Australia currently has an acknowledged shortage of physics trained high school teachers, leading to many teachers teaching out of area. In 2018 I introduced a graduate certificate in Physics for Science Teachers to help science teachers learn physics and become qualified to teach it.
The degree consists of four courses taken sequentially, PHYS9110: Everyday Physics for Teachers, PHYS9120: Mechanics for teachers, PHYS9130: Electromagnetism for teachers, and PHYS9140: Thermal and Modern Physics for teachers. The design of the degree has been student focused, with material created with the needs of practicing teachers in mind. Examples of this include giving details of how to conduct demonstrations and experiments, opportunities to share teaching resources, and references made to where the topics occur in school syllabi. In order to achieve this input from teachers was vital. I have been a high school teacher so do have some first hand knowledge of what teachers need. Ingrid Mendes, our 2017 visiting teaching fellow (a high school physics teacher seconded to UNSW for a year) developed one of the courses, PHYS9130, and provided very valuable feedback and suggestions throughout the design process.
In the program the learning materials comprise of short videos, specifically made for each course, followed by questions to ensure the students have understood the material. These are presented through the Openlearning platform which was chosen because it encourages interactivity and is visually appealing. Using this platform also made it easy for us to set up short NESA accredited professional development courses using some of the materials developed for the graduate certificate. Online assessments are conducted through Moodle due to its more sophisticated quiz question types (STACK) and ability to use Turnitin.
In 2018 the degree was predominantly online, but included three face-to-face weekends where students conducted experiments at UNSW. These weekends were hard for rural students to attend and so in 2019 the degree was converted to be entirely online. Experiments are now conducted at the teacher’s schools and written reports are submitted for marking. Teachers can sit the final exam at UNSW or under invigilated conditions at their school.
The program started small with four students completing in 2018, in 2019 nine students completed. Feedback from past students has been very positive, with some students being offered permanent positions due to completing the degree.
I presented a connections seminar titled "Design, Development and Delivery of an Online degree" about this degree on June 25th 2018, resources can be found here: https://teaching.unsw.edu.au/connections-25-june-2019 . In this connections seminar I talk about the design process and considerations I used to develop this degree program. I have also presented talks on this at GIREP and the AIP summer meeting in 2019.
If you are interested in seeing what the course is like you see the learning materials for the second course in this degree by going here: https://www.openlearning.com/courses/ and then using the enrollment key "Mechanics" (do not include the quotation marks!).
