Re: Computers in the lab. /diatribe/

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 10:12 9/4/00 -0400, Michael Edmiston wrote:
> Each teacher has to decide whether each experiment succeeds best
> (promotes learning) by computerizing data acquisition or by more
> manual data acquisition.  Here are some of the ways I make that
 decision....

> Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.

It seems to me that this proposition is roughly equivalent to this
 position:
"Each physician has to decide whether each course of treatment for
bacterial infection works best by using the preferred broadband
antibiotic or alternatively by prescribing bed rest and herbal
infusions, with daily acupuncture."

That is to say: if it has been established by respectable
experimental protocol that a certain prescription is far superior
 to others, a physician would risk malpractise by deviating far
from this high road.

 Now physics professors may have their character failings, taken as
 a group, but I would think that willful quackery is not numbered
among them.

I am forced to conclude then, that the evidence adduced for a
particular style of student involved teaching/learning has been
lacking in some way.
 Here are some possibilities:
1) The evidence has not been widely visible
2) The evidence has been widely visible but non specific
3) the evidence has been widely visible but unconvincing due to
 poor protocols
4) the evidence has been widely visible, specific, run with
excellent protocols which are not understandable to a highly
competent physics professor.

These possibilities each lead to a different course of action
for people who would proselytize for improved student achievement.
 The option which I personally most fear is the fourth.

    The experimental design of differential learning protocols
is a life science experiment of high order, involving ethical
and statistical considerations. There are numerous confounding
possibilities.

The experimental designs are those which best null out the
uncontrolled variables.   In general, physicists seem to be
blissfully ignorant of such factors,so one sees the unedifying
 sight on this list  of sample critiques  being
offered ante particular protocols on the basis of assertions
which would be more appropriateto beginning undergraduates in
a life field. (And why wouldn't they be?)

I say, don't expect an educational psychologist to design a
quadrupole mass spectrometer - he can't
 Don't expect a Feynman to use an illustration from an
engineering field correctly (Work involved in lifting with a
screw-jack) - he won't.

Closer to home, don't expect a physicist to use physiological
examples of optics insightfully, because he won't.

But expect a scientist to realise that best practise in various
 research fields differs, and expect one to act on the basis of
 research findings from an alien research milieu all the same,
if they cast light on his ultimate objectives.

End of sermon. Now I get the familiar backwash - much the same
that teachers doubtless experience - this year's fad - fashions
 in teaching nostrums -ivory tower researchers - and I am cast down.

 Either teaching is so dominated by uncontrollable factors -
personality,student attitide, school support - that new methods
are in vain,
or
 there are some teaching methods that can offer improvement across
 a wide section of practioners and situations. I wish I knew that
this option applies.


brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>  Altus OK
                Eureka!