Preliminary study of integrated physics and mathematics bridging course.

Creating an environment to allow students to appreciate the linkage between subjects has been gaining increasing importance because interdisciplinary approaches are necessary to address socio-technological challenges. Subjects like Physics and Mathematics have often been taught as separate subjects. This results in students viewing various subjects as individual subjects, which is not ideal because there is no clear distinction between the subjects when dealing with real-life problems. For example, a number of students have a tendency to view Mathematics as only formula without applications, which result in them losing interest as they are unable to appreciate the vast number of applications that Mathematics can be applied in. In addition, it has been observed that a number of students are able to solve the Mathematics portion during Mathematics lesson, but are unable to evaluate similar Mathematics questions during Physics lessons. Hence, this paper proposes an integrated Physics and Mathematics learning and aims to help students establishing linkage between the two subjects. In order to achieve the learning objective of the students being able to appreciate the linkage between the two mentioned subjects, the syllabus is planned such that Physics is used as an application of Mathematics. The team has performed a preliminary study and implemented the proposed idea with a group of students in a bridging course. The bridging course is conducted for a duration of five days, whereby both Mathematics and Physics topics are covered. The students involved are incoming undergraduate students, and the data collected is analyzed. The preliminary results indicate a clear shift in enabling the students to appreciate the linkage between Physics and Mathematics Mathematics.