Yesterday’s New York Times carried this wonderful article on introductory physics lectures at MIT. It brought back bitter memories.
I recall sitting in a crowded lecture hall listening to a profesor prattle on about Physics 101 with several hundred fellow bored Princeton students some forty years ago. The professor, who had written the text, reproduced the illustrations from the book with chalk on the green boards before us. Over the greenboard hung a 12′ long slide rule, a relic that had seen duty in World War II calculating bomb trajectories. Zzzzzz. I decided I was not cut out to be a physicist and dropped back to the more popular physics for dummies course at midyear. I didn’t study hard science again for two decades.
The physics department [at MIT] has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning. Last fall, after years of experimentation and debate and resistance from students, who initially petitioned against it, the department made the change permanent. Already, attendance is up and the failure rate has dropped by more than 50 percent.
My hat’s off to MIT. Had physics been taught this way, I might not have opted to become a sociologist. Doesn’t this sound like fun?
At M.I.T., two introductory courses are still required — classical mechanics and electromagnetism — but today they meet in high-tech classrooms, where about 80 students sit at 13 round tables equipped with networked computers. Instead of blackboards, the walls are covered with white boards and huge display screens. Circulating with a team of teaching assistants, the professor makes brief presentations of general principles and engages the students as they work out related concepts in small groups. Teachers and students conduct experiments together. The room buzzes. Conferring with tablemates, calling out questions and jumping up to write formulas on the white boards are all encouraged.
Hearty thanks to my pal Joe Wehr for bringing this article to my attention. I’m putting online media ahead of the dead-tree variety this year and am lucky to read the Times one day a week.
RSS Feed
Follow Jay on Twitter
{ 1 trackback }
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
John Seely Brown’s How to Connect Technology and Passion in the Service of Learning, The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 2008, is particularly relevant to this post.
Just started hitting the gym again and came across this form.
Hope to contribute and learn alot
Darn.. another good thing to happen **after** I graduate from MIT. Maybe it’s time for me to go and get a PhD ? Thanks for sharing, Jay!