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Re: [Phys-L] Indicators of quality teaching (Was:MOOC: Edx OffersMechanics course by Prof.Walter Lewin)



On 06/21/2013 12:59 PM, Anthony Lapinski wrote:

Books are terrible. Who writes these things?

It's true that most of the books are terrible. But keep in mind
that writing books is reeeeeally hard. It's a miracle that they
get written at all.


On 06/21/2013 01:19 PM, Richard Tarara wrote:

IMO, the test of the teaching/teaching methods is the end product.

It's not that simple. That's part of it, but nowhere near the
whole story ... especially in a thread where a highly-selective
school such as MIT has been mentioned. It's easy to get good
results if you start with the top 1% of the students. The mark
of a good teacher is to get good results with students who were
not born wizards.

Teaching wizards poses some unique challenges, but overall it is
ridiculously easy compared to teaching non-wizards.

/Some/ guys who do well teaching at MIT would also do well teaching
at South Dogpatch High School ... but many would not. The quality
of the MIT "end product" is not a reliable indicator of teaching
skill.

On the other hand, let's be super-clear: There are some ways
in which end-product standards matter a great deal. For example,
in private pilot training, at the end of the process, everybody
has to meet the same standards.

Of course, private-pilot standards are not the same as airline
standards or Top Gun standards, but the point remains: if you
want private pilot privileges, you have to meet private pilot
standards. No compromises. No corner-cutting. No "grade
inflation". Depending on where the students start, they might
move through the course faster or slower, but the completion
standards are the same for all.

=================================
=================================
More generally:

Anybody who claims to know "the" correct teaching technique
doesn't know what he's talking about. Over the last few thousand
years it has become obvious that there are lots of different
techniques, each with some advantages and some disadvantages.

*) With the best students, there are N different techniques, and
almost anything you try will work just fine, within reason. One
of my favorite proverbs helps keep things in perspective:

If Benjamin Franklin had gotten a formal education,
he might have amounted to something.

*) With the worst students, there are N different techniques, and
if you try them all you might find one that works, or perhaps some
combination that works.

*) With the other 98% of the students, you never know in advance
what techniques will work best with any given student. This
makes teaching a large class rather inefficient, because you
have to go over everything multiple times, in hopes of that each
student will pick out the tidbit(s) they need ... before getting
unduly bored by everything else.

This is one way in which books and videos have an advantage over
the usual classroom experience: Reading and watching are more
individualized. The moderate-to-good students can fast-forward
over the stuff that doesn't speak to them, and pore over the
stuff that does.

Continuing that thought: I find it shocking that so many of
the present-day educational web-videos are so poorly cross-
referenced. The importance of links has been understood for
thirty years that I know of, since well before the world-wide-
web existed -- and possibly much longer than that.

Anybody with more than a few days of teaching experience knows
that students learn stuff out of order. Hence the importance
of the "spiral" approach. Even more importantly, the order is
not the same from student to student. Therefore in online
materials -- video as well as text -- it is important to have
lots of links:
-- click here to skip forward
-- click here to go back for background information on a
specific topic (on a /specific/ topic, as opposed to
starting over entirely)
-- click here to delve into deeper implications of the
current topic
-- click here to see a list of ramifications, including
different but somewhat-analogous systems
-- et cetera.

For offline materials, this is less convenient, but it is still
important. Links to the background, links to the ramifications,
et cetera. At the very least, a book ought to have a well-thought-
out index.

On 06/21/2013 12:51 PM, Larry Smith got it mostly right

More important than what the teacher does in class is what the
teacher gets the students to do in class.

That's the right idea. We agree that a major part of the
teacher's job is to provide pacing, feedback, et cetera,
to motivate students to do the work. Obviously that's only
part of the job of the overall job description, but it's a
large, indispensable part.

You would think that books would contribute to inspiring the
students, but often they are particularly poor in this area.

More important than what the teacher does in class is what the
teacher gets the students to do in class.

I would have left off the last two words. Being smart requires
thinking about stuff /all the time/ ... not just "in class".

By way of analogy: Put yourself in the shoes of a doctor. The
patient has high blood pressure and diabetes. Nothing that happens
_in the doctor's office_ is going to solve the problem. What is
needed is a /lifestyle/ change: diet, exercise, et cetera. In
the best-case scenario, you can motivate the patient to do the
right things, henceforth, day by day, for the rest of his life.

So it is with teaching physics or anything else: In the best-
case scenario, the you can motivate each student to think about
things the right way, all day, every day, for the rest of his life.

=========

It should go without saying that the teacher /also/ needs to know
the subject matter backwards and forwards. That's indispensable,
but not the main topic of discussion today. It's another part of
the overall Venn diagram.

Also: Content affects teaching technique: The techniques for
teaching artistic drawing are different from the techniques for
teaching math, or soccer, or whatever. There are many parallels,
but also many differences.