Re: Lectures and written communications

[John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

> There has been an interesting thread on this Phys-L network
> concerning the efficiency of  the lecture method and other
> methods of teaching.  Don Simanek claims that one major
> problem is that students have not learned how to listen, take
> notes, and then respond.

My question about Don's claim is "How do you know that?".  Anecdotal
evidence is very suspect.  As one grows older your memories actually change
and what you think was true when you were young is not a good indicator of
what actually happened.  Since using some standard tests has only recently
been a feature of physics education, we have little comparable data from
earlier times.  We do not have direct evidence if the lecture system is less
effective now or if it has always been equally ineffective.

If you read Gerald Bracey, he comes up with convincing arguments that
student ability and test scores have actually not changed over several
decades in the US.  Other evidence is that raw IQ scores have risen so that
they have been renormalized every so often back to 100.  I do not have exact
statistics on the magnitude of this effect, but from what I have read it is
considerable.  If you were test 50 years ago and scored high, you might with
the same raw score only be considered average now.

We do have firm evidence that the majority of students in physics courses
are not understanding the concepts that are presented.  In addition to the
various papers in PER journals, I would point to parallel papers in general
science Ed. journals.  For example "Why May Students Fail to Learn from
Demonstrations?  A Social Practice Perspective on Learning Physics", Jour.
Res. in Sci. Teach., 34, #5 pp509-533 (1997) explored the reasons why
students fail to understand demos.  The learning was actually quite low, but
the teacher was an award winning experienced teacher.  The students had
little understanding of what the teacher was trying to convey, and the
teacher had little understanding of the student difficulties.  The lecture
system made it all too easy to hide these problems.  All of the PER results
have parallel results in education journals and to my knowledge no papers
point to high effectiveness of conventional lecture based courses.

Remember that each generation has complained about the lack of ability,
dedication,... of the current generation all the way back to Plato.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

BTW As to manufacturer responsiveness, I remember well my father's comments
about car sales when he was young.  The car was your responsibility as soon
as it was off the lot and any repairs were at your expense.  He remembered
when his father bought a new car and just after he got off the lot he hit an
expensive dip.  All 4 tires blew out at his
expense!  And years ago the public was considered to be even more gullible
than now.  My grandfather recalls reading commercials on radio for "genuine
simulated gold rings".