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Posted By: Zoidberg What to do in the classroom? - 03/30/06 02:13 PM
I'm studying teaching and physics. At the moment i really do not enjoy the lectures that I am going through. Surely there is a better way to take that information to the students I teach?

The point of this is to ask, what stood out for you when you learnt science? Why do you enjoy it? Is there anything that teachers did (or could have done) that I can use?

Any replies would be nice.
Posted By: TheFallibleFiend Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/30/06 02:53 PM
My aunt is a teacher. She's taught English and Logic and music, mostly to Gifted and Talented students, but for the past 10 years or so she's been the head of the drama department at her HS.

I am a tutor and guest-lecturer in programming at a local HS. (I've also taught at the university level.) I mentioned to my aunt that the students are extremely rude to their own teacher. They invariably start out treating me just as rudely, but after the first ten minutes of my first lecture, everyone does a 180. Suddenly, they're paying attention, asking questions, sometimes arguing with me or among themselves about some particular point.

Her response: You have discovered the first rule of teaching and the first rule of maintaining order in a classroom - and that is having something important to say.

If you want your own students to have it better than you did, then you are going to have to go on an intellectual journey. You're going to have to understand why you think you know what you know. You need to be able to explain it very clearly - first to yourself and then to someone else. Make sure you actually understand it - and when you come to that understanding then think, "Geez. I wish someone had explained it to me THIS WAY - I would have understood it very much quicker" and then THAT's the way you teach it.

Qui docet, discet. (Kwee DOH'ket DEES'ket, He who teaches, learns.) Don't expect the students to fall at your feet with anticipation. A huge problem that I think many teachers have is that they've completely lost sight of what teachers are supposed to do. They're full of "educator" nonsense. Know your subject. Make sure that you explain things to students in an orderly way so that they can understand the natural and logical progression of ideas. Plan your thoughts before you speak, but don't plan every word you're going to say.
Posted By: Zoidberg Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/30/06 03:10 PM
I agree. It's hard not to get caught in this educator role. It is a real emphasis where I study. There is a huge discrepancy between the content, Maths and Physics, and the educational units.

And to quote sayings 'Practice makes perfect.' Teaching is not excluded here.
Posted By: Justine Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/30/06 03:42 PM
One of my science teachers spent the first class on riddles to teach us how to ask questions. It was memorable and gave me initiative from the start to speak up in class.

Eye contact with the students is a valuable tool. I was more attentive with teachers who used overhead projectors or if using blackboards or dry erase boards that they turned often to face the class the majority of the time.

If possible depending on class size, rearranging the desks in a horseshoe shape so all the students can see each other and the teacher clearly works well.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/30/06 05:40 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Zoidberg:
I'm studying teaching and physics. At the moment i really do not enjoy the lectures that I am going through. Surely there is a better way to take that information to the students I teach?

The point of this is to ask, what stood out for you when you learnt science? Why do you enjoy it? Is there anything that teachers did (or could have done) that I can use?

Any replies would be nice.
I studied mostly by myself. I.m.o., the teacher should just tell stories, show videos etc. about the subject he/she is teaching. Then he should give the student assignments that require the student to study for him/herself. In case of dificulties the student should contact the teacher.
Posted By: dr_rocket Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/30/06 07:57 PM
I think that TheFallibleFreind, Justine and Count Iblis II have more or less hit the nail on the head. I would like to add that Science is part of the human condition - a good part at that. To be a good scientist your mind must be "lit up" and very active with it. The same thing is true for teaching. I have noticed that students very quickly evaluate and rate professors, instructors, TAs, etc. If your a burn-out, stuck-up,ignorant or just a dummy they know it immediately. On the other hand, can spot genuine passion in a heart beat. If you know your subject well and can tell a good story you will captivate the student's minds. It is just like reading bed-time stories to children. Once you have lit the flame the student will home in on the subject like a missile.

If you are studying a subject and your teacher is killing it - you need to take a different tac. When I studied differential geometry, many years ago, the professor strangled the whole thing and then spent the remainder of the semester beating it to a pulp. I was forced back on my own resources. Essentially I "read around" the subject. I went to the library and looked up the history of the subject and all the punters that had added to it. It is quite a tale. I also looked in every textbook on the subject for "good explanations."

Looking back, I wonder if maybe that prof did me a favor?
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/31/06 01:37 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
I studied mostly by myself. I.m.o., the teacher should just tell stories, show videos etc. about the subject he/she is teaching. Then he should give the student assignments that require the student to study for him/herself. In case of dificulties the student should contact the teacher.
I would not see this as the perfect education method. By midsemester, I wouldn't expect students to show up except for exams.

Students want to see that the teacher is interested in the subject and interested in them learning. Students will look for reasons to believe the opposite--even if it isn't true.

A good teacher should care about the subject and project this. He/She should be extremely well prepared for every class.

I had one Prof. who would take one day a week and send the students to the blackboards to solve problems. Students worked in teams of 2 each. The Prof would wander around and nudge students when they needed it, or provide new problems as they finished.
(of course, the teacher had to divide the class into 3 sessions on that day to have time and blackboard space for everyone) The Prof. obviously cared, and it showed. Students still remember those sessions (even some of the problems).

I had another Prof. who gave essentially the same lecture 3 times in a row. I stopped going to class. Unfortunately, the Prof. figured out that he was way behind and went into overdrive to cover all the subject (required for the qualifying exams) in time. Point is, students lost confidence in the Prof. because he obviously didn't care.
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/31/06 05:14 AM
Zoidberg wrote:
"I'm studying teaching and physics. At the moment i really do not enjoy the lectures that I am going through. Surely there is a better way to take that information to the students I teach?"

Well I currently teach at the University of Washington, my sister teaches at the University of Wisconsin, and a friend's daughter, in grad school just completed her final year teaching at Iowa State so I come to your question with a bit of sympathy. And then, of course, I was once a student myself (and still am ... in a sense).

I think lectures are a great way to get information across. But lectures need to be exciting. You need to not just be an educator ... but also an actor. You need to exude enthusiasm for the subject and it needs to be contagious. Give me 5 minutes in any lecture hall and I'm a raging adrenaline rush ... even if I've taught the exact same material 20 times before.

And then there's that thing about demos. Build demonstrations. And the more exciting the better. Don't just talk about STP ... blow something up. Then implode something. They'll pay attention. Oh and do it outside ... where windows won't shatter. Ask me how I know. ;-)
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/31/06 12:12 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by J. Arthur God:
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
I studied mostly by myself. I.m.o., the teacher should just tell stories, show videos etc. about the subject he/she is teaching. Then he should give the student assignments that require the student to study for him/herself. In case of dificulties the student should contact the teacher.
I would not see this as the perfect education method. By midsemester, I wouldn't expect students to show up except for exams.

Students want to see that the teacher is interested in the subject and interested in them learning. Students will look for reasons to believe the opposite--even if it isn't true.

A good teacher should care about the subject and project this. He/She should be extremely well prepared for every class.

I had one Prof. who would take one day a week and send the students to the blackboards to solve problems. Students worked in teams of 2 each. The Prof would wander around and nudge students when they needed it, or provide new problems as they finished.
(of course, the teacher had to divide the class into 3 sessions on that day to have time and blackboard space for everyone) The Prof. obviously cared, and it showed. Students still remember those sessions (even some of the problems).

I had another Prof. who gave essentially the same lecture 3 times in a row. I stopped going to class. Unfortunately, the Prof. figured out that he was way behind and went into overdrive to cover all the subject (required for the qualifying exams) in time. Point is, students lost confidence in the Prof. because he obviously didn't care.
The Prof. should certainly be interested in what he is teaching. But I think that the lectures should not be too much focused about the technical details the students have to master. At university you are educating students to become researchers. So, not only do the students have to master the subjects they are taught, they also have to learn how to master new topics without help from others.

If they don't learn to learn by themselves, they will not learn to do research a few years later when they start to do their Ph.D. and later when they do Post Doc research.

Students don't learn much during the lectures anyway. What happens is that the lecturer breaks down the ''big book'' the student have to go through in steps so that it looks more managable. Students have to sit down and learn the subject by themselves anyway.
Posted By: TheFallibleFiend Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/31/06 03:58 PM
"At university you are educating students to become researchers."

1. He didn't say he was teaching to university students. I didn't think professors took or even cared about educating. My best guess is that he's directed at HS students.

2. Not every college student is going to become a researcher. In fact, it's a pretty small number of them.

"If they don't learn to learn by themselves, they will not learn to do research a few years later when they start to do their Ph.D. and later when they do Post Doc research."

The real thing is this: Many professors are ungodly lazy and some aren't too clear on the subjects themselves - since they've got graduate students to do their work for them.

Even when I taught at uni, I figured that I had a duty to give the students more than they'd get from the book. I assigned reading from the book, but I also gave actual lectures that explained things. I gave my own problems that were generally much harder than the ones in the book.

What you propose is what the very laziest graduate school professors do. I don't even think it's appropriate there - but it's absolutely inappropriate in HS.
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 03/31/06 05:14 PM
Falliable wrote:
"I didn't think professors took or even cared about educating."

You're correct. We do it for the fabuous salaries.

Falliable wrote:
"My best guess is that he's directed at HS students."

And this makes a difference in what way?

Falliable wrote:
"Not every college student is going to become a researcher."

And this makes a difference in what way? Do you propose that we short-change the student whose intention is to become a physician? Many people change their minds while in college and go a different direction precisely because a professor opens them to new ways of thinking and new possibilities they had never before considered.

Clear out the cobwebs.
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 12:16 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Students don't learn much during the lectures anyway. What happens is that the lecturer breaks down the ''big book'' the student have to go through in steps so that it looks more managable. Students have to sit down and learn the subject by themselves anyway. [/QB]
Odd, I learned a lot from my Profs in lectures(at least as an undergraduate). In the end, the student has to sit down with the book and solve problems or he won't really know the subject, but that doesn't prohibit the Professor from being a teacher.

I'm sorry, but if a Prof. decides to show me videos during lecture time, I would wonder what his value-add is to the whole process. Why have a Professor when a less skilled person could do the job--at a much lower cost?
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 01:03 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by J. Arthur God:
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Students don't learn much during the lectures anyway. What happens is that the lecturer breaks down the ''big book'' the student have to go through in steps so that it looks more managable. Students have to sit down and learn the subject by themselves anyway.
Odd, I learned a lot from my Profs in lectures(at least as an undergraduate). In the end, the student has to sit down with the book and solve problems or he won't really know the subject, but that doesn't prohibit the Professor from being a teacher.

I'm sorry, but if a Prof. decides to show me videos during lecture time, I would wonder what his value-add is to the whole process. Why have a Professor when a less skilled person could do the job--at a much lower cost? [/QB]
Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates. The reason they do it is because the teaching duties are fairly distributed over the faculty members. If you want to teach less they may give you some other things to do, like organizing the seminars, or maintaining the fauculty webpage.
Posted By: jjw Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 01:15 AM
Zoldberg:
"The point of this is to ask, what stood out for you when you learnt science? Why do you enjoy it? Is there anything that teachers did (or could have done) that I can use?"

I never taught a class but I have put on seminars for lawyers in my speciality; and such.

Science solves myateries. A smart super saleman once said "sell the sizzle and not the steak". Confront the class FIRST with the mystery behind each proposed scientific solution and you will keep their attention and they enjoy it and remember it more.
jjw
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 01:37 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates. The reason they do it is because the teaching duties are fairly distributed over the faculty members. If you want to teach less they may give you some other things to do, like organizing the seminars, or maintaining the fauculty webpage.
This is definitely not the case for physics departments in the UC (University of California) system. My advisor was able to avoid teaching occasionally by paying his salary out of his endowed chair. He was unable to do this 100% of the time since the department needed him to teach.

You also make the assumption that all teaching is done at institutions with graduate students and significant research programs. This is not the case. Undergraduate only or schools with masters degrees as the top degree are quite common (at least in the US). Many of them are excellent.
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 03:18 AM
Count Iblis wrote:
"Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates."

Nonsense. This is absolute nonsense.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 12:45 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
Count Iblis wrote:
"Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates."

Nonsense. This is absolute nonsense.
Not nonsense but fact, especially in the US where undergraduates do much less than what we do in our undergraduate studies. Let's take physics as an example. In the US in the first year you have to learn calculus. In Europe we do that in high school. And unlike in Europe, in most US universities you don't learn these topics at undergraduate level:

General Relativity

Advanced Quantum mechanics

Quantum Field Theory

Introduction to String Theory.


These topics are part of the curriculum for third and fourth year students in most European universities. These topics can be taught by professors, but also by lecturers. There is no specific need for a professor to teach these topics. Much less so the subjects the US undergraduates have to learn, like Classical Mechanics, Introduction in Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, etc.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 12:50 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by J. Arthur God:
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates. The reason they do it is because the teaching duties are fairly distributed over the faculty members. If you want to teach less they may give you some other things to do, like organizing the seminars, or maintaining the fauculty webpage.
This is definitely not the case for physics departments in the UC (University of California) system. My advisor was able to avoid teaching occasionally by paying his salary out of his endowed chair. He was unable to do this 100% of the time since the department needed him to teach.

You also make the assumption that all teaching is done at institutions with graduate students and significant research programs. This is not the case. Undergraduate only or schools with masters degrees as the top degree are quite common (at least in the US). Many of them are excellent.
Yes, in the US the situation is a bit different. Here the Profs and other staff usually meet and decide how to share the teaching duties.
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 04:09 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
Count Iblis wrote:
"Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates."

Nonsense. This is absolute nonsense.
Not nonsense but fact, especially in the US where undergraduates do much less than what we do in our undergraduate studies. Let's take physics as an example. In the US in the first year you have to learn calculus. In Europe we do that in high school. And unlike in Europe, in most US universities you don't learn these topics at undergraduate level:

General Relativity

Advanced Quantum mechanics

Quantum Field Theory

Introduction to String Theory.


These topics are part of the curriculum for third and fourth year students in most European universities. These topics can be taught by professors, but also by lecturers. There is no specific need for a professor to teach these topics. Much less so the subjects the US undergraduates have to learn, like Classical Mechanics, Introduction in Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, etc.
Except for string theory, all of these subjects were taught at my undergraduate institution. I would have avoided string theory anyway...

However, I have to ask myself how relevant this is. So, you don't have to teach (your department would consider web design an equivalent effort?) Your students learn more subjects...how does this relate to whether you have to actually put out effort to teach your classes?
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 04:12 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Yes, in the US the situation is a bit different. Here the Profs and other staff usually meet and decide how to share the teaching duties.
The department does meet to decide how to shart the teaching duties in the US. They seem to put more emphasis on "teaching" and "duty" than what you have presented.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 07:23 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by J. Arthur God:
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
Count Iblis wrote:
"Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates."

Nonsense. This is absolute nonsense.
Not nonsense but fact, especially in the US where undergraduates do much less than what we do in our undergraduate studies. Let's take physics as an example. In the US in the first year you have to learn calculus. In Europe we do that in high school. And unlike in Europe, in most US universities you don't learn these topics at undergraduate level:

General Relativity

Advanced Quantum mechanics

Quantum Field Theory

Introduction to String Theory.


These topics are part of the curriculum for third and fourth year students in most European universities. These topics can be taught by professors, but also by lecturers. There is no specific need for a professor to teach these topics. Much less so the subjects the US undergraduates have to learn, like Classical Mechanics, Introduction in Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, etc.
Except for string theory, all of these subjects were taught at my undergraduate institution. I would have avoided string theory anyway...

However, I have to ask myself how relevant this is. So, you don't have to teach (your department would consider web design an equivalent effort?) Your students learn more subjects...how does this relate to whether you have to actually put out effort to teach your classes?
There is other work to do as well, like organizing seminars etc. It is only fair that you get less teaching duties if you take up such duties.
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 07:39 PM
Count Iblis wrote:
"Professors don't really need to teach undergraduates."

DA Morgan responded:
"Nonsense. This is absolute nonsense."

Count Iblis then wrote:
"Not nonsense but fact, especially in the US where undergraduates do much less than what we do in our undergraduate studies. Let's take physics as an example. In the US in the first year you have to learn calculus. In Europe we do that in high school. And unlike in Europe, in most US universities you don't learn these topics at undergraduate level:"

Help me out here Count Iblis ... what does your responses, just above, have to do with whether professors teach their classes?

It seems to me your response is off topic and non-relevant to what I wrote.

And Count Iblis went on:
"And unlike in Europe, in most US universities you don't learn these topics at undergraduate level:
General Relativity
Advanced Quantum mechanics
Quantum Field Theory
Introduction to String Theory."

Your statement is incorrect to the best of my knowledge ... but again non-relevant to whether professors do or do not teach a class.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 08:33 PM
Of course, Professors do teach. The point is do they need to teach? Will the university educational system collapse if we decided that Professors don't need to teach anymore to undegraduates and let other staff, lecturers etc. take over that duty?
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 08:41 PM
Quote:
And Count Iblis went on:
"And unlike in Europe, in most US universities you don't learn these topics at undergraduate level:
General Relativity
Advanced Quantum mechanics
Quantum Field Theory
Introduction to String Theory."

Your statement is incorrect to the best of my knowledge ... but again non-relevant to whether professors do or do not teach a class.

I just looked in the preface of the book ''Topics In Advanced Quantum Mechanics'', by Barry R. Hollstein. It says that he wrote it from his lecture notes of a course he taught to graduate students. But this book is is used for third year undergraduate students.

Graduate students here usually don't follow any classes. They start with their Ph.D. research right away. They do have to learn things, but they do that themselves from the literature.
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 10:38 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
I just looked in the preface of the book ''Topics In Advanced Quantum Mechanics'', by Barry R. Hollstein. It says that he wrote it from his lecture notes of a course he taught to graduate students. But this book is is used for third year undergraduate students.

Graduate students here usually don't follow any classes. They start with their Ph.D. research right away. They do have to learn things, but they do that themselves from the literature.
Yes, and J.D. Jackson in the standard senior text for E&M at CalTech (or was 20 years ago). I found that my education in Quantum was sufficient to give me a big edge in grad school, but in other subjects (e.g. mechanics) I had to work as hard as the rest.

And this proves that one can call showing videos and telling stories is passable as teaching how?

Yes, the American secondary education is not as advanced as elsewhere. I had to go to community college starting in my 3rd year in high school in order to do math. Current trends in the US are trying to correct this by allowing H.S. students to take calculus and other advanced courses.

My first year class was largely chinese, taiwanese, US and European students. On the qualifying exam (taken at the start of the 2nd year), the Chinese scored the best, the Taiwanese the second best and the US and European students were pretty much tied. My advisor used to brag that his first group of 3 students "did as best as the worst Chinese". That said, I didn't see that the European students were that much better prepared than their US counterparts.

Also, my experience (and maybe this has changed since I was a grad student) was that UK students were often under a lot of pressure to finish in 3 years, before state support ran out. I find that this put them at a severe disadvantage in doing a complete research project. Basically, given the long time for a US Ph.D., a good U.S. Ph.D. is often (but not always) comparable to a UK Post-doc.

I have not found the same to be the case with students from France, Germany or Holland. However, I have much less experience with them.
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/01/06 10:51 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Of course, Professors do teach. The point is do they need to teach? Will the university educational system collapse if we decided that Professors don't need to teach anymore to undegraduates and let other staff, lecturers etc. take over that duty?
This will sound mean, but it is an honest opinion.

If Professors like you are replaced by other staff with a mission to teach, the University system would be improved.

I would also then state that the University system would be improved if the tenure system were removed or weakened for these Research-only faculty. If your research isn't up to grade (as partly judged by outside referees), you can find a new job. You don't pull in enough grants, you hit the streets.

By the way, keep in mind that for the University of California (as one example), there are 5 undergraduates for every graduate student. Why exactly do you think a University exists?
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/02/06 12:15 AM
Count Iblis asks:
"Of course, Professors do teach. The point is do they need to teach? Will the university educational system collapse if we decided that Professors don't need to teach anymore to undegraduates and let other staff, lecturers etc. take over that duty?"

Yes it would. And if any professor is incapable of sustaining that burden his tenure should be challenged.

BTW: You contradicted yourself yet again in your response.
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/02/06 12:20 AM
J Arthur wrote:
"Yes, the American secondary education is not as advanced as elsewhere."

No argument there.

"I had to go to community college starting in my 3rd year in high school in order to do math. Current trends in the US are trying to correct this by allowing H.S. students to take calculus and other advanced courses."

Fascinating. When I graduated from H.S. in 1968 it was after taking 2 years of algebra, 1/2 year of geometry, 1/2 year of trig, and 1 year of calculus. The U.S. system hasn't always been so weak.

But then again we haven't always had government that led by dumbing things down for a voting public that voted for American Idol.
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/02/06 12:32 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
Fascinating. When I graduated from H.S. in 1968 it was after taking 2 years of algebra, 1/2 year of geometry, 1/2 year of trig, and 1 year of calculus. The U.S. system hasn't always been so weak.

But then again we haven't always had government that led by dumbing things down for a voting public that voted for American Idol.
1981--My H.S. math ended at 2nd year Algebra (with Trig). No Calc.

Now, our local H.S. offers calculus supposedly equivalent to 2 semesters of college calc.

The real winner for me in H.S. was chem. I didn't know it, but the teacher was great. I coasted through first year chemistry in college. I probably should have tried to test out. Funny, I don't recall being told stories or being shown videos...
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/02/06 12:20 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:

BTW: You contradicted yourself yet again in your response.
Nonsense, I didn't make any contradicting statrements on this thread. You, yet again, first misinterpreted my words and then, when I explain myself better, chose to interpret your original misinterpretation of what I was saying as a contradiction.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/02/06 12:48 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by J. Arthur God:
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
Of course, Professors do teach. The point is do they need to teach? Will the university educational system collapse if we decided that Professors don't need to teach anymore to undegraduates and let other staff, lecturers etc. take over that duty?
This will sound mean, but it is an honest opinion.

If Professors like you are replaced by other staff with a mission to teach, the University system would be improved.

I would also then state that the University system would be improved if the tenure system were removed or weakened for these Research-only faculty. If your research isn't up to grade (as partly judged by outside referees), you can find a new job. You don't pull in enough grants, you hit the streets.

By the way, keep in mind that for the University of California (as one example), there are 5 undergraduates for every graduate student. Why exactly do you think a University exists?
I do teach a lot (but I'm not a Prof.). I also do a lot of private teaching in my free time, mostly to US physics students via email. They send me their homework, I send back the solutions with explanations. Per hour's work these students pay me more than I earn from my regular work. If the US system is so great, then why do these students come to me?

You make the mistake of thinking that I am a prof. who doesn't like to teach and would rather maintain the fasculty web page, organize seminars etc. I was just giving examples.


A university as a place where student learn to get their degree will be something of the past within a few decades. Even today, if you want to learn something, you can already find the information on he web. If you want to study theoretical physics, then you can almost do that without ever showing up at the university (except for the exams, of course). This means that the huge amount of tuition fees you have to pay in the US cannot be justified.


Sooner or later, due to economic competition, you will get virtual universities who will offer the same or even better courses as in, say MIT but with far lower tuition fees. To get the degree you would then only have to show up for the exams. Virtual universities already exist, but they don't compete with the top institutions yet.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/02/06 01:05 PM
J. Arthur God :

''Also, my experience (and maybe this has changed since I was a grad student) was that UK students were often under a lot of pressure to finish in 3 years, before state support ran out. I find that this put them at a severe disadvantage in doing a complete research project. Basically, given the long time for a US Ph.D., a good U.S. Ph.D. is often (but not always) comparable to a UK Post-doc.

I have not found the same to be the case with students from France, Germany or Holland. However, I have much less experience with them.''

Yes, the British system isn't so great. Their education is a bit ''narrow'', they don't do a lot of subjects during the last few years of high school and later at university. And Ph.D. theses finished by British physics students can hardly be called ''original work''. Most of it is based on papers that their supervisors had in the pipeline anyway.

Things are better here in Holland, but sadly we are moving in the wrong direction. High school students learn much less maths and physics than they used to. Add to that the fact that university students have to finish their studies much sooner, and you see that today's graduates are not at the level I and my friends were when we graduated.
Posted By: J. Arthur God Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/02/06 07:43 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Count Iblis II:
I do teach a lot (but I'm not a Prof.). I also do a lot of private teaching in my free time, mostly to US physics students via email. They send me their homework, I send back the solutions with explanations. Per hour's work these students pay me more than I earn from my regular work. If the US system is so great, then why do these students come to me?
/[QUOTE]

there are poor students everywhere. One supposes that the students are largely copying your solutions into their homework and ignoring your explanations. It would be interesting to see how well the students you are tutoring in this way fare compared to their collegues.

[QUOTE] Sooner or later, due to economic competition, you will get virtual universities who will offer the same or even better courses as in, say MIT but with far lower tuition fees. To get the degree you would then only have to show up for the exams. Virtual universities already exist, but they don't compete with the top institutions yet.
There have been textbooks for independent study, correspondence courses, night school and other alternatives since before my father was born. There are also cheaper institutions. In the state of California, the California State Universities are cheaper than the University of California, which, in turn, is cheaper than, say CalTech. Why do student shell out the extra cash now for a degree in "Physics" from CalTech if they can get it at Cal State Dominguez Hills for a fraction of the cost? One would guess that the expected level of instruction at CalTech is highe than at CSUDH.

Now, I would say that the flagship state Universities (e.g. U Cal, U Illinois, U-dub, U Texas, etc) are excellent. Probably the best education for the money in the world.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/02/06 10:08 PM
Quote:
there are poor students everywhere. One supposes that the students are largely copying your solutions into their homework and ignoring your explanations. It would be interesting to see how well the students you are tutoring in this way fare compared to their collegues.
They are indeed not the brightest student. Some have to work to pay for their studies and as a result don't have enough time to complete all their assignments by themselves on time.

However, comparing them to other students doesn't make sense. You should compare how well they are doing with my help to how well they would do without my help. smile

Quote:
Now, I would say that the flagship state Universities (e.g. U Cal, U Illinois, U-dub, U Texas, etc) are excellent. Probably the best education for the money in the world.
The tuition fees for the top universities are so high that you could save money my hiring a professor from some third world country (e.g. India) as a private tutor for a group of two or three students. The Prof would be available for the students 8 hours a day. No university in the world comes close to this level of tuition.


B.t.w., one of the students I'm tutoring for more than a year now is from CalTech. Clearly, he can't get the help he needs from there. He is not simply handing in my work without studying. I don't think that would go unnoticed for long smile
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/03/06 12:34 AM
Count Iblis wrote:
"The tuition fees for the top universities are so high that you could save money my hiring a professor from some third world country (e.g. India) as a private tutor for a group of two or three students. The Prof would be available for the students 8 hours a day. No university in the world comes close to this level of tuition."

And upon saving all of that money you would likely qualify for a job where you could ask the question: "Do you want fries with that?"
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/03/06 01:07 AM
Quote:
And upon saving all of that money you would likely qualify for a job where you could ask the question: "Do you want fries with that?"
True, so it is not the education that you pay for but rather the name of the institution where you graduated from that will apear on your CV.
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/03/06 04:31 AM
When one attends a college or university one benefits from many many different value propositions.

1. The quality of the curricula.
2. The quality of the instructors.
3. The quality of resources such as libraries and laboratories.
4. The quality of the other students with whom one studies.
5. The quality of the network one can create by interacting with faculty, administration, and students.
6. The personal references one can obtain.
7. The experiences available through internships.

Just to give you a single example the daughter of a good friend is a 3rd year undergrad at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. It isn't CalTech, it isn't MIT, it isn't Oxford or Cambridge. But she chose it with care and has developed personal friendships with people in Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, ANZUS, and central asia. These have already turned into trips to multiple countries where she has further networked, a 10 week internship at ESO (European Southern Observatory) in Chile that she just completed (she's currently on Easter Island) and a second internship at Mauna Kea Observatories.

Is part of her benefit the name of the institution? I doubt many people have even heard of Macalester. The quality of the faculty and the student body? You betcha!

From sour grapes you can make whine ... not wine.
Posted By: Count Iblis II Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/03/06 12:46 PM
Quote:
Is part of her benefit the name of the institution? I doubt many people have even heard of Macalester. The quality of the faculty and the student body? You betcha!
That's right. I am just questioning the amount of tuition fees one has to pay. In the US it is more than ten times the amount European students have to pay. In case of theoretical physics, you really don't need to spend more than 1000 dollars to learn the entire curriculum taught at university (I'm not counting the living costs). But this is assuming you could learn everything by yourself from books and lecture notes.

But students at university end up learning most of the stuff themselves anyway. The tuition they get only amounts to a Prof. lecturing a bit which is just superficial guidance and thus a waste of time and money. The problem sessions, usually supervised by Ph.D. students, are more important but there is no reason why you couldn't do the exercises yourself at home.

The only labor intensive work per student is checking homework and exams. I don't count prepairing for lectures, because that is not a lot of work per student. You don't get anywhere near the current US tuition fees if students were charged with the work that is actually performed for them.
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/03/06 05:45 PM
Count Iblis wrote:
"I am just questioning the amount of tuition fees one has to pay."

I would be too if I was writing the checks. But things cost what they cost and there is, in our society, not a thing you can do about it. I feel the same way about medical care in the US where we are being raped without so much as a "sorry."

Education is more than just learning. Take the field in which I teach ... Oracle databases. There are plenty of people that have book knowledge. There is even a certification program called OCP the gives people diplomas for their book knowledge. With one of those pieces of paper and match you can start a fire, get a second match and start two fires. In my area the chances of obtaining a job with one is precisely nill.

I feel that a very substantial amount of what I learned in college was self-taught. I had some professors that were brilliant: Carl Djerassi for one. Others that needed to be taught how to inhale air on a regular basis. But I would not be where I am today without having done what I did and while I lived worse than a dog and it cost a lot of money ... I have been repaid many times over. I've no regrets.

But a quick quotation that expresses, better than I can, what I think:

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
~ The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Posted By: TheFallibleFiend Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/03/06 08:13 PM
People teach for different reasons - and an individual might choose it for several reasons. Some people do it because they really believe in it. Some yearn to do something that will make a positive difference for humanity. Some just do it because they're good at it and like doing it. There are others, though, who go into teaching because they're really not very competent at anything else. Others because they like the feeling of authority, or the ability to boss other people around. They're like petty apparatchiks who thrive on their ability to lord their minuscule power over in their puny domains.

Now, here is the difference between students who are going to be researchers and others - the other students just want to learn the material. They don't want to play games. They don't want to help prop the ego of some has-been professor. They just want to learn the stuff. I recall at least one time from my own academic career in which a teacher deliberately threw out an EXCELLENT text in order to teach from a standard, but crappy, one. HOWEVER, this same lowlife gave all of his lecture notes from the really good text book (without giving proper credit to where he got those notes from, btw).

This is not to say that I don't think it's ever appropriate for teachers to show a movie or tell a story. When I'm teaching, I often relate stories from job experiences - or from history or from some other subject area - that are pertinent to the subject of discussion. I obviously don't have a problem with this. What I have a problem with is the idea that teachers should actually teach anything.

This is not to say that I think teachers should always teach from the book. Here is what I typically did when I was teaching at university:

Give reading assignments from book.
Give some very simple problems due every class period (sometimes not graded) from book, plus a more difficult math, logic, or programming problem that had to be worked.
Give lecture on similar material that is in the book, but usually framed around my own particular bias. Usually lecture consisted of general theoretical discussion for one class and then another class of solving problems. (Technically I was an undergraduate and then a graduate teaching assistant, but in fact I never assisted anyone. I taught the entire class, and on one occasion had a person assisting me.)

I then gave harder programming assignments that would be due every 2 or 3 weeks. This assignment would extend some idea that I had introduced in my lectures.

So I might talk about parsing expressions, and then I would give some examples of how to parse them (which is trivial thing to do in some languages, but requires a moderate understanding to do from scratch). I would give several examples of this that were progressively more difficult. For this sort of lecture, I would have two big projects, each 2 weeks in duration. For the first, students would write an assembler to convert a hypothetical assembly language to a hypothetical machine code. For the second, they would write a virtual machine on which to run the program. The idea doesn't come from java, btw, but from an early computer game called red code.

Of course this is not the only way to teach. There may even be better ways to teach. I would never have been so successful if I had not been willing to accept criticism and act on it.

OTOH, what strikes me as the absolute worst thing a teacher can do is just stand there and waste students' time - as I perceive Count I. is suggesting.

The way I looked at it was this: The students are paying $20-$40 for a book for the class (this was some time ago). My salary is my tuition, plus a small stipend (maybe $500 a month). The students ought to get SOMETHING from me.

Now I had some great profs. And I also had a few whose sole contribution to "education" was to raise the temperature of the room by some fraction of a degree. For these fellows, university was basically a place to malinger. By any reasonable criteria, they were lazy and unproductive, but there's something about academia that permits a few slothful individuals to thrive (Ironically, the most widely published author in our dept was also the least competent. Many of the most brilliant students flocked to him, because he was considered brilliant by people who never worked with him. Only after the fact did they realize what a complete boob he was.) I took him for a class in simulation - my specialty now - and came to understand his ability for spouting nonsense that sounded brilliant on the surface of it (at least to the untrained observer).

Different example: I took chem I and II - same prof each time. This guy was pretty famous. He was the dept chair and seemed to be always on the news as an expert. In two classes - he tried each day to solve a problem on the board. At no time was he ever able to solve a single problem - not once. This is not hyberbole. I literally mean he could not solve the simplest problem from the book. Not one time.

And while I think most of my professors were pretty good, there were enough of this sort to cause me to raise hackles even now, decades after the fact. I don't understand how these guys can accept their salaries and look at themselves in the mirror.
Posted By: DA Morgan Re: What to do in the classroom? - 04/03/06 10:26 PM
Falliable Fiend wrote:
"Now, here is the difference between students who are going to be researchers and others - the other students just want to learn the material. They don't want to play games. They don't want to help prop the ego of some has-been professor. They just want to learn the stuff. I recall at least one time from my own academic career in which a teacher deliberately threw out an EXCELLENT text in order to teach from a standard, but crappy, one. HOWEVER, this same lowlife gave all of his lecture notes from the really good text book (without giving proper credit to where he got those notes from, btw)."

I'm not going to defend the indefensable. But then again I have serious questions about your ability, as an undergrad, to presume upon yourself the role of knowing a good textbook from a bad one.

If a student takes biology to become a biologist they deserve the very best educational experience possible that leads them to their desired goal. If they are taking the biology class because it is required and don't care about biology they desere the best possible experience in biology. There is no difference between these two objectives.

The instructor's responsibility is to teach the students how to think. In a field with a huge amount of material it is up to the instuctor to act as a filter ... to indicate what information is important and/or general ... what information is unimportant and/or specific. It is the instructor's responsibility to make the material accessable and to help the student learn how to absorb it, interpret it, and build upon it.

If they fail they fail. And the goal of the student is irrelevant to the instructor's failure. No good institution and no good instructor makes value judgements such as ... this student wants to be a biologist so we'll give them a good education and this person wants to be a psychologist so lets send them off to macrame' class.
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