Re: Squeezing time or squeezing students

[Jerry Lisantti <lisantti@beta.centenary.edu>]

I have had the fortune of teaching Conceptual Physics in the summer where
we meet every day for 4 hours.  This has worked wonderful since the lab
and lecture are intermixed.  You lecture for awhile then do a lab project
(some of which take only and hour or so), then you discuss the lab
results.  I find this mixture of lab and lecture to work very well.
During the academic year the class meets twice a week(about 90 minutes a
class) and once for the lab.  The lab is schedule right after one of the
class meetings. The lab is 3 hrs. However in the future I am going to
schedule the course again for 2 meetings a week but the lab will meet
right each class for 90 minutes each time.  This will allow for the
mixture of lab and lecture.  Some of our Biology courses are like this and
those faculty members feel better about mixing lab and lecture than just
the straight lecture  and a 3 hr lab during the week.  We are thinking
about doing this sort of scheduling for all our freshman physics courses.

On Wed, 6 Aug 1997, Jerry Hester wrote:

> In trying to change the labs here I tend to think that it would be
> really nice to have 3 hour labs rather than the current 2 hours.  This
> seems to me that it would allow time for some discovery learning and
> possibly even time that students could do some actual writing.  I also
> would prefer the current 24 student cap on section enrollment.  
>
> The problem is there are not enough hours in the week to allow enough 3
> hour sections of 24 students.
>
> So would it be better to go with 3 hour sections of 30 students or the
> current 2 hour sections of 24?
>
> -- 
> Jerry Hester                      Email:    jhester@mtu.edu
> Dept. of Physics                  Phone:    (906) 487-2273
> Michigan Technological University Fax:      (906) 487-2933
> 1400 Townsend Drive	
> Houghton, Michigan  49931-1295