The Lane of General Bewlderment

I don't know exactly where I found this, but it makes me smile every time I look at it. It hits the mark.

Institutional change and why it is so slow

I have been following the blogging activities about the AAPT meeting held this week in Edmonton (from afar still, but not quite as afar as usual....) I found loads of interesting stuff on this blog, particularly the last post on 'Twisting the Ivory Tower'.

I was reading through it thinking "yes......yes......yes" about the rationale for change and the drivers and barriers....similar issues once again (Plus Ca Change!)

(Also interesting to see that the MIT students when first introduced to TEAL in their E&M class petitioned against its introduction....!)

The students know best; 'the curse of knowledge'

Have been hearing and reading some interesting stuff while here on the problems caused by the chasm between 'expert' and 'novice' views of a subject. The general idea is that when you know something, it is extremely difficult to think about it from the perspective of someone who does not know it. This has been termed ' the curse of knowledge' by educational psychologists.

Carl Wieman, writing a piece for the APS News 'back page' feature has offered this as a reason for the gap between the good intentions of physics lecturers and the lack of achievements of a (growing) number of students. In other words, we're all nice guys and gals really and want our students to succeed, but we've forgotten (or we don't know) what it is to not know. So, our carefully-crafted instruction - be it lecture, demonstration, lab, tutorial or exam - can go wonderfully well (from our point of view), but in some cases not effect student learning as much as we *think* it does, or sometimes not at all! (Some studies have shown a decrease in understanding of concepts after things like a lecture demonstration!)

So knowing what our students know, and how that changes over a period of time, seems to be an essential ingredient. I am struck by the amount of effort that has gone into developing various instruments to evaluate just that. Of course, I knew about the FCI and the MBT tests for classical mechanics, but there are many more (and a few lists are at the bottom of this post).

Concept tests / evaluation instruments list

from Maryland

workshop physics (Priscilla Laws)

1500, and counting

I was learning today about Physics 101, UBC's equivalent of Physics 1A. It is delivered annually to a monsterous 15oo students. Yes, 1500.... 3 lots of 500 a term. Incredible. The people in charge of it must have to spend literally half their lives on admin and logistics. It puts into perspective the scale of our largest course, at nearly 300. I shall never whinge again about course organisation admin.

At the same time, I heard that the faculty member who is in charge of the course (who coincidentally shares my surname....) is also an academic advisor. To all 1500 first year students.....

I shall trot this out the next time I have to 'persuade' one of my colleagues to take on a course, or a measly 30 student directees......

As I approached the Physics building the other day, I saw this chalked on the ground. You never see that kind of thing chalked outside JCMB.....

Turns out there was an outreach programme in town, evidence for which was soon obtained once I got in the building and was almost taken out by a gaggle of excited 10 year olds, resplendent in matching bright red T-shirts.

It got me thinking about the number of our students that would chalk that after their degree, and how many of them would have swapped 'ro' for 'su'...? But then again, maybe some of those that think that never get to graduate anyway and fall by the wayside en route.

Journals, journals everywhere

One of the things I am often wondering is where to publish some of the
stuff that we done (.. or less egotistically, where can we find out
about other stuff that people have done)

I cam across these lists of journals:

http://www.eos.ubc.ca/research/cwsei/JournalsList.html

http://www.flaguide.org/resource/journal.php

http://www2.le.ac.uk/Members/jlb34/pedr-publications/publications/

Next job will be to sort out the wheat from the chaff and to annotate these lists. I sense a task coming up for one of my new MSc students .....

To hell in a handcart....

You'd have to try pretty hard to avoid the doom and gloom that is coming
out of the UK media about Physics at secondary and tertiary level at the
moment.

Barely a week goes by without something deeply worrying for the subject coming out: here's a selection from the past few months from the BBC Education section of their website:

• Physics Teacher Shortage warning
• Most maths teacher 'not experts'
• Maths exams 'have become easier'
• Maths teacher gap 'to worsen'

And it is not much better over at the Guardian, either:

• Physics teachers dying out in some state schools
• Science students lack basic skills

... and so on. It doesn't make for happy reading. Why are more people not jumping up and down about this? I was preparing some slides earlier this week for a talk soon after I get to UBC; it paints a rather depressing picture that when you see all the pieces of, it is striking the point that things have got to. I think most people in Physics departments in the UK vaguely know about this on some level, but I guess would prefer not to have to think about. 'Surely someone else will solve these problems....?' I don't think that they will.