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1.IntroductionThe World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak the COVID-19 pandemic on 11 March 2020. In response to the call, Malaysia enforced the Movement Control Order (MCO) nationwide in 18 March 2020. Under this regulation, all educational institutions were closed. This sudden situation demanded a change in a curiculum delivery. Vibrations, Waves and Optics (VWO) is a course offered to teacher trainees at Sultan Idris Education University. The teacher trainess enrolled in Bachelor of Education program in Science and Physics. One of the outlined course learning objectives is “to perform laboratory exercises and report writings”. The course was in the middle of semester at time of the enforcement was announced, which was on week 5 out of 14 weeks of face-to-face session. Therefore, an alternative assessment to achieve the learning objective must be designed to avoid learning progress. A series of at-home experiments was quickly designed to fulfil the learning objectives. One of such experiments is the inverse square law of light. 2.Action ResearchWhen we planned the experiment, the main concern was “How can we support student experiment effectively to achieve learning objective in the new norm of learning?”. At that time of planning, we do not know when the pandemic will be over. At the time of writing this article (June 2021), our university is still running on the off-campus mode. Curriculum delivery is made mainly via on-line method. We embraced action research based on McNiff model to guide our instructional practice [1]. The model involves six processes: Observe – Reflect – Act – Evaluate – Modify – Move in new directions. This cyclic process is also generally known as the action-reflection cycle. We describe the process in the following subsections. 2.1ObserveDue to the sudden change in curriculum delivery, we had a very short time to design the experiment. Several challenges were taken into consideration. (1) Smartphone usage for science activity measurement. (2) Resource availability (3) Time allocation. (4) Method of assessment. Generally, a standard in-campus session for a work takes at least two hours in a collaborative group of four students under instructor supervision. The lab work involves the same sets of instruments and apparatus. Students must submit their report a week after the lab session. 2.2ReflectBased on the identified limitations, we reflect on our practice for the new norm. We believed that a simplified version of a standard experiment using available resources at home could be an alternative for students to fulfil learning objectives. While some instructors opt for using computer simulation to replace labwork, we think doing real experiments is essential to prove and grasp physical concepts. [2] 2.3ActWe designed a simple experiment to relate the light intensity at a point and the distance of the point from the light source using a smartphone. Modern smartphones are equipped with various sensors usable for science experiment such as sound sensor using microphone, light sensor using ambient sensor and video tracking analysis using camera [3]. The submitted report must consist of standard lab report components (abstract, introduction, methodology, analysis, conclusion) in pdf form. To get an insight into what they feel about the task, we required students to add a component: reflection. This component allows us to access room for improvement in our instructional delivery. The at-home experiment was a group task. Therefore, students work collaboratively with geographically apart. On-line communication is the primary mean to make them together. Five weeks were given for the task accomplishment. We support them asynchronously by text, image, voice, or video message that student leaves to us during the period. 2.4EvaluateAfter the submission period, we summarize key observation to improve our instruction.
2.5ModifyBased on the observations reported above, we made some modification to our instruction.
2.6Move in new directionsIn the second semester of the implementation of the at-home experiment, we received less technical questions from student. Two cycles of action-reflection had fulfilled our concern. The report that students submitted were in higher quality, based on the graph they plotted and data analysis they reported. We were satisfied that students can perform their task with minimum remote supervision form us. The experience we gain in designing this experiment is useful to improve our instructional strategy in conducting a remote experiment. 3.3.ReferencesJ. McNiff, Writing Up Your Research Project, Taylor& Francis, New York: Routledge
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