A hypercard based environment for the constructivist teaching of Newtonian physics

Many students have severe difficulties in successfully gaining a good understanding of Newtonian Mechanics. They exhibit deep misconceptions, many of which have developed as pre-instructional ideas on the subject in order to explain observed phenomena and experience. We have been developing a series of computer based systems to address this problem by presenting the learner with flexible routes of learning to help elicit, restructure and understand the concepts involved. The systems are based on our previously described theories of the application of Hypermedia to allow constructivist approaches to learning. We are committed to developing usable, inviting and self-paced packages that allow for individual differences, and levels of communication for students. The system is constructed using off-the-shelf multimedia authoring tools, that allow non-programmers to build educational packages that take account of soundly based theories of learning.