Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

[Phys-l] Time to teach

Hi Rick;

A couple of points (a rant perhaps?).

Some years ago (15?) I looked into the existing literature on class size. I no longer have those references (probably out of date anyway) but the conclusions seemed to be that for grade and high school class size had a demonstrable effect on what students learned (the smaller the class the better the performance down to around 10-15 students). The effect for college/university classes was not so clear (a few studies showed better results for smaller classes, others did not).

The administration here has a minimum of 12-15 students before they will allow us to hire an adjunct to teach it. This is in spite of the fact that, after repeated questioning, no one seems to know if the income (both from the state and from the students) of 12 enrollees actually brings in enough to pay for the adjunct. This is due to the difficulty in costing out building and other resources. So one way to fight a push to teach larger classes is to ask your administration for exact figures on how many students must be in a class to pay for the class being taught. There is a good possibility they can't tell you. Another route is to point out that there is a point where offering more seats in a course does not gain more students but offering more sections at different times does (because of variations in student schedules). If we lumped all our physics sections into one lecture my guess is we would lose students to nearby alternative colleges because not all could come to that time slot.

I agree that trying to give a better class takes more time and as we learn more about how to teach well we spend more time trying to do better (and using technology adds to the time spent). I think my teaching is better now than 15 years ago but I'm not sure it is better enough to justify the extra x hours a week I spend on it. I didn't start using pre and post testing until about 5 years ago so maybe in 10 more years I will know ....

I also think assessment/gen ed/ requirements eat up a lot of time. In fact, I suspect that colleges are going the way of high school (as I see it). Some assessment is valuable but by focusing on justifying and certifying what we do we end up spending less time focusing on actually doing the job. I've seen education majors who have already had several semesters of calculus go back and take a trig course because the state requires it for certification. I see that kind of rigid, blinkered certification/justification starting to affect university teaching as well. (Can you tell I just spent x million hours filling out forms for a committee to evaluate whether my classes will satisfy the gen ed requirements AND (get this) a SEPARATE list/form/committee for courses that satisfy specific content in various areas). I was not doing that 15 years ago.

Good luck!

kyle

phys-l-request@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu wrote:
Send Phys-l mailing list submissions to
phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
phys-l-request@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu

You can reach the person managing the list at
phys-l-owner@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Phys-l digest..."


Today's Topics:

1. Time to teach (Rick Tarara)
2. Re: 1869 MIT Entrance Exam (John Denker)
3. Re: 1869 MIT Entrance Exam (Karim Diff)
4. Re: 1869 MIT Entrance Exam (John Denker)
5. Kozol to meet Kennedy. (Bernard Cleyet)
6. Re: 1869 MIT Entrance Exam (Diana Virgo)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:51:44 -0400
From: Rick Tarara <rtarara@saintmarys.edu>
Subject: [Phys-l] Time to teach
To: phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
Message-ID: <006401c80514$83f00850$96503593@rtarara>
Content-Type: text/plain; reply-type=original; charset=iso-8859-1;
format=flowed

This is a topic that may (or may not) be of interest.

With some new administrators here, we are being put under pressure to justify our smaller class sizes (24 rather than 40, 32 rather than 64, etc) and also under some pressure about how labs are counted into faculty load. Neither of these are directly the question though--just the background.

What we are really concerned about within a Chemistry/Physics department at a small College is the fact that the time involved in teaching our courses seems to have grown so much, that short of summers or sabbaticals there is virtually no time to do research/scholarly activity. This wasn't the case 25 years ago even though the standard teaching loads then were 12/12 (contact hours) and are now 12/9 (I'm doing 13/13 which is more or less typical for me. ;-)

What's happened in those 25 years? Are other science departments having the same problem (seems not so bad in our Biology department or some other departments on campus)? Are we doing something different or wrong?

Some suggested problems/reasons:

Increased College activity: Too many self-studies, strategic plans, new gen-ed curricula, assessment studies, etc.

Increased numbers of recommendations: Most sophomores and juniors now are doing summer research at other sites--requiring letters of recommendation. This is in addition to normal senior letters.

TECHNOLOGY! This seems to rob us of time--good example, lists like this. 25 years ago we spent no time writing notes like this or responding to them. But we also were fairly isolated with little professional contact with our peers. Preparing classes for computer presentation, writing/using other computer aids such as simulations, posting work to web based utilities such as Blackboard, etc. all seem to take more time rather than less. Another example: I just spent 2 hours preparing a Word document with the solutions to the test my one class will take Friday so that after the test I can post this on Blackboard. In the past, I would just slap up some hand written solutions on the wall outside my office. When Blackboard first appeared, I just scanned my hand-written solutions in a graphic that I posted. To be sure--I could go back to either of those previous ways. The scanned posting isn't as legible, but would serve. The wall posting demands time from students to come stand outside my office and copy solutions--time THEY don't seem to have! Are we now trapped into a system of presentation and archiving materials that is robbing us of hours a week?

PEDAGOGY It takes a lot more time to craft a good class presentation taking cues from some of the Physics Educational Research than to walk in a work a few examples from the book. It seems that 'new' pedagogy is a more time consuming pedagogy.

So...what do others think? Are you experiencing these problems at your schools--I doubt we are unique, but then we could be. What are some other possible causes? Are there solutions?

{We are also being asked to prove that smaller classes are superior to large ones. Are they? Any research out there--especially in Chemistry--to support classes based on one lab section rather than large classes with many lab sections. Any other comments on this?}

Rick

***************************
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN
rtarara@saintmarys.edu
******************************
Free Physics Software
PC & Mac
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
*******************************


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:49:38 -0400
From: John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] 1869 MIT Entrance Exam
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <470284B2.8010301@av8n.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On 10/02/2007 09:32 AM, Bob Sciamanda wrote:

http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/exam/

Very cute, and interesting.

My neighbor Simplicio says this goes to show how much the high schools have deteriorated over the years, and how much we need to punish the schools and teachers for doing a bad job.

=========

Kidding aside, it is remarkable how some aspects of test-making
and test-taking have /not/ changed over the years. For example,
look at algebra problem #4.
1) At first glance, this looks like a hard problem. This
is what I call the booga-booga factor, i.e. tendency of
some people to make things /look/ scary, just to see if
you flinch. If you flinch, you lose.
2) If you survive to this point, you apply the test-taking
principle that it "must" be an easy problem. Any
difficulties "must" be superficial. 3) Therefore there must be a "trick" way to solve this problem.
4) The most obvious first guess is that the numerator is a
multiple of the entire denominator. Alas this trick doesn't work.
5) There is an obvious second guess as to what the trick might
be. In fact this trick works. End of story.

From a test MAKING point of view, I don't approve of questions
like this; it makes the test unrepresentative of real-world math
and physics problems. OTOH from a test TAKING point of view it is a useful tactic to look for trick questions. The tactic is useful because there are so many bad tests out there.

On the third hand, maybe schools /should/ train people to deal
with the booga-booga factor. I see many examples of this in
the real world; for example the President goes "booga booga"
and Congress flinches. Or workers send up a budget request
or staffing request and their boss's boss's boss turns it down
for some bogus reason. (It's a test, to see if you come right back with a counterargument; if you accept the turn-down meekly, that counts as a flinch. You flinch, you lose.)

Nobody ever taught me this principle; I had to figure it out on my own. Merely putting it on the test is not the best way to teach it.


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:24:31 -0400
From: Karim Diff <karim.diff@sfcc.edu>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] 1869 MIT Entrance Exam
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <47028CDF.8080109@sfcc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

I don't know if this counts as a "trick" but when I went to school (which was not 1869, just in case you wonder)
this kind of gymnastics with factorization was fairly common and we were "expected" to figure it out since we constantly practiced it on homework.

Are tests supposed to be about "real-world" situations or about whatever was done in the classroom (whether it was real-world or not)?
Is this exam in line with what was taught in schools at the time?

Karim Diff


John Denker wrote:
On 10/02/2007 09:32 AM, Bob Sciamanda wrote:

http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/exam/
Very cute, and interesting.

My neighbor Simplicio says this goes to show how much the high schools have deteriorated over the years, and how much we need to punish the schools and teachers for doing a bad job.

=========

Kidding aside, it is remarkable how some aspects of test-making
and test-taking have /not/ changed over the years. For example,
look at algebra problem #4.
1) At first glance, this looks like a hard problem. This
is what I call the booga-booga factor, i.e. tendency of
some people to make things /look/ scary, just to see if
you flinch. If you flinch, you lose.
2) If you survive to this point, you apply the test-taking
principle that it "must" be an easy problem. Any
difficulties "must" be superficial. 3) Therefore there must be a "trick" way to solve this problem.
4) The most obvious first guess is that the numerator is a
multiple of the entire denominator. Alas this trick doesn't work.
5) There is an obvious second guess as to what the trick might
be. In fact this trick works. End of story.

>From a test MAKING point of view, I don't approve of questions
like this; it makes the test unrepresentative of real-world math
and physics problems. OTOH from a test TAKING point of view it is a useful tactic to look for trick questions. The tactic is useful because there are so many bad tests out there.

On the third hand, maybe schools /should/ train people to deal
with the booga-booga factor. I see many examples of this in
the real world; for example the President goes "booga booga"
and Congress flinches. Or workers send up a budget request
or staffing request and their boss's boss's boss turns it down
for some bogus reason. (It's a test, to see if you come right back with a counterargument; if you accept the turn-down meekly, that counts as a flinch. You flinch, you lose.)

Nobody ever taught me this principle; I had to figure it out on my own. Merely putting it on the test is not the best way to teach it.
_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l



------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:55:13 -0400
From: John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] 1869 MIT Entrance Exam
To: Forum for Physics Educators <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <4702A221.4010404@av8n.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On 10/02/2007 02:24 PM, Karim Diff asked:

Are tests supposed to be about "real-world" situations or about whatever was done in the classroom (whether it was real-world or not)?

Here's the deal:

1) School should prepare people for life in the real world (*).

2) Teachers tend (*) to teach to the test. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the test.

3) Therefore my answer is clear: In most cases the test should be representative of the real world.


(*) with minor exceptions that we need not discuss right now.


I've done a lot of recruiting and hiring. I don't know how many
times, when interviewing a candidate who had a Masters in EE from an Ivy League school, I found that the guy ate breakfast on the
complex-s plane, but didn't know how to use a soldering iron,
couldn't explain why the switch I gave him had six terminals on
the bottom (instead of two), and generally made it clear that he
had never built anything in his entire life. And the guy with
a Masters in Computer Science could talk on and on about NP-
completeness but couldn't get a real computer to do simple tasks.

Of course it wasn't all bad; the good candidates were really,
really, good ... but usually on account of some non-classroom
experience:
-- work-study job in a research lab
-- part-time job in industry
-- ham radio or other high-tech hobby
-- et cetera


All in all, I think that unreal tests matched to unreal class
work are a big, scary problem.


------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:15:11 -0700
From: Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>
Subject: [Phys-l] Kozol to meet Kennedy.
To: PHYS-L Maillist <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Cc: Nancy Seese <nancyseese@redshift.com>
Message-ID: <4703336F.9030208@redshift.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed


Kennedy, chair of the Senate HELP committee, is scheduled to meet w/ J. Kozol. They will discuss NCLB reauthorization.

bc, not holding his breath, but hopeful.

p.s. Kozol just announced this on the KPFA Morning Show while interviewed by host Philip Maldari.
Hear for oneself:

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=22560


(near the end)


------------------------------

Message: 6
Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 08:39:43 -0400
From: "Diana Virgo" <Diana.Virgo@Loudoun.K12.va.us>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] 1869 MIT Entrance Exam
To: <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <s7035560.040@MAIL.LOUDOUN.GOV>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Dan,
I LOVE IT!!!!! Our guys would crumble under such a test. Of course,
there is a happy medium--which we have not yet achieved.
Diana


------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Forum for Physics Educators
Phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu
https://carnot.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l


End of Phys-l Digest, Vol 33, Issue 3
*************************************

--
------------------------------------------
'Violence is the last refuge of the
incompetent.'
Issac Asimov

kyle forinash 812-941-2039
kforinas@ius.edu
http://Physics.ius.edu/
-----------------------------------------