[Phys-L] producing a good physics course ... was: The Make-Believe World of Real-World Physics

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 07/11/2013 09:30 AM, Carl Mungan wrote:

> So for that reason I think we need to give textbook writers a big
> amount of encouragement and applaud their courage and give them the
> benefit of the doubt as much as possible. And praise to the heavens
> whatever insights and new directions they manage to pioneer.

That's true and important.  This is a conversation that we in the
community really need to have.

I agree that most people wildly underestimate how hard it is to produce
a good physics course.  Consider the following scale:
  a) writing a novel;
  b) producing a good physics textbook and supporting materials;
  c) producing a Hollywood movie.

Most people, if they think about it at all, tend to think that (b) is
pretty much like (a).  In contrast, I reckon (b) is maybe not quite as
hard as (c), but a lot more like (c) than most people realize.

Let's see if we can take the next step down this road, so as to turn
this idea into a constructive suggestion.

Because people underestimate the magnitude and complexity of the task,
most textbook-writing projects are severely under-resourced.  It makes
me want to tear my hair out to see the same mistake made over and over
again.

On 07/11/2013 10:04 AM, Peter Schoch asked:

> Why should a textbook be written by ONE person?

IMHO it shouldn't.  Not even close.

Consider the analogy to the *producer* for a /small/ Hollywood movie:
 -- He hires the scriptwriters.
 -- He hires the star to stand in front of the camera.
 -- He hires the director to stand in back of the camera.
 -- He hires the camera crew, lighting crew, art department, stunt crew, etc.
 -- He arranges for post-production, including special effects, music, etc.
 -- He arranges for publicity and distribution.
 ++ Most of all, he arranges for financing so that all of the above have
  the resources they need.

For a blockbuster, things are even more complicated, but I don't want to
bore you with details of something that is only an analogy to begin with.

I know enough about managing to recognize a management problem when I 
see one.  Let's be clear:  Producing a proper physics course is only
secondarily a physics problem and a pedagogy problem;  it is primarily
a management problem.  Until people recognize it as such, they are going
to keep making the same mistake over and over again.

Most people in academia tend to be independent and unmanageable to 
a degree that puts the average prima ballerina to shame.  "Research
management" is almost a contradiction in terms, but not quite.  There
are exceptions, as proved by the existence of large projects such as
CERN.  People who play nicely with others can be found in the large 
national labs and industrial labs, where teamwork is the norm rather 
than the exception.

============================

Let's see if we can take yet another step down this road:

There is a basic rule of management that says you should solve the
/whole problem/.  In the present context, we need to realize that
writing a textbook does not solve the whole problem.

IMHO the larger goal is to produce a _course_.  The textbook supports
teaching the course, but it is not the whole story.  A lot of other 
supporting material is required.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but here's something to consider:
Rather than starting with a simple book and adding complexity, start
by thinking in terms of a MOOC.  That's a really complicated thing.
IMHO it is better to plan for complexity and cut corners when necessary,
rather than thinking small and then constantly getting blindsided by 
the un-planned-for complexities.

Most of today's MOOCs are terrible in many of the same ways that the
textbooks are terrible, but I think the MOOC guys may have a better
chance of attracting -- and managing -- the resources necessary to fix
the problems.  I've been saying that for 20 years, and I've been wrong
19 times in a row, but sooner or later it's going to come true.

In particular:  A good MOOC would be able to get around the main problem
that PSSC encountered, namely the fact that the existing cadre of teachers
was not prepared to teach using the PSSC approach.  The hypothetical good
MOOC would have the advantage that the teachers could learn from it as
they went along.

I am optimistic that teachers /can/ be persuaded to adopt new ideas, by
which I mean ideas that are newer than the stuff that's in the textbooks,
i.e. stuff that is 100 years out of date.  I have some experience with
this.  I wrote a book on how to fly airplanes ... which is a much simpler
topic than introductory physics.  The book was at first considered quite
heretical, but instructors were happy to adopt it.  Flight instructors 
would send me email saying, "I feel I ought to offer refunds to all my 
previous students, because I've been teaching this stuff completely wrong 
for 20 years."  It was an easy sell, because the right answer turns out to 
be vastly simpler than the wrong answer ... not just better, but simpler.

We can do the same thing with physics.  Perhaps the most obvious example
is getting rid of the usual "sig figs" rules, which are grossly wrong 
and also more laborious than doing things properly.  Students are smart
enough to figure out that this stuff is wrong, and when they do, it
destroys the teacher's credibility.  Another example is special relativity, 
where the modern (post-1908) approach is very much simpler than the archaic 
approach that is found in almost all first-year textbooks.

> In this age of the Internet, just leave it out of the book and put
> problem sets online where they can be easily edited and corrected.

Indeed.  This leads to another management issue:  A project of this size
needs a formal bug-tracker ... something like mantis or bugzilla.

One of the cardinal rules of critical thinking says that in order to
avoid mistakes, you first have to recognize that mistakes are possible.

On 07/11/2013 10:51 AM, Anthony Lapinski wrote:

> It should be the
> highlight of a student's day. Make it Fun, Interesting, Relevant, and
> Engaging.

It should go without saying, but let me add:  First make it correct.

To say the same thing the other way:  A book full of stuff that cannot
possibly be true is a huge turn-off.  It guarantees that the course will
be neither fun, interesting, relevant, nor engaging.  It is the opposite
and the enemy of critical thinking.