General Physics courses are always included in the starting stages of Materials Science programs. Frequently, first-year students think that General Physics is a challenging subject, difficult to understand and tough to pass. At least this is quite a general feeling among students of Spanish universities. During the last decade, the authors of this contribution have been involved in lecturing General Physics courses of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). One of their goals has been to change this generalized belief and to make Physics more appealing to students, increase their motivation to learn and, consequently, improve their academic performance. For that purposes, some innovative strategies in agreement with science education trends were introduced. Firstly, the role of a formative evaluation via mandatory or optional quizzes at the end of every unit of the course was investigated, concluding that students passing the quizzes increased the probability of passing the course and obtained better final marks, regardless of whether the quizzes were mandatory or optional [1,2]. Later on, the strategy of performing simple demonstrations in the classroom was combined with online tests with the aim of detecting and correcting wrong preconceptions [3,4]. Questions related with the demonstrations in the mid-term exams confirmed that this strategy has a positive impact on the students’ learning process. Active methodologies like cooperative learning including peer instruction and/or flipped classroom were applied [5]. The overall opinion of the students is that this lecturing approach is useful and motivating, making the lectures more attractive and stimulating eagerness to understand Physics.
Going one step further, the current contribution introduces the idea of enhancing the self-learning capacity of the students. In some lectures, the students have studied topics on their own and answered questions using interactive handouts instead of having received the traditional lecture. It is important to emphasize that a proper feedback is required.