I came across this very interesting article on efforts by MIT and other
universities to redesign their introductory science courses. While the
approach is resource-intensive and would require a large commitment from
Caltech, it seems to be far more effective at raising and sustaining
attendance, engaging students during lecture, and improving overall
student understanding of concepts. I remember that there had been talk
earlier of switching our Core classes to individual sections, with a more
individual approach to learning rather than the large lecture format. I
don't know whether Caltech would be willing to invest in this, but it
seems like an effective approach that we should at least consider. Here
is the New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html?_r=1
-Neal Bansal
3 comments:
Hey,
One thing to keep in mind is that in the article, it stated that M.I.T. had made attendance mandatory, so not all of the increase in attendance can be attributed to increased student interest in lectures alone. However, although I can't be sure of this, I would be willing to guess that if we implemented a system like the one mentioned in the article, attendance would probably increase.
-Neal Bansal
There's a proposal in the draft Aims and Needs committee report (presented at the faculty meeting on Monday) about creating an experimental "Caltech Scholars" alternative to the core that might be a good home for this type of "active learning" approach. Mike can probably get the writeup for that from Peter Dervan, if there is interest.
-Richard Murray
It's a good article.
Professor Murray's suggestion reminds me of Professor Abeyaratne's visit, when he described an experiment to duplicate the British tutors system for a single class. Though the class did, on average, equivalent to other classes, students spent less time on it. If we were to do such an experiment, the students involved should have their entire schedule under the new method for a proper test of the principles in question.
-Craig Montuori
Post a Comment