[Phys-L] Re: What students will do. (was: Physics Solutions Manual)

[Jack Uretsky <jlu@HEP.ANL.GOV>]

On Wed, 8 Feb 2006, John M Clement wrote:

> Priscilla Laws commented that their students hardly crack open the
> text, so the problem is not unique.  Indeed in the stone age when I
> went to school that was also a problem.
>
> One comment was made that the PER methods are designed to get student
> to do in class what they used to do outside of class.  This is
> slightly incorrect.  It gets them to do in class what they SHOULD do
> outside of class.  There is no evidence that they ever did it outside
> of class.  Feynman complained about lack of student understanding

        OTOH: Feynman rarely, if ever, taught undergraduate classes, so
what did he know?  The problem did not exist in the early '40's, when I
went to school - the inverse, in fact.  I use to stay in and do my
homework during the week-end, and cut the classes that merely repeated the
assigned reading, while exploring life in the big city during the week.
Also, the faculty could not be described as people who
were part of the "problem".  I entered MIT only two years after Feynman
left, so he was not describing the undergraduates of his time.
                                Regards.
                                        Jack

> long
> before the FCI was developed.  Some PER methods, notably Mazur's,
> requires students to come into class after having read the text.  He
> enforces it with a short reading quiz every lecture.
>
> The real difficulty that students have is that they don't know how to
> think about things, so they need the sort of guidance provided by the
> PER curricula.
>
> John M. Clement
> Houston, TX
>
> > Even w/ a free text some won't read it.  The last week of my ten
> > week
> > stint teaching Chem. at North High several of my "A" students
> > admitted
> > they never opened the text except to do the assigned chapter end
> > problems.  They said they got all they needed from my lectures.  A
> > left
> > handed compliment on my teaching?
> >
> > bc, if he had the chance would now minimize the "direct" method
> >
> > Spagna Jr., George wrote:
> >
> > > Bernard asks
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > p.s. George, did you readopt a text because their grades plummeted?
> > >
> > > And Joel adds
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > Or because you got tired of listening to the complaints on student
> > > evaluations?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > > Or, what was the reason?
> > >
> > > It's a bit more complicated - top grades slipped a little, and more
> > > students "fell off" the bottom of the distribution.  More
> > > importantly,
> > > it became clear that by not using a set textbook we were apparently
> >
> > cut

--
"Trust me.  I have a lot of experience at this."
                General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
                just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley
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