Monday, November 20, 2006

What Ever happened to faculty?


Two interesting articles in this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

‘What Ever Happened to the Faculty?’

“Mary Burgan, former general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, is not happy about the trends she sees with regard to faculty rights.” She talks about “distance ed” as well.

Back to the Basics on Science Education
The best approach to teaching science is to understand not education, but the scientific method, according to Carl Wieman…He is a Nobel Prize laureate and garnered the highest teaching award at the University of Colorado at Boulder…During the talk on Friday, Wieman said that traditional science instruction involves lectures, textbooks, homework and exams. Wieman said that this process simply doesn’t work. He cited a number of studies to make his point. At the University of Maryland, an instructor found that students interviewed immediately after a science lecture had only a vague understanding of what the lecture had been about. Other researchers found that students only retained a small amount of the information after watching a video on science.

Another problem with the current structure of science education is that teachers try to get students to learn “key concepts” from physics. “We think that physics has a few ideas that can be widely applied,” he said. “So people test for those few ideas.” Wieman says that students really only retain about 30 percent of those key concepts, so this approach simply does not work….
● Board meeting tonight! See Board meeting preview

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"What Ever Happened to the Faculty?" just another meek attempt to defend the indefensible.

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...