Physics teacher training students’ understanding of Gauss’s law of electricity by a blended learning course

Source abstract

The implementation and evaluation of an interactive blended learning scenario on Gauss’s law of electricity for the experimental physics course on electrodynamics for physics teacher trainees is presented. The course meets the needs of teacher trainees’ tightly timed study program by providing the necessary mathematical knowledge via seminars that run alongside the physics lectures. During the intervention, students become increasingly confident in their calculation skills required to apply Gauss’s law of electricity. A post-intervention concept test shows that students have a good knowledge of working with closed surfaces when applying Gauss’s law of electricity. However, conceptual difficulties regarding the recognition of symmetries of charge distribution and the tendency to incorrectly transfer the model of conductive hollow bodies to insulators prove difficult to overcome for the students. Therefore, we recommend clearly distinguishing between the properties of conductors and insulators when an external electrical field is applied. The direct comparisons of their properties can be facilitated, e.g., by conducting experiments observing the shielding of the electric field by various conducting and insulating materials.