IU Southeast’s Forinash launching environmental physics class via VIC

By Lisa Denlinger

To help expand the selection, Kyle Forinash, a physics professor at IU Southeast, is developing a course on environmental physics for delivery this fall long distance.

P310 Environmental Physics is required for students seeking certification as high school physics teachers at IU Southeast. Students on other campuses, Forinash said, might be attracted to the course as an elective. The course shows how physics concepts apply to such timely environmental issues as energy production, energy storage and global warming.

Students in the course will meet during regularly scheduled sessions once or twice a week via the Virtual Indiana Classroom (VIC) Network, IU’s interactive videoconferencing network. During these face-to-face meetings, students will pose questions and share projects on which they are working. “I’ve always run this course as a seminar that emphasizes discussion and minimizes lecture,” said Forinash, “and the VIC Network will allow us to maintain that ability to spontaneously interact.”

Between classes, students will engage in discussions, explore Web resources, complete assignments and take quizzes using Oncourse, an IU-supported, on-line course management software.

“The Web offers a wealth of resources,” said Forinash. “The U.S. Department of Energy Web site, for example, is just packed with information. Part of what I want students to learn in the course is how to comb through the vast amounts of information available on the Web and tease out information that is both useful and trustworthy.”

Forinash is developing the course with funding from the IU Office of Distributed Education. He will teach the course and is looking forward to asking faculty from other campuses to make guest appearances.

“Technology makes it possible to give students access to a wider range of expertise and allows them to benefit from other instructors’ perspectives. It allows them to meet, and learn from, their peers throughout the state. And it engages students and allows them to interact in meaningful ways.

“The most appropriate use of technology is to allow you to do something you couldn’t do otherwise,” said Forinash. “In this case, it’s allowing us to offer statewide a course that wouldn’t otherwise be available on some campuses.”

A Web page created by students in Forinash’s past environmental physics classes can be accessed at:

http://physics.ius.edu/~kyle/P310/Environmental.html

Complete course information is available on the Web:

http://www.indiana.edu/~iude/campuscoord.html