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Re: [Phys-l] Feynman's messenger lectures now available



I like to slam the FCI and I use it every year--well the original
version--get very good gains and would describe my in class presentation as
'sort of' lecture. I doubt many if any here 'lecture' in the sense of what
the Feyman lectures are. I suspect that BECAUSE I get good gains, a certain
professor who I won't name would declare that my course IS interactive --
and to be sure there are interactive aspects, but I do talk a lot!

The main thing about the FCI is that it covers a VERY NARROW bit of the
physics curriculum--actually requires fairly sophisticated understanding of
some concepts--and can be 'taught to'. It is NOT the benchmark for much of
anything other than this narrow, sophisticated understanding of Newton's
Laws. Using it to 'prove' one teaching style better than another is, IMO,
absolutely bogus!

Anyway, in the form of an anecdote, let me relate that when I was a senior
in college and president of the physics club, we showed (school had the
original films) the Feynman lecture series in the evenings. We had very
good crowds for those showings. Now we were seniors...and there is little
doubt that Feynman is very good IF you already know quite a bit of physics.
Unfortunately, the books based on his lectures came out during my sophomore
year and the E&M professor tried to use Volume II as our textbook. I wasn't
smart enough to pick up a copy of Resnick & Halliday to actually figure out
what was going on and am consequently weak in E&M to this day (but luckily
am much more proficient with Gauss' Law than the students--so I hold my own!
;-)

Rick

***Free Physics Instructional Software:
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html

--------------------------------------------------
From: "chuck britton" <cvbritton@mac.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 11:31 AM
To: "Forum for Physics Educators" <phys-l@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] Feynman's messenger lectures now available

I hope that those of us who like to slam the 'FCI gain' idea will
actually take the test and see what it is measuring. It isn't
perfect - but there doesn't seem to be a better measure out there.
And the Concepts ARE tested quite validly.

Yes Feynman's lectures DO have a significant 'Chinese Meal Effect'.
It's easy to skip over the 'waffle words' that sometimes
(over)simplify the topic at hand. But they do a good job of inspiring
further learning.


At 10:28 AM -0400 5/19/10, Philip Keller wrote:
The implicit definition here is that "learning"="gain on FCI" and
thus that is how the effectiveness of all teaching must be judged.
This is surely debatable.
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