Re: grades, assessments, etc.

[Larry Woolf <Larry.Woolf@GAT.COM>]

At 10:34 PM -0700 5/3/2002, Jane Jackson wrote:
> [I thought Larry Wolff's post on Thursday, May 2, was especially
> insightful, so today I forwarded it to the 3 dozen physics & astronomy
> faculty at Arizona State University. Here is a response from one of them.
> - Jane Jackson]

> From: Jeff Hester
> Subject: Re: preparing grad physics students for industry
> An interesting article.  While I agree with much of what was said, the
> discussion leaves out the importance of a strong knowledge base upon
> which to draw.  ....    I am all in favor of asking students to solve
> problems or
> carry out projects that require them to pull a broad base of material
> together and search for innovative solutions.  But this should not come
> at the expense of building a broad, deep, and formal base of knowledge
> and techniques.

The relevant bullet from the 3M article that addresses the above comment is
"multidisciplinary."  In my experience, this means that you have a broad
and deep knowledge base.  But the broad in this case is not just what is in
the standard graduate student texts.  Multidisciplinary means understanding
how the knowledge you are learning is applicable to many different contexts.

Notice the examples in my original post - the use of multiple approaches is
often missing and the application of knowledge learned to real life
contexts is also often (or completely) missing.

Much of what I learned in graduate school classes prepared me to
essentially teach the material to others.  This is a nearly useless
endeavor, unless all graduate students are only to become professors to
teach their students to become professors, etc.

Here are some examples of how my points are relevant at many levels of
instruction.

Consider a circuit with a battery and a resistor.  Determine 3 ways to
reduce the current in the circuit.
1. Use a lower voltage battery.
2. Add a second resistor in series with the first battery.
3. Replace the existing resistor with a higher resistance resistor.
The reason for this type of question is that we are always limited in ways
to solve a problem.  Certain theoretical possibilities may not be possible
in reality.  So we must develop multiple approaches so that there is
(hopefully) at least one way to really solve the problem.

For an example of a graduate level text with real life problems that assess
for understanding in real life contexts, see Craig Bohren's Atmospheric
Thermodynamics. (Craig, by the way, was an Arizona grad - U of A.)

This type of thinking is evident in the National Science Education
Standards (for K-12).
http://books.nap.edu/html/nses/html/6a.html
Note that two of the topical areas are:
Science and technology.
Science in personal and social perspectives.
These ideas have relevance for undergraduate and graduate education.  The
idea is that we should not only learn the science, we should also learn how
the science is used.  If it's not used, or if the teacher does not
understand how it is used, perhaps it's not worth teaching.





Dr. Lawrence D. Woolf; General Atomics, 3550 General Atomics Court, Mail
Stop 15-242, San Diego, CA 92121