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Re: [Phys-l] laptops banned from class.



Most of this debate centered on the ability of students to take notes. Now
there is a thread that we should be exciting them, or dealing with the
attitude are (afferent domain). Unfortunately most of the comments really
do not line up with the research. Remember that Hestenes proved that the
ability of students to understand is independent of the lecturer in
conventional lectures.

One comment was that students who had laptops tended to take better notes,
and then there was the instructor who graded the notes. So the idea has
been proposed that the ability to take notes drives the ability to
understand the physics ideas. But there is no evidence for this hypothesis.
It is far more likely that students who understand better will then take
better notes. In other words the notes are a symptom and NOT a cause. If
you already have a good grasp of the ideas, then the notes will be coherent
and correct. If you don't the notes will be incoherent, and often things
will be written down wrong because they are not perceived correctly. I
would also give a personal anecdote about this. I was forced as a college
senior to turn in my notes for grading, because the instructor had a
vendetta against my cohort. We were engineering physics students taking the
spring senior year EE course, and we tended to get all of the As so the EEs
had to be content with lower grades. As a result I have a great distaste
for grading notes.

If you want to grade something, have them make a concept map, and grade
that. It is actually quite an accurate reflection of the connectedness of
their ideas and is remarkably easy to grade by just looking at it. Now as
to notes, there are a number of students who can not process what is being
said if they also take notes at the same time. As a result the process of
note taking must be completely mindless for them. My son is one of these,
and he has been supplied with a notetaker. The prof. has acted quite
annoyed because my son is obviously there in the front row (to help him pay
attention) and is not taking notes. The prof. has been given a copy of the
accommodations, but won't look at them.

Now as to exciting learners, there has been precious little research to show
how this is actually done, and whether it improves achievement. We do know
that distaste for science generally increases with each science course that
students take. The only courses that improve attitudes on the MPEX attitude
survey, are studio courses such as Workshop Physics. So the bottom line is
that lecture driven courses will generally increase the dislike for science.
Only the few deserving (us) will be left. The rest will be left with their
misconceptions and dislike for science.

But there is one thing that we know increases the ability to perform well in
science. This is improving the scores on the Piagetian tasks of which the
most important are probably conservation reasoning, proportional reasoning,
and two variable reasoning. Once this is done, students will automatically
be able to understand things better, and they will probably have greater
enthusiasm for the subject. This is primarily done by using a learning
cycle approach, with tasks that involve the specific reasoning needed to be
improved.



A teacher persuades by exciting the minds of the learners, getting them to
want more of the "stuffs" you have opened their eyes to. Then they will
reach beyond your classroom to find out more for themselves.......
Maybe then the issue here is to be able to connect your lessons to them as
individuals, and not the interesting things that you can do in the
classroom.


On 4/1/06, Carl Mungan <mungan@usna.edu> wrote:

the goal of top notch teaching, IMO, is to persuade
students to learn for themselves.
Regards,
Jack

I find this statement to be provocative (in a good way, ie.
stimulating thought). The claim is our job is to PERSUADE.

I agree that effective learning is self-driven not teacher driven.
You can bring 'em to the trough but you can't make 'em drink, and all
that.

But I'm not sure I know how to persuade people of anything. I've
always been a lousy salesman type, scoring miserably on personality
tests that purport to quantify that kind of attribute.

I know how to model some aspects of learning. (The aspects that match
my learning style, mostly.) I know how to mull over interesting ideas
and applications. I know how to sift through chaff to find some
nuggets. I know some classroom techniques (project loudly, write
slowly and clearly, vary what I do, be enthusiastic).

But I'm quite sure I don't directly know how to persuade others to
learn. If this really is the highest goal, I think I get a D at best.
What do others think is the single highest goal of teaching and how
can one achieve it? Carl
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