Re: Good lectures

[John Cooper <jcooper@BUCKNELL.EDU>]

On Wed, 2 May 2001, Laurent Hodges wrote:

> George Carrier (head of the Challenger Explosion committee that
> Feynman served on) at Harvard taught the applied math course for
> graduate students for many years.  He tried giving beautiful, perfect,
> unflawed lectures some years, and flawed lectures with mistakes ("Oh,
> this isn't right, it should be xxx, but I don't know where I went
> wrong.") other years.  He was convinced that students performed better
> in the second type of lecture and attributed it to the fact that they
> went home and straightened everything out after the flawed lecture,
> and learned in the process.  Well, I know I did that!

   I took graduate Quantum Chemistry from Bill Gwinn the last year he
taught at Berkeley (early 60s).  Gwinn would come into class every day and
within ten minutes, be completely lost.  He'd fuddle at the board to our
most intense irritation, then grin sheepishly and say he'd work it out
next period.  The next period he'd come in, outline the previous class
flawlessly, commence the new material and promptly get lost.
   A few of us figured out that we were supposed to go home each day and
work out what he'd blown, then compare our solutions with his the first
few minutes of the next day.  How many of today's students would be able
to figure that out, or being willing to do the work on their own/together?
   My guess is most would go straight to the dean.

 John N. Cooper, Chemistry
 Bucknell University
 Lewisburg PA 17837-2005
 jcooper@bucknell.edu
 http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jcooper
 VOX 570-577-3673    FAX 570-577-1739