noitulevo noitacude

Eric Mazur, Harvard professor of physics, has a perspective article in the January 2nd issue of Science about education (if you don't have access, I'll be happy to send you a copy of the pdf - my email's on the left). In the supplemental material he gives some examples of questions that students answer in class using a 'clicker', which gives him immediate feedback.

One of the questions is



His list of possible answers is at the bottom of the post, but think about it first...

Mazur writes that he has found that lecturing isn't the best way to educate the students, so instead he has them read the material before the 'lecture', and they then use the time together for discussion of the material. Kudos to Mazur for getting his students to read the book in advance. Perhaps this can only be done at Harvard?

Why don't lectures work? For one thing,

the lecture method as a process whereby the lecture notes of the instructor get transferred to the notebooks of the students without passing through the brains of either.

He also talks about engaging the students, which I agree is extremely beneficial. Sleeping students at lectures is not just very common, it's iconic. What's the most common adjective used with the word 'lecture?' It's 'boring,' and so it is. Having to click a little remote control throughout the 'lecture' prevents sleep, I should say.

I definitely want to do this myself when the time comes.

And the questions are:



You got answers?

---

As for mirrors, while it appears that your mirror image is turned left-to-right but not upside-down, consider that that's not really what mirrors do. What they really do is invert front and back, not left and right.