How to do well in this course

Note

Credit for the original version of this document goes to Dr. Simon Bates from Physics 117 at UBC-Vancouver.

The material below has been used and adapted with his permission.

Introduction

Your success in this course depends to a large extent how you approach it, and how you engage with the activities, the materials and each other.
Here, we give you some ideas and advice on how to do well in the course that you might find useful as you embark on the course.
But before that, here are some key ideas about learning that we have used in designing this course activities and assessments:

Learning is a contact sport.

It’s not like watching a good movie, where you can just let it wash over you.
You have to engage to really learn; you have to struggle to learn.
It’s hard, it sometimes won’t make sense and it takes time and persistence.
You might have found learning (and passing exams) pretty easy to this point; university might well be very different.

Memorizing is not learning.

We won’t emphasize memorizing in this course. Every test you do, you can take in your own notes (we call these ‘open note’ tests).
So more important than remembering every single equation we will use, is knowing when to use which ones, how to use them to solve problems and evaluating if what you’ve calculated makes sense.

Understanding is learning and understanding should be your goal.

Can you explain an idea or a concept from this course to someone else in a way that they will understand it? And some time after you studied it? This is the acid test for learning and it is one reason why we place such a lot of value on interaction and communication with your peers in this course.

We’ll do lots of tests.

Why? Because research shows testing improves learning.
It might seem counterintuitive, but by taking a test, what we recall becomes more recallable in the future.
In a sense, you are practicing what you are going to need to do for the final, and more importantly for longer term retention of the skills you will learn in this class.

Ingredients for your success

Even with all these key ideas about learning, the most important ingredients need to come from you.
Here are some of the things we think you need to think about at the start of the course:

Plan

Spend some time thinking about how you are going to plan your work on this course.
It requires you to schedule 2-3 hours per week of self-study and outside-class time for pre-reading and practice.
Just turning up to lecture and tutorials will not be enough.
Lectures will not present material; they will reinforce and consolidate your understanding of it.
If you have never taken a course like this, you might consider thinking a bit more about how to best prepare for the classes.

Prepare

Read the material for this weeks pre-reading carefully ahead of the classes that follow.
Don’t skim it, don’t hunt for answers to the quiz; make notes and engage in discussions with your classmates on Piazza (or Discord) for things you don’t understand.
You need some basic familiarity or fluency with the content before we can make the most of the precious class time we have together.

Engage

Engage with us, with your peers and yourself.
Be an active learner; participate in face-to-face classes and online – discuss with peers, and ask questions.
Most of all, ask yourself ‘does this make sense?’ If it doesn’t, do something about it!

Practice

The way we assess most of this course will be on your ability to solve problems; numerical and conceptual ones.
So, solve problems as practice: lots of problems.
If the problems we set you are too easy, make up problems.
Practice not just solving but how to get started on problems.
Work with a problem solving strategy so you don’t have to say ‘I don’t know where to start’

Collaborate

Your peers are a fantastic resource for your understanding.
Don’t get isolated; form a study group, use Piazza and/or Discord , go to the Drop-in sessions.
Try not to fall behind (it’s hard to catch up if you do) but do talk to us if you really are struggling.

Be careful not to be complacent

Don’t be fooled by the familiarity of some of this material!
You may have seen most of it before.
This may lead you to expect that you have little new to learn here.
We found that students come with huge misconceptions about seemingly familiar ideas.
You need to be prepared to let go of them if you are to really master these foundations of the subject and this course.

Math

Ah yes, finally, math. You need a relevant math co-requisite for this course. We will assume that you are comfortable with the following (and can do them quickly and easily): scientific notation, unit conversions, order of magnitude estimates, significant figures, trig, algebra, sketching and interpreting graphs, basic differentiation (and a touch of integration too).
Early in the course, you will get a chance to diagnose any gaps in your own math knowledge.