Virtual Physics Course has Real Time Benefits at UA, UAB

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Through the technological power of the Internet, the physics departments at The University of Alabama and The University of Alabama at Birmingham are offering physics students the opportunity to study in ways those before them never had.

Seven students from UA and three students from UAB are experiencing a new way to teach and learn through Internet-ready video cameras and live streaming video.

Dr. Stanley Jones, professor and chair of UA’s physics and astronomy department in the College of Arts and Sciences, began collaboration about a year ago with Dr. David Shealy, UAB physics professor and department chair.

“We were fortunate that UA had a $10,000 grant to purchase the equipment,” Jones said. “We needed to do things like this in order to offer courses to our students that we would not ordinarily be able to do, both due to a shortage of faculty and a shortage of students in undergraduate physics.”

Funding for the equipment both universities needed was provided by the Alabama Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR. Dr. David Cordes, UA computer science department head and principal investigator with the ‘Internet 2’ project, which effectively links campuses across the state through broadband technology, helped make the course feasible.

Both departments found it relatively easy to set up for the interactive course. Jones is convinced that courses taught in this fashion will become more common in the next few years, especially in upper-level classes that would benefit both universities.

UAB’s Shealy was excited about the opportunity that he could provide for his students.

“What the students and professors like about the course is that they don’t have to leave their departments to attend lecture,” he said.

“The class is taught within the department in a regular lecture room or conference room,” Shealy said. “It’s just like a phone call, we dial up the IP address at UA and then we have a private video feed. We went to great lengths with UA to assure the compatibility of the equipment we both use, and we’ve had very little trouble thus far.”

The collaborative course during the fall semester was called ‘general relativity.’ It’s an upper level physics course that deals with the large scale effects of gravity and the theories surrounding gravitation. Dr. Benjamin Harms, UA physics professor, teaches the course.

“The UA students were in the classroom and the UAB students were in the UAB physics department conference room where they saw the lecture simultaneously on a large-screen video monitor,” Harms said.

Class lectures were recorded at UAB and then uploaded to a website set up by Shealy. Anyone who accessed the site, www.phy.uab.edu/~shealy/GR/, could view the lectures as streaming video.

Student response has been extremely positive and has opened the door for a more personalized approach to learning. David Alvarez, a UAB student from Yuma, Ariz., is grateful for the opportunity that the course provides.

“Without the technology of the Internet connection, it [the physics course] would not have been taught at all,” he said. “UAB simply doesn’t have the resources to teach it. Graduating without any formal training in the field of general relativity would have left us crippled in our fields, so in that light it would be fair to say that I’m extremely grateful for this class.”

Mike Wofsey, a UA student from Denver enjoys getting a glimpse of what the future of higher education may look like. “It’s a great setup,” he said. “It’s the future of higher education, especially in specialized classes like this one, where it can be difficult to find the requisite number of students.”

Erik Saperstein, a student at UAB from Bothell, Wash., said, “The setup of the room produces an informal environment and we can, and normally do, mute the microphone on our end allowing us to discuss some of the material as it is taught without interrupting the instructor. Also, if we can’t read what’s on the board, we can zoom in on any part of the board and read it; again, without interrupting the instructor.”

The cooperation of the two physics departments will find UA on the receiving end of the Internet feed in the future. “Next fall we expect that UAB will offer biophysics, a course we are not able to teach because it is not one of our specializations,” Jones said. “As you might expect, it is a strength at UAB.”

Students who took the online physics course said they would take another course offered in this fashion.

“All in all, the ‘electronic’ aspect of the course is transparent,” Saperstein said. “Nothing is lost. I’ve learned every bit as much as I would have, had I been physically present in the classroom with the instructor, but now he can’t hear us when we make jokes.”

UA’s department of physics and astronomy is housed in the College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest public liberal arts college in the state, with approximately 5,500 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students. The College has received national recognition for academic excellence, and the College’s students have been selected for many of the nation’s top academic honors, including 13 Rhodes Scholarships, 14 Goldwater Scholarships, seven Truman Scholarships, and 15 memberships on USA Today’s Academic All-American teams.