Interactive Learning's PhysicsTutor Excalibur is a piece of educational science software designed to tutor students enrolled in a high school or basic college physics course. This is not a stand-alone, comprehensive course, but rather a tool to help students practice for multiple-choice tests as well as supplement and review their course learning.
PhysicsTutor Excalibur is set up like a big, multiple choice test—a test with feedback and hints and instruction all built in. The program functions like this: You start on a screen with 20 chapter topics to choose from. From there you're taken to the first multiple choice question for that topic. You can attempt to answer it, or you can click on "Learn" to see a brief tutorial on the question's concept. If you're still unsure how to answer the questions, click on "Explanation" to see more information and hints specific to the exact question you're trying to answer. Almost all of this information is text based. At any point along the way, you can also see your results—the number of questions you've answered and which ones you've answered correctly.
The major teaching tools here are multiple choice questions and text-based explanations. While some of the instruction uses charts or simple graphics to illustrate a point, the application lacks a wide variety of teaching tools for different learning styles. This is somewhat forgivable, in part, because the main point of PhysicsTutor Excalibur is not to teach, per se. It is a practice tool, a tutoring tool to reinforce concepts a student has already learned (say, from a traditional course or textbook). It also allows students to practice answering multiple-choice test questions and to see what concepts they might not have completely understood.
One very nice feature of this educational science software is the tables of valuable information—constants, data and frequently used equations—that are just a click away from any screen. Having this reference material so easily available means that students won't have to flip franticly through a textbook or rummage through their notes to find oft-used information.
The topics that PhysicsTutor Excalibur covers are comprehensive and include:
- Displacement, Velocity & Acceleration
- Vectors & Projectile Motion
- Forces & Friction
- Energy
- Momentum
- Circular Motion & Gravitation
- Rotational Motion
- Waves
- Thermodynamics
- Electric Charge & Electric Fields
- Electric Circuits
- Magnetism
- Electromagnetism
- Light
- Lenses & Mirrors
- Physical Optics
- Relativity
- Quantum Physics
- Particle Physics (Standard Model)
For each topic, the application delivers approximately 25-35 randomly generated multiple-choice questions (though one had as many as 47) along with explanations for each answer.
PhysicsTutor Excalibur took less than five minutes to install. Pop in the disc, complete a couple of steps and you're good to go.
Once installed, the application is not terribly difficult to use. Most navigation happens through clearly-labeled buttons at the bottom of the screen. Pull down menus at the top also help you navigate, as do corresponding icons on a toolbar at the top of the page. However, it took some experimentation for us to figure out the icons, as they're function isn't immediately apparent from their graphic. This is indicative of the overall feel of this educational science software. It's functional, but not slick. The interface is kind of clunky and dated; in fact, the feel of it kind of reminded us of old DOS-based programs from the 80s. While none of this interferes with its actual educational value, some added niceties would be, well, nice.
We did encounter one small issue that does interfere with its functionality to some degree. Every single feedback box has to be acknowledged by hitting its OK button before you can do anything else. It would seem that a more intuitive program would assume the "wrong answer" feedback had been seen, and allow the user to move on to the next action he wanted to take—like getting further instruction on the topic. It's not a huge problem, but all the OK-clicking got a little tiresome after awhile.
Interactive Learning offers both an email and phone number for technical support on their website.
With its question-based tutoring, variety of topics, and text-based tutorials, PhysicsTutor Excalibur is a good choice in educational science software. Despite the dated feel of the interface, this application would likely be helpful for students in a high school or basic college physics course to supplement their learning. It might be especially useful for someone preparing to take a standardized test, such as an AP exam or college entrance exam that includes science questions.
