From: "JACK L. URETSKY (C) 1996; HEP DIV., ARGONNE NATIONAL LAB, ARGONNE, IL 60439" <JLU@hep.anl.gov>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 19:51:52 -0500 (CDT)
Hi Chris-
I did not have your experience when I introduced a "Mechanical
Universe" plus dialogue labs at a local community college. The students
who stayed became, almost invariably, strong advocates of the program.
Some of them, a couple of years later, still maintain contact.
I know what I did. I do not know, of course, the effectiveness
of the things that I did.
I emphasised from the first that I was teaching a "different
kind of course." I kept posted in the classroom Feynman's dictum:
"What I cannot create, I do not understand" (one F student asked me
"What if I don't agree with that?"). I gave the students a weekly
newsletter that included extra-credit problems and (no credit) puzzles.
Most of all effective, I think, were the dialogue labs, because they
put the students into makeshift support groups. I was amazed to find
later the time that the students had been spending in study groups.
In short, the plan of the course was to emphasize the superiority
of the approach that I was presenting over conventional approaches. The
payoff was that I made some friends as a result.
Regards,
Jack