my teaching philosophy
The sight is all too familiar: the professor lectures earnestly, scribbling away at the blackboard, while in their seats, the rows of students stare back blankly, their minds switched off. Perhaps some desperately jot down everything he says, but they are so busy writing that they have no time to process the new information. This scene often casts the professor as an antagonist to his or her students, and as a graduate student of Physics, I have been on both sides of that battle. However it need not be this way: instead of a battleground, the classroom can become Mt Everest; the groups of students, a climbing party whose members help each other out. In this story, the instructor is their guide, pointing out the crevasses that may trap the unwary, as well as the beauty of the view at the summit, when they have achieved their goal.
To achieve such collaborative learning, it is not enough to perform vivid demonstrations and hand out well made Powerpoint slides. If learning is to take place during a lecture and not just after it, the students’ minds must be actively engaged. For example, a simple ‘Ball Race’ demo piques their interest and gets them thinking about kinematics. Two balls of equal masses are set up to run along parallel tracks. Track 1 runs straight and level; track 2 first runs level, then dips down for a short length before rising up to the original height and running level again. The two balls start at the same moment with the same speed - which will reach the finish line first?
Instead of just asking the class, and then letting the few scattered replies hang in the air, I poll my class using ‘paper clickers’; simple sheets of paper, each with four coloured rectangles on one side, each rectangle with one of the letters A, B, C or D. In this case I present three choices to the students - A. the ball on track 1 will reach first; B. the ball on track 2 will reach first; and C. they both will reach at the same time. The students fold their sheets and hold up their answers, and at a glance, I can tell what the major camps of opinion are. This simple exercise draws their interest, engaging them. However, it does not end there; I wander around, pushing them to defend their choices, to explain why they think the way they do. I encourage them to talk to their neighbours, and see if they can change their minds. After a brief discussion, their answers are put to the experimental test - and to the consternation of many students, ball 2 wins. This provokes discussion again, leading eventually to the right answer - but more importantly, to the right reasoning. They have, through their own efforts, reached the answer; but that alone is not enough. Too often students will focus on just the question right in front of them, and lose track of the bigger picture. Asking them to recap the steps they took to get to the answer helps them organize their thoughts and put everything back in context, and allows them to understand the reasoning and methodology behind the answer. Answers provided by a teacher can be accepted on good faith and swallowed easily, and sadly, can just as easily be forgotten. A result which you have reasoned out yourself, which comes from within, from the give and take of question and answer - this too you may forget, but now you will remember how to get there again.
The steady flow of such questions keeps them alert, and the interspersed demonstrations - whether live or on YouTube - helps keep them curious and receptive. Active engagement is most effectively used with counter-intuitive demonstrations like the Ball Race, but is easily adapted to the rest of the lecture. The majority of each lecture consists of asking the students simple multiple choice questions that test their conceptual understanding of the subject, so that they end up learning how to do physics and solve problems while in lecture, instead of just sitting still and receiving formulae. Their responses help me decide what topics to focus on in lecture, and what homework and reading assignments to choose.
As a teacher, I have learnt that it is invaluable to have a variety of ways of presenting a single concept. One student sees the idea most clearly when it is presented in math; another prefers an analogy with some other physical system, while a third may simply desire a mnemonic to keep things straight. When it comes to solving a problem, it is often best to simply let the students help each other. During office hours, when I find two students are confused over the same problem, I often send them to the blackboard to work it out together. With minimal guidance from myself, they fill in the blanks for each other, and teach other different ways to see the same problem. Having another student correct them is less stressful, and often a friendly sense of competition and cooperation will develop between them. This collaboration continues outside of the instructor’s office, freeing up time for the instructor to focus on students who need more personal attention.
Observing my students as they struggled through problems, I noticed a simple rule that if enforced, made the problem solving experience much less painful, and thus had a small but important impact on how they viewed the subject. Physics, to my students, was ‘that subject full of formulas’. And yet, as eager as they were to reach for the textbook to find the formula that would solve their next homework problem, they viewed formulas simply as machines that took in numbers and spat out other numbers (with hopefully the right units!). In doing so, they neglected the obvious yet powerful fact that formulas are made up of variables. In their haste to plug in numbers and put their calculators to use, they missed out on the many ways in which substitutions and cancellations can reduce the amount of number crunching required and the chances of error. They were also afraid to define new variables, viewing anything not mentioned in the problem as being outside their purview. But by encouraging them to do all their calculations in terms of variables, leaving the number crunching - if any - to the very last step, I helped open their eyes to the hidden patterns. I still remember the grin creeping across one student’s face as he noted, while solving an energy conservation problem, “The ‘m’s all cancel out, don’t they? I don’t need the mass!”
As an educator, or rather, a guide, I have found that education is a two way street. For my part, I have discovered that to facilitate learning, I must not simply talk at my students, but engage them, question them, help them learn from each other, and equip them to think critically. My role is not to tell them what to think, but to help them discover how to do it themselves, giving them tools and guidelines that will stand them well in any future science course. To pay attention to the details of such things as units and sign conventions, but also to learn how to present their thinking clearly. Every day as a teacher, I learn some new way of looking at a concept, a new or more refined analogy for presenting an idea. That is one of my rewards; the other, is an indescribable sweetness that no other profession affords - watching a student at the dawn of clarity, that moment of comprehension when an idea clicks into place, and finally, they understand.
To achieve such collaborative learning, it is not enough to perform vivid demonstrations and hand out well made Powerpoint slides. If learning is to take place during a lecture and not just after it, the students’ minds must be actively engaged. For example, a simple ‘Ball Race’ demo piques their interest and gets them thinking about kinematics. Two balls of equal masses are set up to run along parallel tracks. Track 1 runs straight and level; track 2 first runs level, then dips down for a short length before rising up to the original height and running level again. The two balls start at the same moment with the same speed - which will reach the finish line first?
Instead of just asking the class, and then letting the few scattered replies hang in the air, I poll my class using ‘paper clickers’; simple sheets of paper, each with four coloured rectangles on one side, each rectangle with one of the letters A, B, C or D. In this case I present three choices to the students - A. the ball on track 1 will reach first; B. the ball on track 2 will reach first; and C. they both will reach at the same time. The students fold their sheets and hold up their answers, and at a glance, I can tell what the major camps of opinion are. This simple exercise draws their interest, engaging them. However, it does not end there; I wander around, pushing them to defend their choices, to explain why they think the way they do. I encourage them to talk to their neighbours, and see if they can change their minds. After a brief discussion, their answers are put to the experimental test - and to the consternation of many students, ball 2 wins. This provokes discussion again, leading eventually to the right answer - but more importantly, to the right reasoning. They have, through their own efforts, reached the answer; but that alone is not enough. Too often students will focus on just the question right in front of them, and lose track of the bigger picture. Asking them to recap the steps they took to get to the answer helps them organize their thoughts and put everything back in context, and allows them to understand the reasoning and methodology behind the answer. Answers provided by a teacher can be accepted on good faith and swallowed easily, and sadly, can just as easily be forgotten. A result which you have reasoned out yourself, which comes from within, from the give and take of question and answer - this too you may forget, but now you will remember how to get there again.
The steady flow of such questions keeps them alert, and the interspersed demonstrations - whether live or on YouTube - helps keep them curious and receptive. Active engagement is most effectively used with counter-intuitive demonstrations like the Ball Race, but is easily adapted to the rest of the lecture. The majority of each lecture consists of asking the students simple multiple choice questions that test their conceptual understanding of the subject, so that they end up learning how to do physics and solve problems while in lecture, instead of just sitting still and receiving formulae. Their responses help me decide what topics to focus on in lecture, and what homework and reading assignments to choose.
As a teacher, I have learnt that it is invaluable to have a variety of ways of presenting a single concept. One student sees the idea most clearly when it is presented in math; another prefers an analogy with some other physical system, while a third may simply desire a mnemonic to keep things straight. When it comes to solving a problem, it is often best to simply let the students help each other. During office hours, when I find two students are confused over the same problem, I often send them to the blackboard to work it out together. With minimal guidance from myself, they fill in the blanks for each other, and teach other different ways to see the same problem. Having another student correct them is less stressful, and often a friendly sense of competition and cooperation will develop between them. This collaboration continues outside of the instructor’s office, freeing up time for the instructor to focus on students who need more personal attention.
Observing my students as they struggled through problems, I noticed a simple rule that if enforced, made the problem solving experience much less painful, and thus had a small but important impact on how they viewed the subject. Physics, to my students, was ‘that subject full of formulas’. And yet, as eager as they were to reach for the textbook to find the formula that would solve their next homework problem, they viewed formulas simply as machines that took in numbers and spat out other numbers (with hopefully the right units!). In doing so, they neglected the obvious yet powerful fact that formulas are made up of variables. In their haste to plug in numbers and put their calculators to use, they missed out on the many ways in which substitutions and cancellations can reduce the amount of number crunching required and the chances of error. They were also afraid to define new variables, viewing anything not mentioned in the problem as being outside their purview. But by encouraging them to do all their calculations in terms of variables, leaving the number crunching - if any - to the very last step, I helped open their eyes to the hidden patterns. I still remember the grin creeping across one student’s face as he noted, while solving an energy conservation problem, “The ‘m’s all cancel out, don’t they? I don’t need the mass!”
As an educator, or rather, a guide, I have found that education is a two way street. For my part, I have discovered that to facilitate learning, I must not simply talk at my students, but engage them, question them, help them learn from each other, and equip them to think critically. My role is not to tell them what to think, but to help them discover how to do it themselves, giving them tools and guidelines that will stand them well in any future science course. To pay attention to the details of such things as units and sign conventions, but also to learn how to present their thinking clearly. Every day as a teacher, I learn some new way of looking at a concept, a new or more refined analogy for presenting an idea. That is one of my rewards; the other, is an indescribable sweetness that no other profession affords - watching a student at the dawn of clarity, that moment of comprehension when an idea clicks into place, and finally, they understand.