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Re: [Phys-L] book versus video versus lecture versus tutoring



Another facet to this, in the course I taught last semester (an introduction to modern physics, which has a unit on SR in the syllabus)

I chose a book that didn't cover SR other than in an appendix. And the appendix didn't do it the way I wanted to cover the material. (It did cover the QM material in a way that I wanted, which was the motivation for the book I chose.)

Therefore SR was covered through lecture notes and handouts. One of the criticism that surfaced in the student evaluations for the course was that I strayed from the textbook. An awful lot of today's college students are taken out of their comfort zone if you do units in a course that involves material not in "the text".

I have no real solution for this, other than I wish it was more common for courses to have material not in the text, so that students will be more used to such a situation and not consider it atypical for a college level course when this happens.

Joel R

-----Original Message-----
From: Phys-l [mailto:phys-l-bounces@phys-l.org] On Behalf Of John Denker
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 5:19 PM
To: Phys-L@Phys-L.org
Subject: Re: [Phys-L] book versus video versus lecture versus tutoring

On Thu 09-Jan-14 9:18 PM, I wrote:

*) Many people -- including many on this list -- are using textbooks
that contain hundreds or thousands of physics errors (not counting
typos and other trivialities), yet nobody seems to care.

The last part was an unfortunate exaggeration. There are more than a few people who care. A nice proof-by-construction was provided when on 01/17/2014 08:21 AM, Trivilino, Herman wrote:

I don't think we tolerate errors in textbooks any more than we do in
a layman's youtube video. It's just that many of us feel we are
forced to tolerate the former because a textbook is a necessary
component of the course we've been hired to teach.

OK.

I believe we are now living through a transition period, watching the
extinction of the expensive physics textbook. In recent decades it
has has been promoted and enhanced by publishers whose only goal is to
increase their profits. The way in which physics is presented to
students will, I hope, improve as we get these ubiquitous pieces of
nonsense out of the textbooks by killing the textbook itself

That's an innnnteresting hypothesis.

I reckon the textbook publishing industry is under pressure from several directions, including
a) More-or-less classical textbooks available online for free.
b) Instructors pulling together their own notes to make an
ad_hoc text.
c) Online lessons that do not resemble textbooks, including
video-based lessons e.g. Khan Academy.

Perhaps the OpenStax project will allow us to edit their textbook
soon, and that will serve as a model for reform.

I looked at the openstax physics book, and I was underwhelmed.
The first few pages seemed calculated to make me tear my hair out.
-- Pointless metaphysical discussion of "what is physics".
-- Historical anecdotes that are incorrect, and would be
irrelevant if they were correct.
-- Bohr atom.
-- A five-step acyclic "scientific method".
-- Significant figures.

It would take a *lot* of editing to get that up to decent standards. Besides, I think the future is more in the video format than in the book format.

===

Many of the Khan videos are rather poor by any absolute standard ... yet students find them useful. Anybody who wants to play in this space needs to understand this. A few hypotheses to consider are listed at
http://www.av8n.com/physics/teaching-ideas.htm#teaching-khan

If we're going to do this right, we need to consider the documents as *living documents* with a well-oiled mechanism continuing improvements. This is discussed at
http://www.av8n.com/physics/teaching-ideas.htm#teaching-living-docs

Also ... I'm not sure that a wiki approach with free-for-all editing is a good model ... especially if /reform/ is one of the goals. This is discussed at
http://www.av8n.com/physics/teaching-ideas.htm#teaching-wiki


Minds wander after a few minutes of concentration.

Wow. That's a two-edge sword. There's good wandering and there's bad wandering. I insist that a certain amount of wandering -- aka wondering -- is an indispensable part of the learning process. William James had something to say about this more than 100 years ago:
Each of the associates is a hook to which [the memory]
hangs, a means to fish it up when sunk below the surface.
Together they form a network of attachments by which it
is woven into the entire tissue of our thought. The
'secret of a good memory' is thus the secret of forming
diverse and multiple associations with every fact we
care to retain. But this forming of associations with
a fact -- what is it but thinking about the fact as much
as possible? Briefly, then, of two men with the same
outward experiences, the one who thinks over his experiences
most, and weaves them into the most systematic relations
with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/tt12.html

Note the contrast:
++ All during a lecture, the good student will wonder and
ponder and mull over each new idea, checking to see how
it fits (or conflicts!) with previously-learned ideas.
After some appropriate amount of mulling, he will rejoin
the lecture.
-- The poor student will wander off and start daydreaming
about irrelevant stuff, and never come back.

The issue of "wandering" is not a Manichean yes-versus-no black-versus-white question. It requires shades of gray, and maybe even color. If you managed to prevent wandering, you would help the worst students ... at the cost of doing incalculable harm to the rest of the students. So don't do that.

Some of the Khan videos are clever about this: The
presenter explicitly says "You should pause the video
at this point and think about what I just said ...."

Note that you can pause a video, pause a tutoring session,
and bookmark a book. In contrast, it is hard to pause a
lecture to a large audience, because the appropriate
length of pause varies so widely from person to person.

Also, a lot of lecturers think that if they stop talking
they will lose control of the situation. Well, yes, you
will lose control for a moment ... and everybody will be
better off as a consequence.
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin,
the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

Knowing when to shut up is an important part of the
teaching job. This does not come naturally to me. There's
always one more thing I could say. Still, I know it is
important to give the student some space, so I force
myself to shut up. Sometimes I literally bite my tongue.

Another trick is to apply the proverb that says when all
else fails, ask the student. For example: "How's your
workload? Do you have room in your brain for one more
idea, or do you want me to leave you alone?"

=====

Returning to the topic of traditional textbooks: I reckon many of the existing publishers could survive if they played their cards right, but they are so grossly mismanaged that it seems likely they will die of self-inflicted wounds. They're almost as grossly mismanaged as the US educational system.
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