Using SToMP for Teaching in a Small Group

Abstract

The SToMP project (Software Teaching of Modular Physics) has created computer based teaching and learning materials for topics in physics, with a pedagogic style that is based upon distance learning principles. The material has been produced by a collaboration between staff from several different universities, and includes many interactive models, scripts, pictures, diagrams, a glossary, biographies, text book sections, problems, self and assessed tests as well as a set of software tools for data analysis and display. This case study concerns the use of SToMP materials as part of the formal delivery of a first year acoustics specialist course during the 1997/8 session in the Physics Department at the University of Surrey, UK. This was the third year in which SToMP had been used in this way, but it was the first time that the assessed tests had been used to provide any part of the formal assessment of the course.