Re: A short survey.

["David T. Marx" <dtmarx@SIU.EDU>]

Ludwik,
        Your question comes at an appropriate time.  The surveying of
what students know (other than course content) is important, but
rarely done by instructors or students.  I have been speaking with
students and colleagues about this very issue most of this
afternoon.
        You see, we (team taught) are giving a course to senior and
first year grad. students in mechanical engineering.  We assigned
a homework problem last week and gave out the accompanying
text material (since the course doesn't have a textbook) from the
Barger and Olsson Classical Mechanics book (2ed).  The text
gives almost exactly the equations to set up and solve the
problem, but since it involves writing down an integral, the students
did not even come close to setting up the problem, let alone to
solve it.  It's amazing...everything they needed was in the text, but
only 3 out of 28 students even began the problem correctly.  The
majority only wrote down the basic kinematic formulas..
        I said to the class...you are seniors and ready to graduate, yet
you haven't learned even the most basic things, the skills you'll
need in your future jobs.  They said, "why should we know how to
do integration if we can look it up in a table?"  I said, "you haven't
learned how to setup the problem.  How can you look up an
integral you haven't found?"  Really, I spoke to them for 15 minutes
about working in a technical job and about skills.  This discussion
isn't specifically about this homework problem.  It is indicative of a
much larger issue.  I would like to site a few examples to expand
on this.

(1)  Physics students in a senior optics course were given their first
exam.  One question asks students to demonstrate that a function
satisfies the wave equation.  None of 15 students even tried, when
all that was required was to differentiate and plug in the result.

(2)  Graduate students in electrical engineering are asked to build a
basic amplifier circuit after being given a circuit diagram cannot
complete the task.

(3)  A 4th year grad. student in electrical engineering sends 1 A of
current through a 36 guage wire, obvivious to the fact that the wire
will vaporize.

(4)  A grad. student defending a high energy physics thesis doesn't
know what the meaning of eV is, even though he's been using that
unit for many years.

Why don't students know even the most fundamental things about
their field of study?



On 5 Sep 2001, at 15:47, Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

> Today was my first class, two combined sections of the
> non-calculus College Physics. I will meet my third section
> tomorrow. Thirty nine students were present. I turned my
> face toward the blackboard and asked.
>
> "Please raise your hand if you do not know what sine and
> cosine are in mathematics." I asked somebody else to
> count hands in order not to intimidate anybody. Four
> hands were counted.
>
> Then I turned toward the class and said "Use a piece of scrap
> paper and a pencil, but not a calculator, and answer the
> following question. What is the angle whose sine is 1/2?
> You have two minutes."
>
> After two minutes I said "The correct answer is 30 degrees.
> I want to know how many of you got the correct answer."
> I turned my head toward the blackboard again and said: "raise
> your hand if your answer was correct." Only 11 hands were
> raised.
>
> I would appreciate if those who teach a similar college course
> could conduct the identical survey and shared the outcome
> with me in private (kowalskiL@mail.montclair.edu). I would
> like to know how my students compare with others and what
> the overall situation is. Please send me a message with only
> three numbers, like
>
> 39,4,11.
>
> The first is how many students were surveyed, the second is
> how many declarations of not knowing about sine and cosine
> and the last is the number of correct answers. At the end of
> the next week (after 9/14/2001) I will add numbers and post
> the result. Just for fun. Comment in public if you wish.
> Ludwik Kowalski