A Blended, Multimodal Access Etextbook in Computational Physics Factors and Processes for Creating an Etextbook Blended Courses

O ur goal in educational development is to stimulate a systemic change in collegelevel curricula, in which science and computation are better integrated, which in turn better prepares students and improves learning. By creating textbooks in computational physics (CP), we can advance the integration of modern computational techniques into physics courses.1 Because faculty members often report that they don’t feel knowledgeable enough to teach a multidisciplinary subject like CP, our textbooks provide adequate materials to help them teach courses incorporating computation even with varying levels of experience. Figure 1a illustrates the problemsolving paradigm of science at the core of computat ional research, which is used to structure our books. It symbolizes the essence of computational scientific thinking (we must understand the mathematical and computational basis of algorithms as well as the physical theory to have all three work together successfully). We encourage students to be creative as they work on a series of projects. In this way, students become actively engaged and emotionally involved with the materials as they experience the excitement of personal research. This approach also helps them take pride in their work, become familiar with a large number of techniques and tools, acquire confidence in making different project pieces work together, and learn valuable job skills. From a pedagogical perspective, education following the problem-solving paradigm is a more balanced, effcient, and relevant approach than often found in standard physics curriculum. Although students might have to take fewer physics classes to make room for computation, they learn the physics, CS, and math better when placed in context, which increases the learning process’s efficiency and effectiveness. Individual students learn in different ways, so it’s essential for learners to form mental models to understand abstract subjects, such as physics.2–5 Using multiple senses to interact with the materials improves the ability to form these mental models (the reader’s brain is more activated when there are more ways to view the material), resulting in better learning.6 Thus, an eTextBook makes sense for learning computational science. It’s been shown that interacting with a computer and a textbook in a trial-anderror mode—as opposed to lectures and readings—is a better way to learn how to compute, think reflectively, and write.7–10 Because our textbook is about computational science, it’s particularly effective for our eTextBook to integrate the simulation, multimedia, and networking capabilit ies of a computer.