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[Phys-L] Re: Partners in Innovation: Teaching Assistants in College Courses



"Is there now any longitudinal data that shows
how students react when course after course is done in interactive mode?"



Ask Jeff at Webb Schools of Calif., but do not tell him I sent you.
He's from Arizona, and, since he's chair, they do that style of teaching
over the four years.

Jeff Hengesbach <jhengesbach@webb.org>

http://www.webb.org/academics/faculty/j_heng.html


bc, alumnus


p.s. single gender classes the first two years based on educational
research.




John Clement wrote:

That is an excellent question. It can't be answered because so few
consecutive courses are taught in an interactive fashion. This might be
answerable at some rare universities where they have put in place upper
level interactive courses. If one believes that the research is valid, then
there are some important ramifications of interactive courses.

First consider the study published in The Physics Teacher that showed that
FCI scores held up to 3 years later. This means that you should not have to
repeat material and can move on. This reduces the dullness of repeating
material.

Some interactive courses such as Workshop Physics improve student attitudes.
If this happens the reaction to interactive courses should be increasingly
enthusiastic.

A corollary is that student who go through an interactive course and then a
traditional course may end up very turned off by the traditional course. I
saw this personally when a student came back and wished he were back in my
class.

In either case the evidence is that non-interactive courses are far behind
in building conceptual and problem solving skills. So should this attitude
matter. My attitude would be "Oh, no another dull lecture course!" to a
conventional class. But, then I am extremely biased.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Is there now any longitudinal data that shows
how students react when course after course is done in interactive mode?
I
know a few years back when Collaborative/Cooperative learning was all the
rage, you could hear the comments of students--"Oh no, not another group
based course!" In other words, does the highly interactive mode hold up
through several repetitions with students, or do they tend to 'turn off'
after the novelty wears off?



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