Jerry,
It sounds like an interesting idea and if I am ever up your way,
I would like to stop by and observe this. However, I hesitate to throw
students into a design course without some experience first. Where I
went to school (University of Rochester) and where I am now (University
of Tennessee), the introductory labs were recipe (or scripted) labs,
while the upper level labs were design labs. I teach lab for the
physics majors and try to point out the overall common elements of the
labs, i.e. calibration measurements, etc. Hopefully they will learn
these things and then be able to recognize the need for them later.
I also believe what you are doing is similar with what I do with
one of my labs, that is pose questions that can only be answered by the
students figuring out what measurements and calculations to do. I do it
toward the end of the semester though.
If you are teaching engineering, then you may also want to try
to teach with group projects. I have the physics majors form
mini-collaborations that work almost like the real ones do. Group work
is important in industry (as seen in Dilbert cartoons). I hope to
submit a paper to the Physics Teacher in Spring on it, but the graduate
work is keeping me pretty busy (damn thesis). 8-)
Just some random thoughts and my $0.02. Keep up the good work
and make those engineers eanr the grade like the money they will when
they graduate.
Sam Held
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Hester [mailto:jhester@mtu.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 1998 1:30 PM
To: phys-l@atlantis.cc.uwf.edu
Subject: Physics Laboratory Design
How do you deal with student attitudes regarding physics laboratories?
We at Michigan Tech. have over the past year completely redesigned our
introductory labs. We are going to "discovery" labs as a prerequisite
for the regular physics course. We use Pasco Scientific data
acquisition systems, experiment equipment, and sensors. The laboratory
operation is the following:
Students have guide writeups for exercises.
Just doing the activities and answering questions posed in the writeup
is considered minimal and recieves minimal credit.
The expectation is that students will go beyond what is on the
writeup(pose problems and make relevant measurements).
Labs are 1hr. 50min. long. Lab writeups are generally designed so that
most will be done with the minimum within 1hr. 15min. Students are
expected to utilize remaining time to extend, evaluate, and maybe
redo(tweek the system) where deemed desirable.
Students are expected to arrive on time.
Students recieve credit for efforts up to a maximum.
The problems:
A not insignificant portion of students refuse to accept that we are not
taking anything away in grading, but are rather giving credit. They
can't seem to accept that they don't start out with an A, but must earn
it first.
A large number of students dislike having to stay in lab through the
alotted time. They want to race through the writeup and leave. (We
allow them to leave early but remind them that we will not be able to
give them the maximum credit).
Our students are primarily engineering. When they are done here, they
will go to work at a multitude of engineering companies.
Will they start work at a maximum salary and recieve deductions like
points?
Will they be allowed to leave work early because they finished a minimum
task?
Any suggestions, comments, Help?
--
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