worked examples etc.

I received a very well written email from a student arguing for worked examples, similar to but not identical with the complex problems I write. Here an excerpt of my reply:

If the primary goal is to have you learn content such as Gauss’ law, then I agree with you, the complex psets would be structured differently. However, let me ask you to consider having your primary goal to develop your ability to analyze novel problems.

Let’s take three scenarios

1) students, such as yourself, working on complex problems that are similar to what you describe, with hints, or a possible similar worked example. Then you are correct you might learn more about, e.g., Gauss law. But since you are using prior examples, or hints, the challenge on confronting a novel problem is much less.

2) students working on the current problem sets who ask the question “how do I do this problem”, then make no progress, and get frustrated. Then I agree little learning takes place, either on problem-solving skills or on, e.g., Gauss Law.

3) students working on the current problem sets who ask a more open question “what is going on in this problem”, sketch, analyze the key stages of the scenario, ask what ideas are involved, and hence start to build a frame or structure around a problem. I think these students, even if they make no further progress in the solution, have grown tremendously in earning how to tackle novel situations.

hours out of class?

This week's problem-set is hard. Gauss' law problems see to fall in two categories: trivial exercises with standard geometries (line, sphere, sheet), or very hard problems with complex setups, e.g. uniformly charged sphere with a hole in it which you replace with two spheres, one the original size but now complete, and a small sphere the size of the hole but with opposite charge.

I have also received students' concerns about the amount of work. I use the guideline of 2-3 hours of work outside of class meeting times, so that is 10-15 hours of work for the 5-credit course. I wonder how many other courses follow this guideline and has the student expectation of load decreased.

problem-sets extending lecture content

I received an interesting post on the course discussion board. A student was concerned that the weekly problem-sets were on material that I had not covered during lecture. My reply described how the problem-sets extended and built on the foundation from the lectures.

In the end, I think a core issue is how to communicate to students that learning while at university is more than mastering a set of procedures but being able to develop broader skills so they can solve new and larger problems.

first week done!

The first week is done. All in all it went well, attendance is strong at lectures, the TAs report that students were engaged during the first inquiry lab, and that the discussions were intense during the recitations. Still there were some logistical missteps:

1) students naturally look for a list of problem-sets, lectures etc. However all is organized via a weekly learning module. This is non-obvious to students, and it is forced by webCT not being able to present a directory of lecture files to students except if they are placed in learning modules. One option I might consider is to unhide the psets so students can access it from both paths

2) some students mis-read the 8am deadline as 8pm so missed some work

Let's see if we can keep the momentum up.

inquiry labs

Most labs are revised for the semester, from cookbook to inquiry labs. The goal is to increase student engagement and understanding. The inquiry labs have two key characteristics

1) Students have some control over design of experiment, e.g. create their own multiloop circuit to test Kirchhoff’s laws.

2) Students need to be given sufficient time for reflection, elaboration and application within the lab period.

In most cases we were able to keep the first half of lab same: students learn equipment, then in the 2nd half of lab they design and conduct an experiment

writing weekly summaries

During conversations with students I often suggest that writing a weekly summary describing/explaining the main ideas and concepts of the week is an excellent way to review. If you can easily write the summary, then you have a good organized understanding of the material. If the ideas are hard for you to summarize, then that tells you that you need to re-look at those ideas.

This coming semester I am formalizing this and having students write a weekly review. Since there are over 500 students the logistics of this are daunting! To help with accountability each student will post their writing to CPR, a peer-assessment web-site. The web-site does an internal swap-a-roo: each student gets to look at three other student's summaries and they provide feedback. At the end, the student can read the feedback of their own summary.

How effective will this be? I might track the quality of the summaries as we progress through the semester.

personal contact in a large lecture class

It is a challenge to have more contact with students when there are approximately 500 young people taking the class.

One small thing that I do is after the 2nd exam. Exams are stressful moments in a course. Before the exams I organize review sessions etc., but after the exam I look at how each student did in the 2nd exam compared to the first exam. I contact each student (via email) who noticeably did much better in the 2nd exam compared to the first and congratulate them. I also contact students who scored noticeably worse on the 2nd exam and offer to meet to plan how they/we can help.

Students reply to me after these emails, generally appreciative, and I have now approximately a dozen one-on-one meetings scheduled.

The core idea is that if I was teaching a class of 20 students, I would be able to walk up and congratulate the students who improved, or quietly talk to those who did not do so well. In a class size of 500, it is harder to achieve this level of personal contact, but it is still possible, and it is still important or perhaps more so.