HIGHLIGHT MISCONCEPTIONS IN PHYSICS: A T.I.M.E. PROJECT Matteo Bozzi 1 , Patrizia Ghislandi 2 , Kazuhiko Tsukagoshi 3 , Mami Matsukawa 3 , Motoi Wada 3 , Naoto Nagaoka 3 , Alexey B. Pnev 4 , Andrey A. Zhirnov 4 , Gwenaëlle Guillerme 5 , Maurizio Zani 1 1 Department of Physics, Politecnico di Milano (ITALY) 2 Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, Università degli Studi di Trento (ITALY) 3 Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Doshisha University (JAPAN) 4 SEC "Photonics & IR-technology", Bauman Moscow State Technical University (RUSSIAN FEDERATION) 5 T.I.M.E. Association (FRANCE) Abstract Since the early 1970s it has been pointed out that many higher education students have a fairly large number of mistaken ideas on some Physics topics. Indeed, the term “misconceptions” was introduced for the first time in 1972. This theme is worthy of investigation in order to improve the students’ outcomes in basic Physics courses and to tackle the issue of the growing number of dropouts. Consisting of three main stages closely connected with each other, our research aims at identifying, comparing and overcoming the most significant and widespread misconceptions shown by first-year university students enrolled for engineering, in relation to their basic knowledge of Physics, with specific reference to Mechanics, Thermodynamics and Electromagnetism. It is being developed by Politecnico di Milano [ITA] along with Doshisha University [JAP] and Bauman Moscow State Technical University [RUS], which offer Physics and Engineering courses, as well as with Università degli Studi di Trento [ITA], which provides pedagogic support. First of all, data about the above mentioned misconceptions were gathered by each technical institution through the use of an ad hoc test, which consisted of 12 multiple choice quizzes administered to about 750 students attending the 7 courses globally involved in the research. Hence, misconceptions related to the main macro-areas were further classified according to specific headings, i.e. kinematics, heat engine, electric field, among others. Secondly, the misconceptions expressed by the students attending the different universities involved in the research were compared. They appear to be broadly widespread among the freshmen, with Electromagnetism being the macro-area where the students’ results are the worst. Throughout the third and final stage of our study, a trial video has been produced to enable students to overcome some significant misconceptions. Keywords: Physics misconceptions, Higher Education, Open Educational Resources. 1 INTRODUCTION The freshmen who attend a university basic Physics course do not start with a clean slate [1] but rather with their own personal view and interpretative schemas of many physical phenomena. Indeed, they attend the lectures taking with them the ideas and concepts which they have accrued from their previous learning and experience. Unfortunately, since the early 1970s it has been pointed out that a lot of these higher education students’ ideas on some Physics topics are incorrect [2, 3, 4]. With relation to these erroneous viewpoints, the term “misconceptions” was introduced for the first time in 1972 [5] in the context of a research focused on elementary school children. Defined as ideas at variance with recognised views [6] or dissimilar from the ones generally acknowledged by scientists [7], misconceptions can be classified into the following categories [8]: a) preconceived notions, which are widespread understandings embedded in daily experiences; b) non-scientific believes, consisting in interpretative schemas learned from non-scientific sources; c) conceptual misunderstandings, characterised by the fact that the students construct defective models by themselves without any external influence; Proceedings of INTED2019 Conference 11th-13th March 2019, Valencia, Spain ISBN: 978-84-09-08619-1 2520