For those who want more information on the "Jackson by Inquiry" course:
JACKSON BY INQUIRY: a summary.
In the summer issue of the APS Forum on Education (on page 14-15) is an
article by Bruce Patton of Ohio State Univ. on how he teaches the graduate
level electrodynamics course. He replaces 1 lecture/week with a 2-hour
active problem solving lab. The coverage and homework assigned are the
same; however, homework is started in lab groups and finished together
outside of class. A journal and quizzes are added as assessment mechanisms.
The complete article is at the APS Forum on Education web page: http://www.research.att.com/~kbl/APS/aug96/index.html
I know a woman who is taking this course now. She loves it!
Patton started teaching this way in 1994. He says, "In the third quarter of
the EM sequence each student group developed their own lectures, homework
assignments, and inquiry problem labs, based on a context-rich real-world
situation like underwater communications using ELF waves, design of
multiple detectors for an accelerator, or theories of the electromagnetic
mass of the electron..."
He says, "...comparison of scaled numerical grades in the inquiry
electrodynamics course with simultaneous grades in graduate quantum
mechanics or classical mechanics, taught using the standard lecture
approach, reveals a significant relative IMPROVEMENT in the inquiry
electrodynamics course by students with weaker backgrounds and especially
by students underrepresented in physics such as women and domestic
minorities. As a control experiment, no such differences were observed
between the electrodynamics course and the other first year courses when
they were all taught with the standard lecture format..." Also he says,
"Underrepresented students who took the inquiry electrodynamics course were
found to have a substantially higher relative electrodynamics score on the
qualifying exam."
Sounds good! He gave an invited talk on the course at the APS/AAPT meeting
in Indianapolis last spring and is submitting a paper to Am.J.Phys. His
email address is patton@mps.ohio-state.edu, in case anyone would like more
info.
Jane Jackson (Prof. of Physics, Scottsdale Comm. College--on leave)
Dept.of Physics, Box 871504, Arizona State Univ.,Tempe AZ 85287-1504.
jane.jackson@asu.edu (602)965-8438 FAX:965-7331
Modeling Workshop Project: http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html