Leveraging the online environment to remove barriers to student learning in large first year foundation subjects

Abstract

This work is part of a larger three year project aimed at disseminating good practice in online learning and teaching throughout the Faculty of Science at The University of New South Wales (UNSW). Dissemination is based on a template Blackboard Vista site created for a large first year Materials Science course (Allen, Crosky, McAlpine, Hoffman and Monroe, 2006). A project group comprising members of several schools in the Science Faculty has been formed to manage the overall project and project funds have been used to employ an educational developer to work with academic teaching staff to modify and implement the template into courses from different schools across the faculty. The focus of the group is on large classes with a view to getting maximum impact (improved outcomes for the largest number of students). Fundamentals of Physics is one of the first courses to modify and implement the template as part of this project.