No magic wand for teaching physics
Résumé
Teaching physics is about pedagogy, didactics, but mainly physics. The university physics teacher, being most of the time also a researcher, devotes a large fraction of his time to preparation of courses, exercises, lab work. The pedagogical questions are often felt as the realm of specialists, or too time consuming, leading to the easy option of leaving those questions implicit. Is it possible to improve our teaching without becoming experts in didactics ? At the physics group of the Université de Savoie, we experimented a few techniques and options, with the help of experts in pedagogy. Among others, we will describe the use of the online teaching platform WIMS that allows random exercises, has a large choice of interaction methods and a formal engine; the use of videos of physics courses to be viewed online; experiments in tutorial classes; the use of audience response devices (clickers), in connection to active learning. We are also experimenting some efficiency measuring tools (concept inventories). Finally, we started recently experimenting a flipped classroom. We hope that each and everyone of our colleagues will find a set of tools that suits his/her sensitivity