TITLE: Driving Students Away AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: July 08, 2006 3:58 PM DESC: ----- BODY: Back in January, I wrote about making things worse in the introductory course, which had been triggered by an article at Uncertain Principles. The world is circling back on itself, because I find myself eager to write about how we drive students away from our intro courses, again triggered by another article at Uncertain Principles. This time, Chad's article was itself triggered by another physicist's article on driving students away. Perhaps the length of the chain grows by each time it comes around... According to these physicists, one of the problems with intro course in physics is that it is too much like high school physics, which bores the better students to the point that they lose interest. We don't face that issue in CS much these days, at least in my neck of the woods, because so few of our freshmen enter the program with any formal CS or programming education. I'm not a fan of the approaches suggested to keep the attention of these well-prepared students (a byzantine homework policy, lots of quizzes) because I think that repeating material isn't the real problem. And these approaches make the real problem worse. The real problem they describe is one with which we are familiar: students "lose sight of the fun and sense of wonder that are at the heart of the most successful scientific careers". The intro physics course...
... covers 100's years of physics in one year. We rarely spend more than a lecture on a single topic; there is little time for fun. And if we want to make room for something like that we usually have to squeeze out some other topic. Whoosh!
Chad says that this problem also affects better students disproportionately, because they "have the preparation to be able to handle something more interesting, if we could hold their attention". I think most students can handle something more interesting. They all deserve something more interesting than we usually give them, too. And I don't think that the answer involves "more content". Whenever I talk to scientists about the challenges of teaching, the conversation always seems to turn to how much content we have to deliver. This attitude seems wrongheaded to me when taken very far. It's especially dangerous in an introductory course, where novices can easily drown in syntax and detail -- and lose sight of what it is like to be a scientist, or an engineer. Pouring on more content, even when the audience is honors students, almost always results in suboptimal learning, because the course tends to become focused on data rather than ideas. In closing, I did enjoy seeing that academic physicists are now experimenting with courses about something more than the formulas of physics. One of the commenters on the Uncertain Principles article notes that he is tweaking a new course design around the question, "How old is the universe?" He also mentions one of the obstacles to making this kind of change: students actually expect a memorization-driven course, because that's what they've learned from their past experiences. This is a problem that really does affect better students differently, because they have mastered the old way of doing things! As a result, some of them will resent a new kind of course. My experience, though, is that you just have to stick to your approach through some rough patches early; nearly all of these students will eventually come around and appreciate the idea- and practice-driven approach even more once they adapt to the change. Remember, adaptation to change takes time, even for those eager to to change... -----