Confessions of a Converted Lecturer - Eric Mzur
test of 4 groups that showed regardless of the teacher, the kids learned very little
when his kids took a test not made by him, way simpler, they asked, how would you like us to answer? how you've taught us - or how we think about these things?
Beginning of printing press - the only way to deliver info was lecture.
student who does well on the conceptual problem tends to do well on the conventional problem, but not vice versa
40% do well on conventional but have no clue of the basics.
what are these 40%
how would you characterize these 40% - what are they doing?
memorizing....
if physics is reduced to applying (boring) recipes to problems... - it is boring
the 100% on conventional, but not even able to get 2 points from conceptual.
conventional problems:
very first thing you see - is this and very first thing you think is Kirchhoff's Law
gosh - this is so similar to Dan Meyers presentation of striping a problem...
oh i love this.. Harvard guys' results are our results....this is exactly what we have found to be a best practice......
you let them talk to each other... 40% will talk with the 9% and the 50%....
prof has no clue what is going on in kids' mind, but other kids do... they have all only recently learned it..
concept test: (or as we call it... talk to your people)
he says... turn to your neighbor and convince them of your answer..
2 features:
1. active engagement. can't sleep because every 2 minutes your neighbor will talk to you
2. info flow. don't have to wait till test time to see if they get stuff or not, and can see where they stand with respect to rest of class w/o it affecting their grade
is this any good:
by asking better and better questions,, and ones that are not on your pre and post test... results for him tripled
conclusion:
end of semester evals/student exam performance very misleading indicators
ed is not about info but about how to use info..
interesting - from closing questions:
he said change always comes from outside.. ?
one conclusion he had - we try to cover too much... relax coverage and work on comprehension
now they write: Prof Mazur is not teaching us anything, we have to learn it all ourselves
students own perception of how they learn is often so bent on how they've been trained
how to pull them out - show the data
everything you do needs to involve student thinking, labs, hands on, they can be rote as well...
he said he learned the most in a research group as an apprentice... so - good to know for pre-teacher..
he's not sure what goals are for a lab... (in harvard)
syllabus defines most courses by content
should define by learning out comes..
ie: after talking this course, should be able to...
in lab - no goals articulated at all
all exams are open book... whatever book...
because - when i write a paper... you get to use all resources..
should apply the same to students - have access to all info
because it's not about remembering it - but about using it..
bravo
because now - info is so ubiquitous
so now - a lot of old problems can't be asked anymore... if you can pull it out of text book - not a good question..
have to be creative in assessing the students understanding
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