Teaching

The Open Physics Hub promotes and implements innovative teaching initiatives at all levels of University education (Bachelor, Master, and PhD) related to the main OPH scientific activities.

The Open Physics Hub aims to promote significant innovations in the teaching activities carried out by the Department of Physics and Astronomy. In particular, a broadening of the teaching offer is planned through the introduction of new teaching methodologies, transversal competence and interdisciplinary topics. These will be embodied in the Master Degree program and in the PhD courses, where new teaching approaches will be tested as well.

As a first example, the Master Degree in Physics will be integrated with two new courses dealing with the development of transversal skills (entrepreneurship, project planning, team-working, communication and outreach), which are highly valued in the job market for Physics graduates.
Such innovative teaching will be conceived and realized with the goal of:

  • Bridging soft-skills already provided by other courses of the University of Bologna with the teachings of the Master Degree in Physics, so to offer different examples of integration between specific and transversal expertise to our students;
  • Addressing recommendations from social partners relative to the demand of specific skills in the job market;
  • Fulfilling the quality criteria defined for EU projects dealing with monitoring and support to teaching quality.

 

Furthermore, the Open Physics Hub will promote the opening of new specific courses in all the Master and PhD programs offered by DIFA to provide basic training in fields related to Advanced Sensing and High-Performance Computing. The first examples of such innovative teaching activities are given by the following courses, already available for the 2019/2020 academic year:

  • Computational Material Physics (Msc in Physics, Prof. Cesare Franchini): the course will make direct use of the OPH HPC cluster for lectures and laboratory activities
  • High-Performance Computing in Astrophysics and Cosmology (Msc in Astrophysics, Dr. Marco Baldi): the course will make direct use of the OPH HPC cluster for lectures and laboratory activities
  • Innovative Detectors (Msc in Pysics, Prof. Mauro Villa): the course will employ instruments hosted in the OPH Advanced Sensing Lab
  • Pattern recognition and Complex networks (Msc in Physics, Prof. Gastone Castellani and Prof. Daniel Remondini): the courses are focused on innovative computational approaches to data analysis and modelling.