Welcome to the Homepage of the Physics Education Research Group at the Open University.
We are a large and diverse group of people with a common interest in finding out more about how physics students learn and how we can teach them more effectively. The Group was formed early in January 2000, and brings together people from a number of different areas of the University. Some of us are physics academics and course managers, others are educational technologists and others are software developers, but we have all been involved with developing and evaluating physics courses and learning materials. Our interests span a wide range of topics, and include:
• teaching and learning 'difficult' physics concepts
• the use of modern educational technologies for teaching and learning physics
• developing physics problem-solving skills
• the use of web-based experiments and simulations, particularly interactive screen experiments, to develop practical work skills
• development of mathematics skills for physics students
• students learning from diagrams and other representations
• context-based and problem-based learning
For the forseeable future, most of the activity of the group will be based in the piCETL (follow this link for more details)
