Re: [Phys-l] not our majors now!

["Jeffrey Schnick" <JSchnick@Anselm.Edu>]

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Rick Tarara wrote:
> > Rick  (maybe the solution IS what I tend to dislike about much of the

> > 'new pedagogy'--that is, get them to do everything you feel is 
> > essential IN THE CLASSROOM--with the obvious loss of coverage.)
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John Clement wrote:
> As to getting students to do everything inside class, that is not true.
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John Clement is absolutely correct.  At the college level, I find that
the 'new pedagogy' invariably involves having the 'initial' exposure
(with the adjective in quotes because the students are exposed to
physics long before I meet them) to the material occur outside the
classroom (where the student reads the textbook) rather than inside the
classroom (in lecture).  That leaves the classroom as a place where the
students can practice the kind of reasoning that you really want them to
be able to do by the time they finish the introductory physics course.
I used to lecture in class and expect the students to practice the
reasoning to a larger extent on their own.  I have inverted that
sequence.  Now I require to them to read the material prior to class and
practice the reasoning to a larger extent in class.  In switching over,
I made no change to the amount of material covered.

To enforce the requirement that students do the reading assignment,
except for the occasional 'pop no-quiz,' I give a reading quiz every
class session.  Each quiz consists of three questions.  I try to design
them so that two of the questions are essentially 'tell me one of the
things that the author told you' questions, and the other one is
supposed to be a 'figure out the answer to this question by applying
information that you gathered by doing the reading assignment'
questions.  (I employ other ways of encouraging students to do the
reading as well but I think that this has the most impact.)  It works
but it does go against the fatherly advice of a teacher whom I greatly
admire.  In Teaching Introductory Physics, A Sourcebook, by Clifford E.
Swartz and Thomas Miner, AIP Press 1997, it is written:

SMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSM
The daily quiz wastes valuable class time and puts too much emphasis on
marks.  One suspects that teachers who give a quiz every day are more
concerned about discipline than teaching and are using the test to call
the class to order or to keep students busy until the period-ending
bell.  There are better ways to motivate students to do their
assignments.
SMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSMSM

While I consider the book to be a valuable resource, I do disagree with
the authors on this point.

Jeff Schnick