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Re: [Phys-l] Another alternative theory horror




On 31 Aug 2011 at 0:43, John Clement wrote:

Of course my question is: Do you have a good way of assessing the outcomes
of these lectures?

This course is a general education course that was designed to cover aout twice as many topics as
ought to be covered in one semester, in one semester. Over the years I have reduced the numer of
topics as much as possible, but I have found ways to focus on a few things.

I appreciate your concern about assessment. I can only say that students do well on tests and the final.
I will say that I back up this lecture content with an exercise in which students find a peer-reviewed
research article from a recent issue of Science or Nature. They evaluate the structure and content of
the article in comparison with the lecture content. My purpose is to let them see how scientists communicate
with other scientists about the process they go through, the methods used, the presentation of data,
the analysis, and conclusions. I do not expect them to fully understand a given article, but I do ask them
to search for an article they think they can understand for the most part by reading the abstracts.
Most students do a very good job on the assignment. On question I ask them is, "What surprised you
about the article you read?" Many give answers that indicate that they hadn't realized how scientists
did science before. Many times they indicate that they surprised at how much work has to be done
to obtain one or two pieces of information or to arrive at a given conclusion.



Joe Redish found that the standard lecture/lab/recitation courses pushed
students toward more novice like views, while studio style courses made them
somewhat more expert like. So how do you know that the student attitudes
are actually changed? For example based on experience, one estimage that I
have heard is that it takes about 160 hours or so to change teacher's
paradigms. Paradigms are very resistant to just short term interventions,
especially lectures.

They will gladly parrot back what you tell them, but then you need an
independent way of assessing that does not involve just looking at what they
parrot.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX