tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post5307262386059819455..comments2024-03-26T14:44:37.985-04:00Comments on D-Ed Reckoning: M.I.T Drops Physics Lectures; NY Times ConfusedKDeRosahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06853211164976890091noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-88548377280601239022009-01-27T23:28:00.000-05:002009-01-27T23:28:00.000-05:00Just to elaborate :-)The 8 story building about ¼ ...Just to elaborate :-)<BR/><BR/>The 8 story building about ¼ of the way from the top of the picture pretty much centered left/right is a dorm (actually, two dorms). Two minute walk to the lagoon, and three minutes from there to the seashore :-)<BR/><BR/>Four years here or four years in the Northeast and ~$100K of debt. Hmmmm ... decisions, decisions ...<BR/><BR/>-Mark RouloAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-80942445856969075522009-01-27T23:23:00.000-05:002009-01-27T23:23:00.000-05:00"Mark, your use of the letter R for Thursday made ..."<I>Mark, your use of the letter R for Thursday made me think you went to MIT. But your last post about MIT needing two tracks for 8.01 confused me--they ALREADY have 3 tracks, at least, and have had at least 3 tracks for nearly 20 years now.</I>"<BR/><BR/>I didn't go to MIT for several reasons:<BR/><BR/>(1) I didn't know that I would get in, and didn't apply (I had a hard time seeing how yet one more white male with high SAT scores would be of interest to MIT).<BR/><BR/>(2) If I did get in, it would be very expensive. I wasn't real keen on the idea of graduating with up to $100K of debt. I didn't see much point in applying if I wasn't going to accept.<BR/><BR/>(3) I had pretty much *no* social life in high school. Another four years of this didn't seem very appealing, and I didn't think I would be competitive at MIT without spending most of my time studying.<BR/><BR/>(4) UCSB sent me a promotional package with a 8½"×11" glossy shot of their lagoon. It looked like this:<BR/><BR/>http://express.ece.ucsb.edu/pictures/ucsb_aerial2.jpg<BR/><BR/>but from a slightly different angle.<BR/><BR/>But ... if MIT has already sorted physics by seriousness, then I have no idea what MIT thinks it is doing.<BR/><BR/>Sigh.<BR/><BR/>-Mark RouloAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-27333412757064959982009-01-24T00:36:00.000-05:002009-01-24T00:36:00.000-05:00No, I think your takeaway is wrong. This is a fun...No, I think your takeaway is wrong. This is a fundamental change to the way 8.01 is taught. The comments on the NYT article are more telling.<BR/><BR/>Here is how MIT's old 8.01 worked:<BR/><BR/>after 3 hours of lecture, you had assigned problem sets, one a week. the problem sets took 10 hours a week, roughly. That was normal. Recitation section would usually show you how to work related problems. If all else failed, you could watch the problems be done by Walter Lewin himself, explaining each step, on the TV at MIT. It ran continuously all day, and all night, so you could watch it over and over again. Feedback was definitely not tight unless you made it so--you looked at the answer key, etc. But you had various opportunities to admit you didn't understand, if you were willing to do that--most young MITers aren't.<BR/><BR/>Apparently now, the feedback loop isn't tighter, because you work in "groups" where only one person has to do the quiz for all of you to get credit. The clickers are just given to the ones with the most prior knowledge, and you're seated to "Share the knowledge". So the strugglers learn less, but their attendance raises their grade.<BR/><BR/>This is inferior to the old way, where at least the kids with prior knowledge would generally group together, and leave the others all together, struggling. The strugglers would then have to face their own attempts to learn something while the more advanced would race ahead. This was healthier.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-22341369007406609082009-01-24T00:27:00.000-05:002009-01-24T00:27:00.000-05:00Mark, your use of the letter R for Thursday made m...Mark, your use of the letter R for Thursday made me think you went to MIT. But your last post about MIT needing two tracks for 8.01 confused me--they ALREADY have 3 tracks, at least, and have had at least 3 tracks for nearly 20 years now. (They have 8.01L, the long version, for those who can't handle 8.01. It adds one month to the course, and is smaller, more hands on. They have 8.012/8.022 for those with massive physics experience and with solid advanced calc already under their belts (it used the book by Kleppner & Kolenkow) and they used to have 8.01X, the experimental group not to mention the ones inside Concourse, ISG, etc.<BR/><BR/>MIT's 8.01 was taught with 3 hours of amphitheater, and 2 hours of recitations section in a classroom format with another professor running that--not a TA.<BR/><BR/>"If you are not majoring in physics, you merely need to pass. You can skip class, avoid the book and copy answers off your friends and TAs.<BR/><BR/>I believe MIT was trying to solve this problem."<BR/><BR/>No, not exactly. MIT tried to solve THAT problem by getting rid of Pass/No Record for the first year, now it's only the first term, maybe even less. <BR/><BR/>Recall that MIT shows EVERY SINGLE first year physics problem worked out by Walter Lewin on their internal television network. There is no need to copy answers from friends. You just copy Lewin.<BR/><BR/>Some teachers felt they needed a new method, didn't like the (typical) drop off in attendance, and that the current failure rate was too high. Of course, that could be attributable to a variety of factors, including less preparation for the students in high school. The attendance factor is huge of course. but attending to that as a issue rather than a symptom would be mindboggling for MIT's other cultural issues.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-18829053996334343512009-01-13T18:53:00.000-05:002009-01-13T18:53:00.000-05:00"The result is that the new class is slightly less..."<I>The result is that the new class is slightly less challenging, but much friendlier. </I>"<BR/><BR/>When I was at UCSB 20 years ago, they "solved" this problem by having three physics tracks:<BR/><BR/>1) Physics for Poets (ie. w/o math)<BR/>-----------------------------------<BR/>Here you would learn that things fall down when you let go of them.<BR/><BR/>2) Physics for Engineers, Chemists and Physicists<BR/>----------------------------------<BR/>This is/was the "real thing". 4 or 5 quarters long (depending on whether you took the quantum/relativity quarter). You needed to use calculus. Second quarter of this sequence caused me to become a chemist.<BR/><BR/>3) Physics for Biologists<BR/>------------------------------<BR/>This is/was a three quarter sequence that still had math, but wasn't as hard as (2).<BR/><BR/>My guess is that MIT doesn't have many students who care about Physics for Poets.<BR/><BR/>This suggests that MIT is weakening their physics for physicists class to make things easier for the biologists. I'd rather see two courses offered.<BR/><BR/>-Mark RouloAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-52105460753231422012009-01-13T17:36:00.000-05:002009-01-13T17:36:00.000-05:00As an MIT alum who majored in physics and was at M...As an MIT alum who majored in physics and was at MIT recently, during the transition to TEAL, I thought I'd chime in.<BR/><BR/>There's a lot more context needed here. The first thing you need to know is that first semester at MIT is pass/fail to take a little of the pressure off. You can think whatever you want about that, but it's a big part of the reason that there was such a difference in learning between physics majors and non-physics majors in these courses.<BR/><BR/>If you are majoring in physics, you need to know this stuff, and you need to <I>get it</I> at a really deep level. That means reading the book, going to lecture, doing the problems ahead of time and asking good questions of your TAs.<BR/><BR/>If you are not majoring in physics, you merely need to pass. You can skip class, avoid the book and copy answers off your friends and TAs.<BR/><BR/>I believe MIT was trying to solve this problem.<BR/><BR/>The result is that the new class is slightly less challenging, but much friendlier. There's more emphasis on making sure that students understand the problems during the class before they leave to do the problem sets.<BR/><BR/>You are right about the codling. MIT is making it a little easier to learn physics in these classes, and that does mean that students don't get as much exposure to what it really means to solve tough physics problems or do experiments (incidentally there is no physics lab requirement at MIT).<BR/><BR/>I think this codling is ok, because at the college level, doing physics problems is really different from solving engineering problems or learning biology or chemistry or math. You only need a deep understanding of how to solve physics problems if you are a physics major, and you will get plenty of that in later years.<BR/><BR/>Not to mention, there is still a more advanced version of the freshman requirement that many interested students elect to take. This version is still run as a traditional lecture/homework/TA class, and it does force you to begin learning the skills of investigating and solving physics problems on your own.<BR/><BR/>I personally prefer the old way, but I think that so long as MIT continues to offer the choice, it's a good move to have students learn in the TEAL environment by default.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01218055774223731082noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-83208735554349875112009-01-13T17:22:00.000-05:002009-01-13T17:22:00.000-05:00Hey Mark.Good points.I think I made some of them i...Hey Mark.<BR/><BR/>Good points.<BR/><BR/>I think I made some of them in my next post.KDeRosahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06853211164976890091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-65936248465611555512009-01-13T16:58:00.000-05:002009-01-13T16:58:00.000-05:00"Our professor gave some really good lectures and ..."<I>Our professor gave some really good lectures and then he ran one of the problem solving sessions. Is there a difference?</I>"<BR/><BR/>Two differences: tightness of feedback loop and the professor is running the problem solving sessions.<BR/><BR/>-Mark RouloMark Roulohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09361464305104325702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-44927027010516033342009-01-13T16:57:00.000-05:002009-01-13T16:57:00.000-05:00"What the article describes is exactly what was go..."<I>What the article describes is exactly what was going on in our problem solving classes with our grad student after our lecture. The only change is that we had blackboards.</I>"<BR/><BR/>Well, not quite. Consider the turn-time for the closed loop in the new scheme: minutes. If you get a wrong answer, you can know very quickly. Plus, you can then get help to correct things.<BR/><BR/>The old scheme might go like this:<BR/>Monday: lecture.<BR/>Tuesday: Do problems. Get them wrong.<BR/>Wednesday: more lecture. You still haven't understood the problems you had on Tuesday.<BR/>Thursday: More struggling.<BR/>Friday: Finally, section with the TA. You can get help (or maybe not depending on the TA).<BR/>Friday: Last lecture.<BR/><BR/>You can get *very* lost very fast with the traditional approach (especially with poor TAs). The new scheme tightens the feedback loop for the students who care.<BR/><BR/>-Mark RouloAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25541994.post-11267459438452704902009-01-13T16:50:00.000-05:002009-01-13T16:50:00.000-05:00"I find it hard to believe that all four hours cla..."<I>I find it hard to believe that all four hours classroom time in Introductory Physics are present in a large ampitheater. Are there any science/engineering majors (especially those attending M.I.T) out there that that were taught like this.</I>"<BR/><BR/>When I was attending college -- 20 years ago -- a typical class week was three hours of lecture in a large ampitheater (MWF for one hour, or TR for 1½ hours) and one hour of TA time in a small classroom.<BR/><BR/>-Mark RouloAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com