Re: What to do now

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 13:07 -0500 9/18/01, Steven T. Ratliff wrote, regarding Tina
Fanetti's plea for help:

> Some ideas:
>
> Sometimes students are reluctant to ask questions.  They might not know
> what to ask, or they might be afraid of appearing to be stupid.

All of the above, and more. Most have been taught all through school
that questions of the nature you encourage are not welcome. So asking
them to ask questions will likely be non-productive. Most don't
realize that they even have questions since they don't understand
enough to realize what they don't understand. So ask them lots of
questions, encourage them to discuss their answers amongst themselves
(Paul Hewitt says "check you neighbors."). Ask someone to answer (try
to pick on everybody roughly equally, but also try to ask people who
have a reasonable chance of answering the question--except for the
smart-asses. Ask them questions you are pretty sure they can't
answer), or, even better, get a classroom set of small white-boards
(18 inches square, about) with suitable pens attached, and give one
to each student. When you ask a question, have them write the answer
on the board and hold it over their head. This way you can see the
answers but nobody else can (unless they obviously look around, which
you can discourage). It shouldn't be too widely used--maybe once or
twice in a class period, rarely more often than that. [Thanks to Pat
Canaan of Corvalis, OR, for this idea]

The hi-tech version of Pat's idea is the calculator based technique
of having the answers sent to you electronically, then you can
display the results on a video screen for all to see. Check Eric
Mazur's Book "Peer Instruction" (New York: PRentice-Hall, 1996, ISBN:
0135654416, $24.20), for the details of how to do this. Disadvantage
over Pat's method--it requires a lot of advance preparation and
planning. Pat's method can be used spontaneously.

> One approach is to rely more on other means.  For example, you can give a
> quiz (perhaps not counting towards a large part of their grade).  When you
> grade the quiz, you will see what areas they need help in.  You can then
> concentrate on those areas in your lecture.

Quizes take class time, that you already see is too short. There is
another method (also not without labor requirments, as seems to be
true with all the hi-tech approaches to this problem), called
"Just-in-time Teaching." It involves having the students do
preparation in advance and answer questions about their preparation,
the discussion of which you can then incorporate into that day's
lesson, hence the name "just-in-time teaching." The students respond
to a website which only you can access, so you get their answers
before class (and you also know who is not doing their preparatory
work). Developed by any number of people, but extensively used by the
Physics Dept at the Air Force Academy. They have also been in the
thick of its development. Contact Prof. Evelyn Patterson there. She
has been using it for several years. There is an AAPT workshop given
on the subject at their national conferences.

> Another idea is to hand out pieces of paper.  At the end of the class give
> the students a few minutes to write down any questions that they have.
> Collect these papers.  You can answer the questions at the start of the
> next class.

Probably won't be too productive for the same reasons as they didn't
ask in the first place--they don't know enough to know what they
don't understand.

As a teaching tool, the modeling concept has proven to be a powerful
technique. I'm not too conversant with its details. Perhaps John
Barrer will be willing to jump in here, or someone else who is more
familiar with it than I.

Head for the AAPT website. There is a wealth of material there
(<http://www.aapt.org>). Follow the link there to the Physical
Sciences Resource Center, or go there directly at
<http://www.psrc-online.org/>. Lots of the list members also have web
sites (I'm not one of them) with useful material and links on them.
Many have the URLs in their signature line. Check them out.

Good luck,

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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