Dr. John Debs' Application Support Material

for an Australian Award for University Teaching: Award for Teaching Excellence

In 2012 I co-developed, from first principles using my teaching philosophy, the first-year Foundations of Physics course at ANU. I have continued to independently grow this service course since 2014 with increasing student numbers. I frequently adapt, evaluate, and innovate my teaching practise in this course. For many students, this course is one of the first they will take at university, and often their only Physics course.

Below is a summary of media, data, and documents directly related to my teaching in this course, that support my award application.

PHYS1001 Classroom Video Collage

Survey Responses

Below is a selection of survey response summaries, run with the independent help of the ANU Science Teaching and Learning Centre

Example Lab Video Summaries

Below are just two of nearly 1000 videos produced by my students, as a way to report on their inquiry-based labs. There are too many to choose from, with many of similar quality. These highlight a very recent video, and one of the first produced. These students typically have not made videos before.
The new electric train lab introduced in 2017, and an example student video.
Watch Dennis discuss the conservation of energy in the first year I started using video summaries, 2015

Class Facebook Page

Since 2014, I have used a Facebook Group to facillitate the continued interaction between students, between students and tutors, and students and myself. This works extremely well as most are on Facebook, with people helping and teaching each other. The Group can only be joined by ANU members, so below is a PDF summary of the 2017 page.

2017 Facebook Group Summary