Srbuhi Yolchinyan
About Srbuhi Yolchinyan
Srbuhi Yolchinyan is originally from Armenia and moved to the United States to pursue a Master's in Physics from UTRGV. She has been working as a lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy since graduation. She has a BS in Chemistry from Armenian State Pedagogical University. This degree provides her with an intimate understanding of the challenges non-Physics majors could face when taking Physics classes.
Course Redesign Project and Experience
Ms. Yolchinyan completely redesigned her General Physics course to move away from traditional course materials and adopt an OpenStax Open Educational Resources. These openly licensed College Physics resources allowed her the opportunity to redesign her course and all her lectures. She also created new PowerPoint slides and designed homework assignments that are completely free for students. The freely available textbook from OpenStax allowed her to move away from costly traditional textbooks and homework assignment websites. Her students were happy to use the OpenStax textbook and lecture materials that are freely available to them. They were also happy to have homework that was completely free of cost.
Reflections
Initially, Ms. Yolchinyan was hesitant to adopt OER textbooks. She was not sure how the quality of free textbooks would compare to traditional textbooks. However, after an initial review of the College Physics textbooks from OpenStax, she decided that the cost savings for her students far outweighed the efforts spent creating lecture materials from scratch. The experience was positive and provided her the opportunity to implement creative and fresh ideas into her course. She felt very fulfilled by the entire process.
Srbuhi Yolchinyan Contact Information
- Office: BINAB 2.131
- Phone: (956) 882-6779
- Email: srbuh.yolchinyan01@utrgv.edu
