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Re: Lectures and written communications



-----Original Message-----
From: John Clement [mailto:clement@HAL-PC.ORG]
Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 8:48 PM

There has been an interesting thread on this Phys-L network
concerning the efficiency of the lecture method and other
methods of teaching. Don Simanek claims that one major
problem is that students have not learned how to listen, take
notes, and then respond.

My question about Don's claim is "How do you know that?". Anecdotal
evidence is very suspect. As one grows older your memories
actually change
and what you think was true when you were young is not a good
indicator of
what actually happened. Since using some standard tests has
only recently
been a feature of physics education, we have little
comparable data from
earlier times. We do not have direct evidence if the lecture
system is less
effective now or if it has always been equally ineffective.

I can't speak to the research nor if the quality of students has changed,
but I do think that a common thread in all the research studies is that
effective methods are ones that promote
self-evaluation/meta-cognition/formative-assessment/etc. This goes
hand-in-hand with "learning how to listen". If so, students who already
have this ability to self-evaluate/etc. would do better than others with
lecture-based presentations. This seems like a straightforward research
project. Does anyone know if this has been tested? If students who have
this ability do better with lectures and if a particular methodology
develops this ability, it seems that we would then have evidence of the
"benefit" of the particular metholodogy (beyond a particular evaluation
instrument). This can address the question posed last month on this list
<http://lists.nau.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0204&L=phys-l&F=&S=&P=55155>.

____________________________________________
Robert Cohen; rcohen@po-box.esu.edu; http://www.esu.edu/~bbq
Physics, East Stroudsburg Univ., E. Stroudsburg, PA 18301