learning
rallain | June 24, 2010The Louisiana Board of Regents is promoting a 'performance-based' funding model for the universities in the Louisiana system. In short, the funding each university will receive is based on:
The percent of students that graduate
Graduating more non-traditional students and minorities
Accepting and graduating more students that transfer from community colleges
Here is my main problem with this funding formula. Don't we want to do these things anyway? Isn't this suggesting that we are not trying to do these things and if we do try, we will get more funding. Actually, it is not about trying,…
drorzel | June 16, 2010Inside Higher Ed featured one of those every-so-often articles about the awesomeness of the demographic subgroup of the moment, this time Athur Levine's panegyric about "digital natives", who "grew up in a world of computers, Internet, cell phones, MP3 players, and social networking," and how they're too cool and tech-savvy for current universities:
They differ from their colleges on matters as fundamental as how they conceive of and utilize physical plant and time. For the most part, universities operate in fixed locales, campuses, and on fixed calendars, semesters and quarters with classes…
rallain | June 14, 2010Suppose there was an imaginary university. (is that statement redundant?) Let me call this TIU (The Imaginary University). Also, suppose TIU offers summer courses. Further, suppose there is an instructor teaching 2 sections of lab during the summer. Here is a communication that instructor might have received.
Dear Person Teaching a Summer Course:
It appears you are teaching 2 sections of lab. One lab only has 13 students enrolled in it. We have determined that it is not financially appropriate for us to give you a full course pay for this partially full lab. We are going to pay you 13/…
rallain | June 2, 2010This idea comes up every once in a while. The idea that an institution should remove its physics degree program because it doesn't produce enough majors. Right now, it is up again due to budget problems in our state.
I think the idea of removing low-completer programs is dangerous. It comes from administrators who like to think of the university as a business. If you are a business, and you want to save money - it seems obvious to cut things that don't produce as much 'product'. Really, this brings up several issues.
Is a university like a business?
I am going to go with "no". Let me…
rallain | May 27, 2010Sometimes (ok - just once) I get asked for recommendations about reading material on the ideas of teaching physics. I used to recommend Arnold Arons book on teaching introductory physics. Still, that is a classic and a great resource. However, there is a better one.
Teaching Physics with the Physics Suite - Edward Redish
Originally, this was kind of like the instructor's manual that went with one of the big name intro-physics books (maybe the new version of Halliday and Resnick). But this book is way more than an instructor's manual. What is even better is that it is online and free (see…
rallain | May 27, 2010Even though I have taught courses like this before (in a sense, my last physical science course was like this), I really don't like these courses. I will classify a "tell and repeat" course as one where the instructor tells the students stuff and then the students repeat this on the test. Look around, it happens a lot. But really, what is the point?
Here are some example questions from a tell and repeat course (most of these I have used in a course - when you point a finger, 4 are pointing back at yourself):
What is the difference between a meteorite, a meteor, and a meteoroid?
Which has…
rallain | May 25, 2010A note about the end of the semester (I really should have posted this a few weeks ago): sometimes I get students that come in and say they are not happy with their grade. It is not unusual for them to come in right before the test, but it seems more common to come after all the grades are finished. Here is a typical student:
"I really need a C (or D) in this class, but I have a 67%. Is there anything I can do to bring my grade up? Maybe I could do an extra project, or file some papers or wash your car?"
That is not one real student, but I have had students ask if they could file my…
rallain | May 20, 2010Grades are all over the place, but what are they? Well, I guess there are a few questions. What is a grade? What is the grade supposed to be? Why do we give grades?
I think the grade is supposed to be a measure of a students' understanding of the material. Probably everyone would agree with that description. But, it is still a bit tricky. Who (or what) determines what a student should understand? Who determines what an "A" means? Fortunately, there is not a governing body (yet at least in physics) that says what an "A" grade means. It is left up to the expert evaluations of faculty…
rallain | May 17, 2010And lo and behold. Another semester has ended. I was going to post about somethings from my physical science course (for non-science) majors. Then I noticed that both Ethan at Starts With a Bang! and Farady's Cage posted about their semester reflections. I vote that the academic blogging community make this a tradition.
This semester, I had 3 courses. Here is a brief overview of what I learned.
Physics for Scientists and Engineers II
This is the electricity and magnetism part of the intro physics course. As I said before, I used Matter and Interactions (Chabay and Sherwood). I am not…
jgoldman | May 12, 2010What is culture? One simple definition might be: a distinctive behavior shared by two or more individuals, which persists over time, and that ignorant individuals acquire through socially-aided learning.
There are at least four different ways to learn a particular behavior or problem-solving strategy. That is to say, there are four different ways to learn. The first is social facilitation, in which one individual does the same thing as the demonstrator at the same time. Essentially this is a situation of on-line matching of motor actions. For example, I might learn the steps to a complicated…
rallain | May 10, 2010This is a question that comes up every now in then. But I would like to ask a few similar questions with my first order approximation answers. I would love to hear some other ideas on these questions.
Do people need a functional understanding of math to function in this world?
I say no. Maybe this is not a popular answer, but this is my first answer. Let me give my reasons. What percent of people in this world have a functional understanding of math? (let me just say functional understanding means they can do basic word problems and understand what is going on) If I estimate this…
jgoldman | May 10, 2010...and what can word-learning in dogs teach us about the evolution of language in humans?
What is involved in the learning of a single new word? Consider the word "tiger", being learned by a child with already a modest vocabulary, at least for animal words. First the child must make a new entry in the mental lexicon - that "tiger" is a word in the first place. He has to categorize it as a noun. It has to be categorized under "animal" (a supernym) and related to its hyponyms, like "Sumatran tiger." Then, of course, the child has to learn what actual *thing* the word "tiger" refers to. Now,…
rallain | May 8, 2010I have one more comment about the previous MythBusters episode where they compared two cars crashing into each other at 50 mph vs. one car crashing into a wall at 100 mph. At the end of the episode, Jamie reflected on the experiment. He said something like (regarding how he incorrectly thought one car at 100 mph was the same as 2 at 50 mph):
"....that was a mistake. You know what? I am ok with that. That is how you learn stuff"
What a great attitude. I think this is something many students miss out on. Which is better, taking a class where you know everything and don't even need to…
rallain | May 4, 2010Really, I have many jobs. But in this case, I am talking about my two jobs inside my one job as learning facilitator. I like to call myself a learning facilitator rather than a teacher or a professor because I can't make people learn (that would be teacher). Professor would imply that I am professing the truth. Well, I don't know if anyone knows the truth in science - I am sure I don't. So, I am going to stick with learning facilitator (LF).
In my official role as a LF, my institution has actually assigned two jobs:
Help students learn (my words, not theirs)
Evaluate students'…
jgoldman | April 28, 2010Say you're visiting Los Angeles and you have a sudden craving for Chinese food. Since you are only visiting, you might not be aware that nothing is open past, like, 10pm (not even coffee houses), but you get in your rental car and go driving around in search of your Chinese feast anyway. You try hitting up Panda Express, but no such luck. Of course they're closed. You try the neighborhood Chinese restaurant: closed as well. You get back in the car, and think to yourself "maybe the OTHER Panda Express will be open", but alas, it is not. You are ready to return to the hotel and just go to sleep…
rallain | April 12, 2010I don't know.
One the one hand, it would seem that teachers (and really I am talking about grade school level and maybe middle school) need to be good an managing students. What should a teacher have to help students? I think the first big question is "what is going to happen in the classroom?" Let me take two extremes:
Lecture-traditional. Basically just your normal lecture.
Something else - for example stuff that high school physics/math/computer science teacher Shawn does.
Although I really don't know the answer, I am going to lean towards - teachers need some content expertise.…
rallain | April 7, 2010I gave the following question on my last physical science (physical science for non-science majors) test:
Block A has a mass of 10 kg and volume of 100 cm3. Block B has a mass of 1 kg and a volume of 1 cm3. Which block has the greater density? Which block has the greater volume?
The results of this question are interesting. Of the respondents, 33 answered both parts in a meaningful way. 8 of these 33 answered that the one with the greatest density had the greatest volume (that is 24%). Most of these 24% said that 1 cm3 was greater than 100 cm3. However, there were some that said the…
rallain | April 1, 2010ZapperZ (at Physics and Physicists) recently had a post about Chad (from Uncertain Principles). It was sort of a review of Chad's book How to Teach Physics to Your Dog.
In this post, ZapperZ makes a very Feynman-like distinction between "teaching physics" and "teaching about physics". This is a really good point - that to learn physics you have to do physics. I completely agree. It is just like riding a bike - you have to ride a bike to learn to ride a bike.
So here is the question. What do I do here on this blog? I don't know. Do I talk about physics? Yes? I do not teach physics -…
rallain | March 26, 2010I am teaching physical science this semester. It appears that I will be teaching it again this summer. Ideally, I would like to switch to something like Physics and Everyday Thinking for large lecture courses. A course like this is being developed, but it isn't quite finished. Also, the current version includes chemistry and physics. I really need something different (we offer physical science 101 is physics and 102 is chemistry).
The current course is pretty traditional. Your basic physical science stuff. It has the following content.
Forces and Motion
Newton's Laws
Projectile motion…
rallain | March 25, 2010Think Thank Thunk is a relatively new blog from Shawn Cornally, a high school math and science teacher. I have found his posts to be quite entertaining. In Shawn's latest post, he talks about grades. You know I like to talk about grades. Shawn puts teacher into two groups in regards to their ideas about grades:
"
Grades should reflect a student's progress with course material. Where an A+ indicates mastery.
Grades should be an amalgam of student's knowledge, behavior, and anything else the teacher wants to control.
"
I was in the middle of posting a comment to this post, but it was…