Open Access

The Proceedings of the 12th PTEE conference 2024 in Rosenheim present 15 articles from a wide range of actual topics in physics teaching – from artificial intelligence, innovative teaching and examination methods, lab experiments, tutorials to thoughts on what would be desirable to know, when you start teaching (activating) physics.

The benefits of activating teaching methods are promoted by many colleagues and have been proven by numerous studies. Nevertheless, experienced instructors often do not switch to those methods in their teaching, and first-time lecturers start with traditional instead of activating methods. This article is aimed at (future) educators who are thinking about implementing such methods, as well as experienced ones and educational support staff who wish to provide support for their colleagues. This report is based on personal experience, (free-response) evaluations, standardized tests, and literature. It shows, which factors supported the introduction of and transformation to activating teaching methods, which made it difficult, and which would have been helpful. It is demonstrated why a changeover is worthwhile for physics educators despite possible risks and setbacks.

We present how a teaching unit can be designed to teach the scientific method. To understand how scientific progress happens, it is necessary to understand the fundamental process by which science generates new knowledge. Teaching the process from observation, hypothesis, prediction, experiment/thought experiment, testing and possibly revising the hypothesis to a theory poses several challenges for the teacher. We will show how we let our students carry out this process themselves in a teaching unit of 1.5 hours.

Research on the teaching and learning of physics has identified specific conceptual and reasoning difficulties that often prevent students from developing a functional understanding of various topics taught in introductory physics courses. There is evidence that instructional materials that take into account such difficulties and prompt students to critically assess their own understanding can improve student learning. In this paper Tutorials in Introductory Physics are introduced, a set of materials intended to supplement the lecture, textbook, and laboratory of standard introductory physics courses for students in physics, engineering, and other fields. The Tutorials in Introductory Physics were originally developed by Lillian McDermott and the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington. They have been translated into other languages, including Spanish, Greek and German. In addition, they have served (and continue to serve) as a model for the development of instructional materials for other STEM subjects, such as electric circuits and engineering mechanics. We discuss various aspects of incorporating the Tutorials into a typical course and possible issues associated with their implementation.

Lithography is the workhorse for the global semiconductor industry. At the Applied Physics department of our institute, we have developed course-based projects in which we train physics students lithography skills that are valuable for a career in Europe’s growing semiconductor industry. In this article, I will present the lithography facility at our institute, where students develop lithography processes for the fabrication of microstructures. I will show two examples of lithography projects that provided students the opportunity to grow towards competent, skillful lithographers. I will stress that universities of applied sciences in Europe need microtechnology facilities and competence centres that are embedded in Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem to power the workforce for its industry growth.