Re: Computers in the lab. /diatribe/

[Rick Tarara <rtarara@SAINTMARYS.EDU>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "brian whatcott" <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: Computers in the lab. /diatribe/


> At 10:12 9/4/00 -0400, Michael Edmiston wrote:
> > Each teacher has to decide whether each experiment succeeds best
> > (promotes learning) by computerizing data acquisition or by more
> > manual data acquisition.  Here are some of the ways I make that
>  decision....
>
> > Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
>
>
> I am forced to conclude then, that the evidence adduced for a
> particular style of student involved teaching/learning has been
> lacking in some way.
>  Here are some possibilities:
> 1) The evidence has not been widely visible
> 2) The evidence has been widely visible but non specific
> 3) the evidence has been widely visible but unconvincing due to
>  poor protocols
> 4) the evidence has been widely visible, specific, run with
> excellent protocols which are not understandable to a highly
> competent physics professor.

As teachers we have many different types of classes with different
pedagogical goals.  In some classes we are trying to prepare students TO BE
scientists and engineers, in others we want students to understand a few
basic principles so that they might teach these at the elementary or middle
school level, for others we want to convey the scope and importance of what
science does for them everyday,.....(add your own class and goals here)....
These differing goals might well require different educational approaches.

There is ample evidence that traditional teaching techniques (IN THE END)
produce very good scientists and engineers--that evidence being the
scientist and engineers who have come out of these programs.  Do we really
want to risk making radical changes in that curriculum without sufficient
evidence that the END product will be better (and it might well be, there
just isn't enough research, IMO, to prove this)?

On the other hand, there is also ample evidence that students in
introductory courses don't attain anything near the instructor's
understanding of fundamental concepts (such as Newton's Laws as assessed by
the FCI).  For many of the clientele listed above, this is certainly a
failing of traditional instruction and should be of serious concern.
However, for other clientele, scoring well on the FCI may not be of much
importance while the narrower coverage _usually_ dictated by many of the
'new' teaching techniques may be a detriment to the course's goals.

There is also the 'inversion' aspect of some of the new pedagogies that
needs to be considered.  That is, _some_ of the newer techniques essentially
do IN CLASS what we (many years ago) used to do outside of class (group
collaborations, discussing concepts, working through the notes to build
understanding, etc.) and then the gathering of information is left to the
students to do 'outside' the classroom.  This is somewhat built on the
nature of today's student, but probably on different theories of pedagogy as
well.  Just as in the past, _real_ success in this kind of course will
depend on how much time/effort the student really invests OUTSIDE the
classroom.  Do the statistics on student work habits give us an optimistic
picture here?  I'm not so sure.  Again, I am looking at the whole picture,
the final product, not the success or failure in one small area of the
curriculum.  I suspect that every 'teaching theory' in the list of 50 or
more that has been cited recently, has had research to back it up and new
techniques designed to accommodate the theory.  Few have met the test of
time, but that is not a condemnation of any single theory, just a call for
caution.  My _favorite 'pedagogical advancement' is the OPEN CLASSROOM
concept.  How many hundreds of millions of taxpayer's dollars went into
building and remodeling schools and then later remodeling again to put back
the walls?  I'm sure there was all kinds of research to show the advantages
of that system!

The point here is much the same as Dave Hamilton's (I started this earlier
but was interrupted by having to preside over a class).  It also seems to me
that the 'evidence' tends to be _specific_ to borrow from Brian's list, but
our goals are more general.  How the evidence applies to the whole
curriculum (especially for science and engineering students) remains, at
least to me, unclear.

Rick

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Richard W. Tarara
Associate Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

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