KUCHING – A total of 30 people will take part in an “Active Learning Workshop in Science and Engineering” from 8 to 10 July, at Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus.
The workshop is funded by Swinburne University of Technology, the Asian Physics Education Network (ASPEN) and the UNESCO South East Asia regional office in Jakarta. It is designed to introduce participants to a technique called “Active Learning” where students are encouraged to actively engage in forming their own conceptual understanding of physics and engineering concepts.
The participants at the workshop come from Brunei Darulssalam, Cambodia, Timor Leste, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines and Thailand, and include representatives from UNESCO, ASPEN and institutions of higher learning from the Asian region.
Covering the topics of electronic and electric circuits, light and optics, heat and temperature, and linear mechanics, the workshop will be coordinated by Dr Alex Mazzolini, the Academic Leader for Physical Sciences in the Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences at Swinburne’s Melbourne campus and Professor David Sokoloff, an internationally recognized expert in active learning from the University of Oregon..
Dr Mazzolini, who is also the chair of the ASPEN Coordination Board and ASPEN National Point of Contact in Australia, has been in actively involved basic research and education development for over 20 years.
For more than two decades Professor Sokoloff, Professor of Physics at the University of Oregon, has conducted research into students’ basic understandings of physics. He has used the results of this research to develop an active learning strategy that can enhance students’ conceptual understanding in introductory physics courses.
This workshop is part of Swinburne University’s commitment to renewal of its education programs in science and engineering. It has funded two projects from its Australian Government Learning and Teaching Performance Fund (LTPF).
These two projects aim to introduce Active Learning (AL) into several of the University’s first year level subjects in Science and Engineering. Part of these LTPF projects involves running several Active Learning Workshops (ALWs) for Swinburne staff and other interested academics. An ALW was held at Swinburne University’s Hawthorn Campus in Melbourne in January last year.