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Re: [Phys-l] Lecture Isn't Effective: More Evidence #2



Maybe a good part of the problem is the PER so-called "studies".
regards.
Jack

"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




On Fri, 5 Aug 2011, John Clement wrote:

Yes, there is an effect, but so far there has been no dramatic effect
demonstrated for conventional lectures. Of course if you go to interactive
lectures and ILDs there is a much larger effect. But all of the PER studies
have failed to show a difference between the dynamic well respected lecturer
and the newbie who follows the book. This was demonstrated at ASU in one of
the early Hestenes papers, and has been confirmed by a recent study in AJP.

The recent evidence is that the learning is purely dependent on what is
done, IE vs conventional teaching, and not on the particular professor. The
gain was purely a function of the method. Of course this did not test the
intrinsic motivation.

People would like to believe that an inspiring teacher gets better results,
but the evidence for this is very slim from the PER studies. They show that
you get identical results when you do identical things.

Now there is a difference between American and Chinese students that may
make a difference. Chinese students may share with Japaneze students the
paradigm that you can change the way you think and that you are not limited
by purely inherited factors. It has been found that students can improve
their thinking if they believe that it is possible, and that this is more
difficult if they don't believe in it. But this factor should affect the
effectivenes of all methods.

American students have much more of a tendency to blame others for failure
than most foreign students. This was not as true when I was in school and
students would blame themselves. But again this factor should affect all
methods. But some methods such as IE may be much more effective at
combating these negative attitudes. And the evidence gathered by Joe Redish
would seem to confirm this hypothesis in the case of studio style courses.

An interesting piece of anecdotal evidence can be gathered from the videos
of Malcolm Wells teaching. He achieved high gain in physics, but on video
is boring as heck.

Again, my comment about Chinese lectures was pointing out the lack of actual
evidence, so the conclusion was really a hypothesis.

We would all like to think that we can be dynamic and interesting which will
make us more effective, but the evidence for that is slim. It may work for
politicians and advertisers, but it doesn't work as well for education, if
at all. And for those who don't believe in the FCI or FMCE how about using
the Lawson test. I have gotten an increase of 20% in proportional reasoning
on that test 40% to 60% and a doubling of sequencing ability even though it
was not covered. This was dramatically improved by adding a little
motivation and a lot of bridging.

As to skills at engagement I would say they are teachable IE techniques.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Student's intrinsic motivation and teacher's skills of
engagement even with big number of audience make
the difference.....


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