Physics education

Entry requirements

Minimum 2:1 (or equivalent) in BSc Physics or a related subject

Months of entry

October, February

Course content

The Physics Education Research Group brings together physicists with an interest in how students learn and a passion for improving their teaching. At the OU this research theme is inevitably concerned with the full range of educational technologies, pedagogical methodologies and evaluative techniques that are required to support, sustain and improve the evidence-based teaching of physics in a large and diverse organisation. Research students in this area are housed in the School of Physical Sciences while their projects are coordinated through the University’s recently founded eSTEeM centre for Educational Scholarship in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects. Areas of particular expertise are:

• online experimentation
• assessment and its links to learning
• physics education in an open and distance learning environment
• public engagement and physics outreach through a range of media.

An important and exciting driver of current and future activity is the establishment of the innovative Wolfson Open Science Laboratory at the OU, and the opportunities thereby provided to introduce and evaluate new methods of teaching laboratory skills and practical techniques in a virtual setting.

Potential supervisors

• Professor Nicholas Braithwaite - laboratory-based teaching and learning
• Professor Robert Lambourne - laboratory-based teaching and learning
• Professor Sally Jordan - assessment

Department specialisms

- Shared web-based representations to support learning - A critical assessment of remote experiments in science distance teaching.

Fees and funding

Please see The Open University website

Qualification and course duration

MPhil

PhD