|
| Something that continues to bother me every time we have a
| discussion about the teaching format that ought to occur
| during the 50 minutes or so of class time, is the lack of
| discussion about what happens outside of class time. I would
| probably be less bothered by this if it were obvious to me
| that most teachers (especially science, but really all
| teachers) held students responsible for doing a reasonable
| amount of study, problem solving, lab calculations and report
| writing... outside the class period. <snip>
|
I don't think I could've said it better. Though I don't particularly
like formulas like you should be spending two hours outside class for
every hour in class. (Though I admit formulas have their utility for
those that are clueless as to the need to do outside work.) One should
be spending whatever time it takes to comprehend the material. When I
took introductory physics, I had 4 hours of lecture a week and a
standard 3-hour lab. I'd guess I spent 2-3 hours each day on the course
outside of class on average; that is what it took for me to understand
the material and practice my skills to achieve good grades in the class.
So that is what I did; I also managed to fit in time for various bits of
the collegiate exploration experience that Mike referred to.
| On the other hand, if you have structured your in-class time
| and your grading procedure such that the required
| out-of-class time for passing the course is less than the
| time spent in class... then please stop this method of
| teaching. No matter what you do in class, you are not
| developing the work ethic that we need to instill in our students.
|
This is probably more in important than the physics you teach. I've
written before that you teach responsibility by giving responsibility;
which means that you have to be willing to see people screw-up.
Luckily, college is the perfect place to do this as when you screw-up
there are plenty of second chances available; you can retake the class
for example. In even worse situations you can take a couple of years
off in the "real world" and then come back. One of the best (not
smartest) students I had in intro physics was a fellow who flunked out
as a freshmen (before I started teaching) and then came back at age 28
after getting married and having two kids and getting tired of playing
on the road in the band he was part of. This student worked hard and
succeeded!