Physics From a Researcher's Point of View - A brief history of an experiment in innovating education in STEM
5 years and 9 months ago I have started an experiment: I have offered Max D. Fryer , my student at that time, to run weekly after school sessions on special relativity together. This marks the beginning of PhysicsBeyond and the course Physics From a Researcher's Point of View.
One and a half years later students from another local school started attending the still in-class sessions at that time. When the first COVID lockdown struck, I decided to move the course to online sessions using Teams. This has made it possible for many more students to participate. I was also able to gain my first international students Monica Sing , Khyathi . and Dhruve Dahiya .
Last year about 100 students contacted me showing interest in participating. However, with so many students the original format of the interactive live sessions didn't work anymore; in particular, as students kept contacting me months after the course has started. Many of the students dropped out after one or two sessions. It's been very frustrating!
Reflecting on the past years I also realised that, despite students enjoying the course a lot, only very little learning has been taking place. Students simply didn't engage with what we have discussed outside the sessions; the price being forgetting of both knowledge and skills. My experiment was on the verge of failing. Structural change was needed, if I wanted to turn things around.
It was at that time I took the most able and most committed students of the cohort and started the BeyondResearch programme with them. This programme is now in its second year. It is very demanding and students have to work very hard for this; but those who have persevered can see their tremendous progress and do value it a lot.
Running BeyondResearch is close to my heart and takes a lot of my time. However, it does limit the reach of PhysicsBeyond to a very small amount of students. It is not easily scalable. I didn't want to simply abandon Physics From a Researcher's View and I wanted to reach more students willing to learn and educate themselves in physics and maths.
Inspired by my friend Niklas Steenfatt , and the reach and impact he has had with his YouTube channel changing the lives of some of his dedicated viewers who made the effort to put his good advice into practice, I decided to eventually listen to the advice given by my very good friend Florian Rieger years ago and develop a YouTube format for Physics From a Researcher's Point of View.
领英推荐
After lots of thinking, research and work behind the scenes, an online format of Physics From a Researcher's Point of View is finally ready! (Check out the launch here.)
Yes, it is yet another experiment! It remains to be seen whether it will work and facilitate learning. The nature of YouTube is such that I do expect the majority of viewers to simply use it as yet another piece of edutainment. However, I also hope that it will eventually reach people, who will use the opportunities engineered within and around the course to engage properly and truly learn. May it help them to shape their (and our!) futures in a positive way!
As always in the world of the internet and social media, the premise is to have reach. This is where I would like to ask you, dear reader, to help me spread the word so everyone around the Globe, who might be one of those students to significantly benefit from the course, will know about it and can make an informed decision whether to make use of this opportunity, or not.
If you agree that the Physics From a Researcher's Point of View course is something worthwhile, please either share the course page, the PhysicsBeyond website, the YouTube channel, the launch post on LinkedIn or this article. If you like the idea of PhysicsBeyond, please stay connected by following us on LinkedIn. Many thanks for your time, your interest and your support! ??
(Last but not least, if you happen to understand German, you should definitively check out Niklas's channel!)