Re: AP Students

[Mike Ugawa <mugawa@QUARK.SFSU.EDU>]

Robert Cohen offered the following response to my earlier posting which he
starts by quoting:

> > The best teachers, by student consensus
> > among my fellow physics majors, were a few professors who were noted
> > for being outstanding lecturers--eloquent, passionate, clear and
> > well-organized in their lectures.
>
> Yes...but what did the students learn?  Do you have evidence that they
> learned better?

The evidence was in the grades. Students found that with excellent
lectures from which to learn, the same effort produced a higher grade. Or,
for those of us who put in whatever extra effort (processes that had
nothing to do with the instructor) necessary to get an "A," we found
less extra effort was needed. Essentially, the excellent lectures made it
easier (less time consuming) to learn, thus leaving more time for those
who were so motivated to go beyond the level of understanding that would
have been achieved under a less competent lecturer. (i.e., More time would
have been required to just reach the more basic level of learning with a
less competent lecturer.)

Again, all this was within an environment that existed before the modern
instructional methods that I employ now. All we could do was compare
different lecturers. The bottom line is that we still learned our physics
well, as evidenced by GRE scores, grad school acceptances, successful
careers, etc. This is why I wrote that the ability to learn physics well
from lecture is, in part, what characterizes physicists (of my era or
earlier--I completed my Bachelor's in 1985).


Best wishes,
Mike Ugawa
St. Ignatius College Prep
San Francisco


--
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  *                                                                    *
  *                          MICHAEL B. UGAWA                          *
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  *               PHYSICS * CHEMISTRY * COMPUTER SCIENCE               *
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  *                    EDUCATING THE YOUTH OF TODAY                    *
  *             TO FACE THE CHALLENGES OF THE NEW MILLENIUM            *
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  *                        mugawa@quark.sfsu.edu                       *
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