ON THE USE OF AUDIOVISUAL RESOURCES TO MOTIVATE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS IN THE SUBJECT OF PHYSICS

Physics has the reputation of being a difficult and useless subject among first year students at the University of Cadiz (Spain) Nautical and Maritime Transport BSc degree. Hence, a Teaching Innovation Project was carried out during the first semester of the academic year 2015-2016 aimed at showing students how Physics can explain numerous quotidian situations and specific events related with their discipline, with the objective of motivating them to study. The project included selecting a collection of short-duration videos freely available in Youtube showing common situations related with particular topics within the subject. The selected videos were played at the beginning of the lesson in a Flipped Classroom style and students were asked if they knew how to explain what they saw. A few minutes later, the lecturer clarified what the video was exhibiting within a Physics point of view and proceeded to illustrate the pertinent laws and equations. The experiment revealed that, when a video was used as an introduction to the topic, students paid more attention to the lesson. Furthermore, as the semester drew on, many students started enjoying the subject because some lessons explained situations that they had experienced themselves. Finally, with a more motivated and hence focused audience, the lectures could be taught with an optimal learning pace.