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Re: Pedagogy

With all due respect, physics is not a blood sport...it is what people
make of it. Perhaps you learn by being bloody, but that is not
everyones's, or I would suggest even the average person's experience.

joe

On
Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Bob LaMontagne wrote:

If your not the type who would spend three days holed up in
your dorm room because you just HAD to work out a physics
problem simply because you wanted to understand it, not
only would I consider changing schools, I would consider
another discipline. College is a very uneven experience.
The main thing that it has to offer is time off for four
years from the real world of having a job - and a chance to
spend that time learning and challenging yourself. It's
nice to have a gifted teacher in a course, but what you get
out of it is directly related to what you put in.

Most of what I read in Fernanda's diatribe was a
regurgitation of the nonsense promoted by Sheila Tobias in
her book "They're not dumb, they're different", where she's
looking for a kindler, gentler physics. Physics is a blood
sport. It progresses because we all jump on any new idea
and tear it apart to find flaws. We do it to the ideas of
the colleagues in out own departments. We do it on lists
like this. We do it because we want to understand. If you
don't have that passion, what's the point?

Bob at PC

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 4/30/2004 at 1:43 PM Fernanda Foertter [Advanced Physics
Forums] wrote:

while I agree with you in some respect of "active
learning", how much of
the
material should I be forced to learn on my own and then be
tested on it?

Afterall, if I can learn on my own Physics, then why am I
here? Cause if
I'm here to learn on my own, then I'm basically using the
university for a
stamp of aproval...but am I not going to a learning
institution? If I
wanted a certificate, then why not just make a generic
exam for that
certificate?

Fernie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Karl I. Trappe" <trappe@PHYSICS.UTEXAS.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 6:37 AM
Subject: Re: Pedagogy


Fernanda Foertter writes:

Basically, if you can't
learn on your own, you shouldn't be here.


Fernanda: While I sympathize with most of what you said
(and even
registered the same complaints when I was taking
physics), I would
like you to consider your own responsibility for your
education.

In particular, passive learning is not to be confused
with getting an
education. In a cliche: 'You never get out of
something more than
you put into it."

There are studies which show the relative percent of
learning from
various teaching styles and student participation
styles. We hear a
lot from PER about the demise of the lecture as an
archaic and nearly
worthless approach to student mastery.

The information retention scale goes something like:
5-10% retention
from passive listening (the lecture) all the way to as
much as 90%
retention when you know that you will have to present
the material
yourself. These figures are recollected from a talk
(from the
business side of campus) about getting sales people to
master their
product information). Its not totally unrelated. If
you are
"learning it on your own", you probably are actually
learning it!

Another interesting tidbit I picked up along the way is
"Pop quizzes
*burn information* into the mind of the participant."
It seems that
forced recognition that you *do not know* the material
causes the
student to strongly reinforce those bits of
information...by *active*
participation in that bit of information digestion.

Karl


--
Dr. Karl I. Trappe, Physicist
KIT Science




Joseph J. Bellina, Jr. 574-284-4662
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN 46556