolts’ requirements are that it restricts the type of resources to activities that can be described in words and static pictures rather than video or animation, and that the types of experiments are limited to those that use commonly available materials. This, however, is desirable for this study as no teacher or school should be excluded from using the resources due to lack of suitable equipment.

The limitation of the physical design is that it is nearly impossible to simply create an aesthetically pleasing document in a format that is easily modifiable. This is a significant limitation and a compromise needed to be found.

3.4

Conclusion

In this section the design of the resources was discussed. First, the reasons behind the selection of material to go into the resources were outlined. These included ideas such as finding the common ground in the state and territory curricula, incorporating elements that will help female students, and choosing activities that can realistically be used by a wide range of teachers across Australia.

Then the rationale behind the physical design was discussed. This included both the realities of how teachers prefer to receive their resources, and the aesthetics of the design.

Finally, the limitations of this approach for designing resources were considered. The main limitation was that of the competing requirements of designing aesthetically pleasing documents that also could be modified.

In the next chapter the process of designing the resources is described. The curricula are researched, existing resources are examined, and the final design of two resources is presented.

Chapter 4

Results

4.1

Introduction

In Chapter 2 it was determined what types of resources should be designed for this study, what their knowledge emphases should be, and how they should be designed to ensure the maximum number of students would enjoy the lessons and learn something.

This chapter contains the answers to the second and third research questions: ‘What areas of state and territory curricula are relevant?’ and ‘Can a resource be designed that relevant and adequate?’.

In order to answer the first question, the areas of physics that are common to all Australian state and territory curricula are found. It is important that the resources are in a common area of physics as ASI wants the maximum number of teachers to use the resources. Then, from this, a narrow area of physics is chosen on which to create

resources. The reason the topic is limited is so that the study remains a manageable size. Following this, both the Year 10 and Year 12 curricula are examined to find out what knowledge students will already have when using the resources, and what knowledge they should gain as a result.

Then, typical students difficulties with the chosen topic are outlined, and current resources available on the topic are described. A detailed evaluation of current resources was not carried out as this is a separate research question.