Lec 10 | MIT 5.95J Teaching College-Level Science and Engineering, Spring 2009
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0:22 - 0:29Now, what I want to do now, is basically summarize all the themes —
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0:30 - 0:34Basically, summarize all the themes of each of the sessions we've had.
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0:34 - 0:37Partly as a way of reminding you of all the things we did
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0:37 - 0:41and also of jogging your memory of any questions you might have about that.
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0:41 - 0:47and then it will be your chance to ask questions
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0:47 - 0:51so I'll think aloud here. I'll do it in a way
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0:51 - 0:55that I can leave them up the whole time. So let me let me do it here.
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0:55 - 1:00I'll do it on these two guys.
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1:00 - 1:11Yea, do it here. Ok, so our sessions and the summaries of them
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1:11 - 1:16So session number one was
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1:16 - 1:27the introduction, so I'll start with session two, which was
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1:27 - 1:37So teaching equations, ah now the fundamental idea I wanted people to learn on this one was to help students
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1:37 - 1:41learn equations in big chunks.
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1:41 - 1:48So, doing derivations is generally antithetical to that, because students will just see the little symbols
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1:48 - 1:53and they'll see a ton, and ton, and ton of symbols. And their chunk size is much smaller than you.
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1:53 - 2:01So, you will overload their short-term memory and they won't really be understanding. They'll be just
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2:01 - 2:14trying to remember and trying to write as fast as they can.
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2:14 - 2:19So, is that visible, the orange? Yea? Great. Oh yea good, your a good test.
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2:19 - 2:25Ok chunks, so teaching equations: you want to try to chunk the equations.
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2:25 - 2:32Because that gives meaning for the student. For example, what does each term mean, well how would you
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2:32 -expect that term to show up in the equation. Those are the kinds of things that a book generally does
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Not Syncednot do very well. And that's something that you as a teacher, actually have a lot of value to add.. Uh
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Not Syncednow I, just learned about a book. Uh, that does try to do this. Uh, which is called "The Student's Guide
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Not Syncedto Maxwell's Equations" Which is, does anybody know that book?
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Not SyncedYea? You know? Ok, so it looks fantastic. I'm like number 7 or something in the queue to get a copy from the MIT libraries - which shows how popular it is.
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Not SyncedBut the way it's organized - first of all it's sold an immense number of copies for a technical textbook. Something like 7000 or something like that.
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Not SyncedSo it's sort of a physics bestseller. Uh, ok it's not an Agatha Christie novel, but it's really well done.
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Not SyncedUh and each chapter talks about one of the equations. So there's four -roughly - of Maxwell's equations and there's four chapters - one per equation.
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Not SyncedSo, it's helping the students chunk just by the very structure of the books. But most books don't do that - aren't that well - that interestingly constructed - not thoughtfully constructed.
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Not SyncedSo, it's something that you as a teacher really should do. Ok, the next one.
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Not SyncedMisconceptions. So, why do we spend a whole session on misconceptions?
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Not SyncedWell it's fundamentally important - uh, misconceptions - because if you don't know where your students are, you have no chance of bringing them to where you want them to go.
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Not SyncedThe example that's classic, that's probably started this whole line of research about misconceptions was students understanding of force and motion.
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Not SyncedAnd basically what you'd find is most peoples intuitive understanding of force and motion is F = MV.
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Not SyncedIf you have an object, you stop pushing it, it stops moving. Force and velocity are connected. If you have a heavier object, you have to push it harder. If you have a lighter object, you push it less.
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Not SyncedSo, force and mass are connected. So it looks like F = MV. Whereas, we would like to teach them F = MA - Newton's second law: force equals mass times acceleration.
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Not SyncedSo, there's a fundamental difference there. And if you don't take account of that, you'll end up producing just rote knowledge.
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Not SyncedThey'll say, ok, well whenever I happen to be in physics class I'll use F = MA and I'll just solve problems symbolically using that procedure you told me.
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Not SyncedBut I don't really believe it or understand it or use it in my own reasoning. So, my intuition is no longer available for reasoning.
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Not SyncedSo, by taking account of students' misconceptions - helping them come to a intuitive understanding of how things really work, you're actually making them much smarter.
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Not SyncedSo, this is, uh -
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Not SyncedSo that's knowing how students think.
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Not SyncedSo this is, pretty much opposite to behaviorism. And this whole line of - ah - 'cause your saying well I really want to peer into how people are reflecting and how their cognition works.
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Not SyncedSo, what's going on under the hood.
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Not SyncedAnd behaviorism says well no, ah, all you need to do is look at the behavior. If they're solving problems correctly, that's fine.
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Not SyncedWhereas, actually, you want to know, well, why did they solve it that way. Is it because they really understood it, or not.
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Not SyncedDid they just say 3 times 6 is 18 because they were told or they memorized it? Or, was it because they really understood it, in which case they can make a word problem related to it.
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Not SyncedSo, knowing how students think, then you're actually part of the cognitive revolution and you are connecting to students directly - and making them much smarter.
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Not SyncedOk, homework and exam questions.
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Not SyncedOk, so, constructing homework and exam questions. The main theme of that was Bloom's Taxonomy.
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Not SyncedOk, so this was a hierarchy of goals that you could have. So, the full name is, "A Taxonomy of Educational Objectives."
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Not SyncedAnd the ones we're talking about, if you look at the full title, it's the Cognitive Domain. There's the cognitive and affective - affective means related to feelings and emotion.
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Not SyncedUh, this is the cognitive domain ones I am talking about here. So, are you asking for just comprehension, are you asking for students to analyze, are you asking them to synthesize knowledge? What is the level of cognitive activity that you are asking for.
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Not SyncedAnd generally, you want to mix levels. Uh, so you don't want to just push the students off a cliff.
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Not SyncedAnd say, ok, uh, discuss how - you know the first day in thermodynamics class - discuss how the second law of thermodynamics applies to the entropy of the universe.
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Not SyncedYou know, that's just too hard. You've pushed them way off the cliff and you've jumped way too high in the taxonomy.
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Not SyncedYou also don't want to just give them pure comprehension problems - do they remember the rule that you're trying to teach.
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Not SyncedRather you want to mix them. And Bloom's Taxonomy gives you a structured way of seeing what level your questions are at and making sure you mix them.
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Not SyncedSo that you prepare students with comprehension questions so that they can later do evaluation questions.
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Not SyncedOk, course design.
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Not SyncedSo, for course design, the big idea is big ideas.
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Not SyncedSo you want to organize your course around some kind of large ideas. Ideally, those large ideas will transfer outside of the course, too.
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Not SyncedAnd if a whole curriculum is organized around a few large ideas, for example, waves, and offlitory motion
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Not Syncedyou could also organize a whole bunch of a physics major around ideas like that. Or conservation.
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Not SyncedBy giving structure to the curriculum, you turn it away from just a series of unconnected facts.
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Not SyncedLike ok, this topic, that topic, that topic, that topic. You actually - you give it form and organization
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Not Syncedand then it's much more likely to be built into long lasting chunks in the students' minds.
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Not SyncedOk, so next one was [inaudible]
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Not SyncedThe sixth session was "Interactive Teaching." And the main theme is that questioning and reflecting lead to long lasting learning.
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Not SyncedSo, I showed you four different - three or four different - timescales on which you could be interactive.
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Not SyncedWhen you ask questions - a short one is when you wait 5 seconds - or actually some of you suggested 7
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Not Syncedwhich is probably better. It's just harder to do, ah, but it's probably better.
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Not SyncedSo, you wait a certain amount of time to allow people to actually formulate questions.
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Not SyncedSo that promotes interaction on a short scale. You can ask short questions one or two minutes - two or
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Not Syncedthree minutes with a multiple choice right in the middle of a lecture. It gives you feedback.so it's
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Not Syncedrelated to the misconceptions one. You're learning how students think just as they answer the questions.
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Not SyncedOr you could do longer, or, on the same time scale you could ask feedback questions from this sheet
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Not Syncedat the end of the lecture so that's also promoting a space for questions
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Not Syncedand you can actually see how successful that is.
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Not SyncedThere's so many questions actually, we could spend two more sessions answering all the questions, which
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Not SyncedI'm glad about.
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Not SyncedBecause questioning and reflecting, that's how people make knowledge their own.
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Not SyncedSo, the formal name for that is Constructivism. What you're doing is you're helping people construct knowledge.
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Not SyncedAnd you can do this on a long scale - like for example for a whole lecture - you can use a question like "the wood blocks" - ah - which I showed you earlier.
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Not SyncedYou can actually do that for an entire lecture. And, actually, we just did that for an entire lecture in my artoproximation class.
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Not SyncedBecause the wood blocks leads to xylophones - and I brought in the xylophone - and we could talk about how the pitches of the thick and thin wood blocks relate to the pitches shorter and longer xylophone slots.
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Not SyncedSo, there's lots - so rich examples like that - one doesn't have that many of them. But, when you do have them, you can actually build an entire session around them.
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Not SyncedAnd it produces all of these good things.
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Not SyncedOk, 7.
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Not SyncedSo lecture planning and performing. So for the planning of a lecture - just like for the course - the planning of a course - you want to organize it around some kind of big idea.
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Not SyncedSome kind of thing that gives it structure. The whole lecture, you want an objective.
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Not SyncedSo, an example of: by the end of a lecture I want students to be able to explain the origin of the terms in the Navier–Stokes equation.
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Not SyncedSo, then you would choose your activities in lecture around this goal. But that goal - just like the longer scale one for the whole course - gives structure to the lecture.
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Not SyncedAnd you know what to put in, and what not to put in. And the lecture planning blank sheets - or the templates I gave you - I posted - you can use those to that end.
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Not SyncedOk, that's for the planning part. And for the performing - the - let's say the main thing in performing that people don't normally think about - when they think about teaching - is timing.
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Not SyncedOk so, you want to create little bits of suspense and interest which are then - you know - little bits of tension that are then released.
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Not SyncedAnd you want to do it on multiple scales: short and long. You know, the interactive teaching questions from here help do that. Especially if you have a demonstration, because people want to know.
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Not SyncedHmm, is the thick wood block going to be higher pitch or is it going to be lower pitch? Hmm. And you'll find that when you do things like that the entire room is dead silent because people really want to know.
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Not SyncedAnd the way you structure the questions can promote that - by having people vote they've now made a public commitment which then activates the cognitive dissonance part of people's minds.
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Not SyncedThey don't - they have a - by making a public commitment they've now made their internal state more towards the public state, which is "All I want to know is what's going on".
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Not SyncedAnd they really do want to know what's going on.
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Not SyncedSo, timing - you can use - get a lot of timing ideas from the interactive teaching methods. The timing is really important for performing. Imagine jokes where people tell you the punch line first, and then they tell you the rest of the joke.
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Not SyncedRight? They don't go over too well. And most comics - at least most successful comics - don't do that.
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Not SyncedBut, we usually do that with our teaching.
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Not SyncedOk. Blackboards and slides for teaching.
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Not SyncedSo, the main concepts to think about there are the chunk size that students have and how many spots they have in short-term memory.
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Not SyncedOk, so with a blackboard you have many advantages for free. Which is that - on the blackboard - you don't have to use too many short-term memory slots.
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Not SyncedUh, you can put the entire session all on one giant set of blackboards in the front. And you can offload a lot of the work onto something that is individual field and present for everyone all the time.
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Not SyncedBecause remember, their chunk size is much smaller than yours. Uh, so you might see the entire lecture as one chunk, but obviously they don't see it that way or they wouldn't be in that lecture.
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Not SyncedThey're the learners. Uh, and then, when you're doing the slides - if you're going to use slides for teaching - to mitigate some of this problem of not having enough short-term memory slots: generally not enough space.
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Not SyncedWell, you could try to get four black - four slide projectors - or three slide projectors, but it's pretty hard to do. And it sort of triples or, quintuples, nuntuples the time to prepare the slides.
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Not SyncedBecause you have to synchronize three different slide presentations. Uh, so at least use assertions at the title, and then visual evidence.
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Not SyncedVisual evidence is much easier to remember and the assertions help people to know what to look for.
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Not SyncedSo, they're not spending all their cycles - which they don't have that many of because their short term memory has been filled up - uh, they're expending their cycles trying to understand the visual evidence.
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Not Synced[Inaudible] I posted a set of example slides with the tech source. There was a request for the tech source, so I posted that, as well.
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Not SyncedUh, showing this method of presentation for the factorial - the logarithm of the factorial.
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Not SyncedOk, and then, the last one was [inaudible]. So, maybe the summary could be one - the comment that was on one of the sheets was: is there any hope? [laughter]
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Not SyncedAlright, and I think, well that question is - it's coupled to another question. So the main theme for that is that social and educational... Social and educational change are coupled.
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Not SyncedSo, if there's no hope for education there's no hope for society. Uh, or alternatively, if there's hope for education there's hope for society and vice versa.
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Not SyncedBut the main positive lesson from this is that by improving society you improve education, and also by improving education, you improve society.
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Not SyncedSo, that's one really good reason to want to be a teacher, and to make teaching a part of your career, as I'm sure many of you are thinking about doing.
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Not SyncedOk, so those are the short summaries of the nine sessions. What I'd like to do now is give you a chance to ask any questions you have.
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Not SyncedWell, of course, have our - in - let's see - in 10 minutes - at 10:10 - 10:00 - we'll take a 10 minute break. Ah, but before that I want to start the question session.
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Not SyncedSo, the way we'll do that is if everyone could just look at your index card that you brought with a question. Or it doesn't have to be an index card - it could be a sheet of paper.
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Not SyncedAh, and spend one minute thinking about something that puzzles you, you wonder about, you're interested in, you'd like to know more about. About anything related to teaching.
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Not SyncedAnd check-in with a neighbor or two. And we'll just start doing questions.
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Not SyncedOk, and then we'll have our break at 10:00.
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Not SyncedSo, I'll leave all these guys up here, and then I'll mark here: your questions.
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Not SyncedOk, so take another 10 or 20 seconds to formulate a question. Ah, or formulate your thoughts and we'll start.
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Not SyncedSo, uh, kind of implicitly throughout this semester,
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Not Syncedwe've kind of been thinking that our audience is, like,
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Not Synceda college-aged audience. So if you're teaching older
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Not Syncedpeople, what are the things that you have to do differently?
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Not SyncedGood question. So, let me repeat the question,
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Not Syncedand then also that'll give me a chance to bring in
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Not Syncedone of the other comments from the question
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Not Syncedsheets, which is, so the question was,
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Not Syncedwhat about teaching older learners, so
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Not Syncedpeople who aren't college aged, so middle-aged people.
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Not SyncedDo you have to do things differently?
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Not SyncedNow, before I answer that, let me say why
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Not SyncedI repeat the question. So, the comment was that it
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Not Syncedis a good idea to repeat the question, because
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Not SyncedOCW asked that I repeat the question, so it's
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Not Syncedbecause of the pickup, the microphone pickup
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Not SyncedI guess is here, and it picks up me much better
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Not Syncedthan the audience. So it's good for that. But it's
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Not Syncedalso good, as the commenter pointed out, it's
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Not Syncedgood because it makes, it shows the students
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Not Syncedwho are asking the question that I actually value
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Not Syncedtheir questions, because I'm telling everybody,
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Not Syncedlook this is something we should all be thinking
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Not Syncedabout, so it brings the whole class together
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Not Syncedaround it, and it also gives me time to think
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Not Syncedabout the question. Although in this case, I didn't
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Not Syncedactually use any of that time to think about the
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Not Syncedquestion, so let me think about the question now.
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Not SyncedSo I'm not sure it actually gives you that much time.
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Not SyncedIt actually gives you one or two seconds. But,
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Not Syncedactually, if you just want one or two seconds,
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Not Syncedit's best to just sit there still and think for one or two seconds,
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Not Syncedso that's what I'm going to do now.
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Not SyncedOkay, so now I waited actually four seconds, just
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Not Syncedto show that it's possible to do that, though difficult.
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Not SyncedSo, there are some things that are different, and
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Not SyncedI'd say that one of the main differences is not just
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Not Syncedthe misconceptions, but the conceptions of
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Not Syncedlearning that people have. So, for example,
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Not Syncedyou might be teaching people who just failed
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Not Syncedout of math in school, never did math again.
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Not SyncedAnd now you want to help them learn math.
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Not SyncedOr you want to help them learn reading
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Not Syncedand they always thought of themselves as
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Not Syncedterrible readers. So now they've been, they've
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Not Syncedimbibed the lesson of the blue-eyed, brown-eyed
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Not Syncedexperiment, which is that they are bad at this. They,
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Not Syncedyou know, for whatever reason, it's their fault.
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Not SyncedYou know, and we're very good at that. We're very
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Not Syncedgood at passing blame. Sort of, why didn't people
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Not Syncedlearn physics? Oh, well, physics is a very hard
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Not Syncedsubject. It's not that we teach it terribly, it's a very
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Not Syncedhard subject. So basically we're saying, blame the
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Not Syncedvictim. It's very convenient. So after a while of that,
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Not Syncedthe victim actually starts to get
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Not SyncedStockholm Syndrome, so they start to identify with
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Not Syncedtheir captors, and they agree, yes, physics is a
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Not Syncedvery hard subject, I never had a head for physics.
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Not SyncedSo, as an experiment for that, next time you go to
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Not Synceda party, ask people "What do you do?"
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Not SyncedI mean, obviously not a party of other graduate
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Not Syncedstudents in science and engineering, because it
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Not Syncedwouldn't work, that test wouldn't work here.
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Not SyncedBut just, for example, so my officemate when I was
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Not Synceda graduate student, he used to live in Hollywood,
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Not Syncedin Hollywood itself. So he used to go to parties,
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Not Syncedand his roommate was a script rewriter. So his roommate
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Not Syncedwould actually, scripts that were considered too
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Not Syncedbad even to make movies out of, but they really
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Not Syncedthought they should make a movie out of it,
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Not Syncedbecause they thought they could make a lot of
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Not Syncedmoney if they just rewrote the script in bits, sort of
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Not Syncedlike D-grade scripts that needed to be made
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Not SyncedC-grade, his roommate rewrote them. So he
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Not Syncedhad a lot of Hollywood connections. So they had a
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Not Syncedlot of parties, he had a lot of parties with people
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Not Syncedwho weren't from CalTech, which was good.
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Not SyncedSo go to a pary like that, and when people say what do you do?
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Not SyncedSay, oh I'm a chemistry guy; I teach physics, or I'm a TA for this class or I'm working on a PHD in mathematics
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Not SyncedAnd just watch how fast people run [laughter] Alright. You know so if they're more polite - if they're
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Not Syncednot very polite they'll say, "Oh, what do YOU do." If they are more polite, they'll say, "Oh, I was always
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Not Syncedterrible with that."
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Not Synced"That was never my thing" Ok, so now - and this is so prevalent - ah, so now what do you have to do in
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Not Syncedthat case, Well you have to - so that's their misconception.
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Not SyncedAnd so number three up there. You really take account of that.
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Not SyncedThey're way of thinking about math and physics - the way that it was taught to them completely did not
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Not Syncedwork. And now you have to just go around that.
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Not SyncedAnd so one of the ways, actually Brian Butterworth, uh, who actually studies this.
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Not SyncedHe's a professor of neurophisiology in London.
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Not SyncedI've mentioned his book a couple times. I think it's called "The Mathmatical Brain" or "What Counts".
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Not SyncedDepending upon whether it is the American or English title.
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Not SyncedSo, math phobia is caused by people having a fear that there is only one way to get the right aswer.
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Not SyncedRight, so they think that they are walking across a tightrope.
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Not SyncedAnd if you make one misstep, then you fall into the abyss.
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Not SyncedRight, and so if you have that conception of mathematical reasoning and problem-solving then you are going to have a lot
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Not Syncedof fear. Right, so what you have to do is you have to show people, "No, actually," - ah
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Not SyncedWrite it up here.
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Not SyncedSo, if this was their model. That's the one way to get to the solution and actually you have to show
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Not Syncedthem, not that, but... And show them even dead-ends.
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Not SyncedYou know. Not every method or solution will work out.
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Not SyncedSome might just end up there, some might end up there, some connect to other methods and get to a solution.
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Not SyncedAnd even maybe - that's one solution, but maybe there's two.
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Not SyncedSo, you want to show them that there's robust paths across the river.
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Not SyncedYou're not trying to - for example - jump Niagara Falls, where one misstep and down you go.
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Not SyncedSo that's the way of reducing the math phobia.
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Not SyncedNow that's a particular example, but it's an example of how you have to think slightly differently for
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Not Syncedthe adult learner. The reason is that they have had longer time to internalize the misconception.
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Not SyncedThe high school student, they haven't necessarily formed their own view of themselves.
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Not SyncedIt's less true of the college level where people are forming their view of self.
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Not SyncedMore and more. But it's still changable. Especially in America. And that's one really excellent part
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Not Syncedof the American university system.
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Not SyncedSo, you may not realize it - if you come from America - but in almost every other country in the
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Not Syncedworld, when you go to university, You pick your subject and that's what you do.
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Not SyncedFor the rest of your university time.
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Not SyncedSo, England for example, it's even before that.
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Not SyncedIf you want to do physics at Cambridge, you would have to have done, for the last two years of high school
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Not Synced- basically everyone who did physics at Cambridge did physics, math, chemistry, and further math.
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Not SyncedFor their maths, I should say.
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Not SyncedSo, further math is just more math - basically like
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Not SyncedDC - DE calculus.
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Not SyncedSo they, for the last four years - two years - of school, only math, and physics, and chemistry courses.
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Not SyncedAnd then, they go on to university and do just physics.
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Not SyncedAnd Cambridge had a radical innovation on that, which is
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Not Syncedin the first year, you didn't do just physics, you did physics math, chemistry, and maybe a fourth subject.
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Not SyncedAh, so that was considered very progressive, and it was compared to the rest of the educational system.
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Not SyncedIn Europe, in general, there isn't that freedom.
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Not SyncedSo, in America, you still have it. So, students in colleges are still going to be quite different from
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Not Syncedthe people that basically fixed their view of themself as bad at math, or bad at whatever.
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Not SyncedAnd that's one of the things that you change when you think about adult learners.
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Not SyncedOk, I'll take one question back there and then we'll have our break.
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Not SyncedStudent: Towards the beginning of the class we talked about
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Not Syncedthe experiment in math teaching in New Hampshire
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Not SyncedProfessor: Benezet, the experiment? Student: Yea, the the Benezet experiment.
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Not SyncedI don't think we ever really got to figure out what happened to that [inaudible]
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Not SyncedProfessor: Ok, So what happened to the Benezet experiment in New Hampshire.
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Not SyncedSo this was in the Louis Benezet was superintendent of schools
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Not Syncedin Manchester, New Hampshire from 1924 to 1938
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Not SyncedAnd so what happened. You know, if it was so great, where is it now?
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Not SyncedUh, so, I might have mentioned that I actually went and did research
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Not Syncedon what happened to it. And I went to the Manchester
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Not SyncedNew Hampshire school board, and just spent a whold day in their archives reading all the minutes of all
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Not Syncedthe school board discussions about it. And all the votes about Benezet.
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Not SyncedAnd whether to reappoint him as superintendant
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Not Syncedor what to do about the curriculum. And basically, what happened was two things:
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Not SyncedFirst of all, there was extensive studies done showing that the curriculum was very successful
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Not SyncedUh, so one study was by
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Not SyncedSo, Eta Burman. She was a teacher in Manchester
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Not Syncedin the program. And then she did her masters in education - I'm pretty sure - at Boston University.
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Not SyncedUh, yes, I'm sure it is. Because you can find her thesis in the Boston University library.
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Not SyncedSo, she did her education thesis - was an assessment of how the students did
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Not Syncedin that experimental program versus the reqular program.
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Not SyncedAnd the students in the experimental program were just much better.
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Not SyncedAh, it was just totally clear. So now, what happened?
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Not SyncedWell, what happened partly was that -
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Not SyncedI think a lot of it is what Alfie Kohn article about "Not for my kid"
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Not SyncedHow priviledged parents undermine school reform.
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Not SyncedSo, there was huge opposition from the priveledged parents.
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Not SyncedAnd so I interviewed some of the people who had those priveledged parents
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Not Syncedwho had taken that curriculum 50 or 60 years ago.
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Not SyncedAnd one of them was later mayor of Manchester.
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Not SyncedAnd he said his parents just hated the curriculum.
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Not SyncedSo generally, ah, the people whose parents were foreign
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Not Syncedfor example, French Quebeca, who'd come to
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Not SyncedNew Hampshire to work in the mills.
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Not SyncedAh, the non-English speakers, the lower-middle class, it was ok it was fine.
-
Not SyncedAnd the ones I talked to from that background loved the curriculum.
-
Not SyncedAnd the few who really hated it were actually socially quite powerful.
-
Not SyncedAh, and they came from the predominantly English-speaking families.
-
Not SyncedAnd they hated that he wasn't, for example, giving homework.
-
Not SyncedBecause he said, if you have 8 hours of school, what more homework do you need?
-
Not SyncedWhich, I think is actually true.
-
Not SyncedAh, if you can't teach people in 8 hours a day - um, that's rediculous - that's 40 hours a week.
-
Not SyncedSo, why are you giving them still more homework?
-
Not SyncedAh, so he didn't have homework, he actually had them learn in school
-
Not Syncedwhich is one of the benefits of interactive teaching.
-
Not SyncedIf you're lecture is no longer dictation and you're actually learning, you don't have to do a lot of
-
Not Syncedstuff out of school
-
Not SyncedSo, there was opposition there. So - and - what happened was the
-
Not Syncedvotes in the school board went to something like this:
-
Not Synceduh... see how this is T... so this is 1938... and 1924
-
Not SyncedAnd this is the votes "in favor" and "against." They went roughly like this:
-
Not SyncedSo, the school board, I think, had about, ah, I think had about 15 people on it.
-
Not Synced14 people depending, I mean, sometimes, one person wasn't on the school board.
-
Not SyncedAh, so the first votes were something like 13-1
-
Not SyncedSo, in other words, +12
-
Not SyncedAnd then - uh so, over here 1924 - when he was first appointed...
-
Not SyncedAnd then, the votes went like this and then started going down
-
Not Syncedlike that, and by 1938 - so there was votes taken every 3 or 4 years or 2 years -
-
Not Synceduh, whether to renew the appointment. Cause that was just the term.
-
Not SyncedAnd by here, this was - the vote was 6 to 6, uh, right here.
-
Not SyncedUh, that's right. It was 6 to 6 in 1937,
-
Not SyncedAnd then, what happened in 1938, was they didn't vote to not take him on,
-
Not SyncedBut what they did is they voted to use a standard textbook.
-
Not SyncedSo they voted to use a standard textbook in the curriculum
-
Not Syncedand then the curriculum was declared incompatible with the standard textbook
-
Not SyncedAnd of course, the standard textbook was pretty terrible - I haven't read the textbook personally
-
Not Syncedbut I'm sure that - given the state of standard textbooks - then and now.
-
Not SyncedAlright so, and it certainly wasn't the progressive - kind of - understanding algorithms
-
Not Syncedapproach that Benezet had.
-
Not SyncedSo, then the textbook was instituted and the curriculum was basically killed off like that.
-
Not SyncedSo then Benezet left for a professorship of education at Dartmouth
-
Not SyncedAnd then they - after Benezet left - so this is Benezet...
-
Not SyncedBenezet left, The new superintendant put in a - basically - drill and kill curriculum
-
Not Syncedwith lots of testing and uh, sort of the standard now.
-
Not SyncedNo child left behind 60 years - 70 years before it's time.
-
Not SyncedOk, but the curriculum was very successful
-
Not Syncedand it was basically killed off by opposition
-
Not Syncedfrom - ah - wealthy parents AND - to be fair - Benezet didn't help his case
-
Not Synced- ah - so a couple of the students told me that
-
Not Synced- actually when the students wouldn't answer things in class
-
Not Syncedhe would sometimes make fun of them. Now that's terrible.
-
Not SyncedI mean, it's terrible just on moral grounds, but also
-
Not Syncedit's terrible political strategy.
-
Not SyncedBecause now the parents are going to go - I mean the kids will tell their parents
-
Not Syncedand if the parents needed any ammunition, at all.
-
Not SyncedThere they have it.
-
Not SyncedSo, Benezet was just arming the enemy, too.
-
Not SyncedYea?
-
Not Synced[student mostly inaudible]
-
Not SyncedYea. Good question.
-
Not SyncedEh, well. Yes, good question.
-
Not SyncedSo is there a comparable force in college education? The parents with previledge?
-
Not SyncedAh, yea, Unfortunately it's ones colleagues on the faculty.
-
Not SyncedAh, The reason is because they were the ones who did well by the old system.
-
Not SyncedAnd so now, a change is likely to be misinterpreted - or maybe rightly interpreted -
-
Not Syncedas, well, this isn't for the benefit of the top 5%. So, we can't do it.
-
Not SyncedAh, so, for example
-
Not Syncedinteractive teaching is often criticized as, "Well that's really useful for the people that aren't learning
-
Not Syncedanything. But the top 5% - it'll just slow them down."
-
Not SyncedSo, we can't possibly do it.
-
Not SyncedSo, the wars about interactive teaching turn on - a lot - of that question.
-
Not SyncedAnd that is a very similar force.
-
Not SyncedUh, because people are saying, "Well, it's those people who are just like me, because their the ones
-
Not Syncedthat will become future faculty. And those ones aren't given the benefit of the system."
-
Not SyncedImperically, that's not true. I think the - they are actually benefitted, as well.
-
Not SyncedAh, and Benezet found that too.
-
Not SyncedIt wasn't that some people did worse, they were all doing better.
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Not SyncedAh, but it's the intensity of the response that you get to things sometimes
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Not Syncedin that vein, shows that it's an underlying social force.
-
Not SyncedAnd not just purely a cognitive reason.
-
Not SyncedIs that, ah, what you were thinking about?
-
Not SyncedOk, so 10:08 - at 10:18 we'll start again with more questions.
-
Not SyncedOk
-
Not SyncedSo, I know there's sevreal more questions.
-
Not SyncedBecause I already have 2 in the queue
-
Not SyncedUh, go ahead.
-
Not Synced[student] My question is what do you do when you are confronted
-
Not Syncedwith a question you don't know the answer to
-
Not Synced[professor] Ok, what do you... I don't know. No. Sorry.
-
Not Synced[laughter]
-
Not SyncedThe question was what do you do when you are confronted
-
Not Syncedwith a question that you don't know the answer to.
-
Not SyncedAnd my answer was I have no idea.
-
Not SyncedThere's good answers to that question.
-
Not SyncedAnd hopefully I will give you one of them.
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Not SyncedAh. So, I would say the number one thing is not to bullshit.
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Not SyncedThat can only end - at best - it won't end in disaster. But, it can end in disaster.
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Not SyncedAh, so the first thing - so if you don't know the answer to it, but you have to think
-
Not Syncedwhat's going to get triggered in you.
-
Not SyncedSo, if it's something - for example - really related to the material
-
Not Syncedyou're more likely to to get triggered and say - Oh I should have known the answer to that,
-
Not SyncedI must be a lousy teacher, ah how will they ever respect me again
-
Not SyncedSo, if you remember the discussion we had last time about political barriers -
-
Not Syncedabout the 3 levels at which conversations are carried on.
-
Not SyncedSo, this is from difficult conversations: there's the factual level,
-
Not Syncedthe emotional level, and the meaning level.
-
Not SyncedSo, the fact is someone just asked you a question.
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Not SyncedAnd you don't know the answer right away.
-
Not SyncedThe emotional reaction - the emotional transmission is
-
Not SyncedOh my god, I feel worried and nervous.
-
Not Syncedand then, the meaning level is oh, what does that mean for me
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Not Syncedoh, it means that I'm a bad teacher - they found me out.
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Not SyncedI'm really not supposed to be here.
-
Not SyncedRight, and so, the same thing happens with students
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Not Syncedwhen you ask them a question that they don't know.
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Not SyncedSo, you want to create structures where that meaning -
-
Not Syncedthat bad meaning isn't triggered.
-
Not SyncedUh, so you want to just pause, first of all. The reason is if you don't pause
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Not Syncedthen you are more likely to act out based on the emotion
-
Not SyncedSo, I've seen this happen several times
-
Not Syncedwhen I was a graduate student
-
Not SyncedUh, which is that whether the -
-
Not SyncedSo, this is - sometimes when the person
-
Not Synceddidn't know, but in general when they were somehow challenged
-
Not Syncedby the question. So, either way, whether it's because you don't know the answer
-
Not Syncedor because the student's tone has some kind of cheekiness to it
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Not Syncedand you feel a bit of insolance and you think
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Not SyncedI'm the teacher, Goddammit
-
Not SyncedHow dare you talk to me like that
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Not SyncedSo, that emotional reaction - whether it's - or that challenge,
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Not Syncedthat worry, that anxiety about your authority
-
Not Syncedwill produce a bad response, in general
-
Not SyncedOk, so if you just right away respond
-
Not Syncedyou are likely to do bad things
-
Not Syncedand this is something I've seen happen a few times
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Not Syncedwhere you put the student down or you compete with the student
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Not SyncedYou say things like, how could you not know that?
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Not SyncedAnd then you dismiss the question
-
Not SyncedSo, if you pause for just one or two seconds - even an instant -
-
Not Syncedafter you practice it - just the pausing to realize
-
Not SyncedOh, wait a minute. Uh, I just had an emotional reaction happen
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Not SyncedUh, I felt it in my body. I got a bit sweaty. Ah, my palms sweated
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Not SyncedWhatever it may be, that your particular reaction is -
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Not SyncedI feel it often in my face, my face gets warm
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Not SyncedUh, if you remember - ah - way back
-
Not SyncedWhen we were doing the, what is it the wood blocks, or the cones?
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Not SyncedNo, it was the cones.
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Not SyncedWhen I was dropping the cones.
-
Not SyncedAnd there was a question - when it was time for question and discussion -
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Not Syncedone person said, Oh, the answer is block and I've seen you do it before
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Not SyncedAnd I just remember, just feeling flushed.
-
Not SyncedI was like, Ok this is not the time to answer that question.
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Not SyncedAh, so it's the same thing. So, that's lesson number one, is to pause.
-
Not SyncedAnd then you can think and regroup and have a relective response.
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Not SyncedThe reflective response is maybe, oh, you know that's a really interesting question
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Not SyncedI'd never thought about that
-
Not Syncedbut I'm going to think about that and I'll tell you the next time.
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Not SyncedThat's perfectly fine.
-
Not SyncedAnother one is you can try to figure out the answer together
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Not SyncedYou say, Well, I'm not sure, but let's see
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Not Syncedif we can find out the answer in the next minute or two
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Not Syncedif not, I'll work on it in the eavening, or work on it tomorrow and tell you.
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Not SyncedAnd then you can try it together.
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Not SyncedAnd then students have
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Not Syncedthe advantage of seeing how you would reason about a question
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Not SyncedAnd it helps, if you do that intentionally
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Not Syncedbecause there's sort of a general rule of thumb
-
Not Syncedwhich is that one's facility with equations declines with distance to the blackboard
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Not SyncedSo, the closer to the blackboard, the lower the facility of the equation.
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Not SyncedSo, if you just leap to the blackboard and start writing,
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Not Syncedyou're likely to feel too nervous and actually just mess it up just because of that
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Not SyncedSo, if you say ok, let's actually think about doing this together
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Not Syncedthink about what you might do. Think about some approaches
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Not Syncedthen go to the blackboard and maybe start working
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Not SyncedThen, you know you have your out.
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Not SyncedIf it doesn't work in 2 minutes, say
-
Not SyncedOk look, it's a good question, I'll really need to think about this some more
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Not SyncedAh, and I'll do that, and I'll come back to you.
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Not SyncedOk, does that help answer your question?
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Not Synced[student] Yes, cause we were just talking about how the discussions with our students
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Not Syncedand I'd be like, perhaps there'd be somebody who'd point out a different way of doing something
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Not Syncedand you're not prepared to talk about, you know, that with them
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Not Synced[professor] Right, so what if somebody produces - yea
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Not Syncedif you're going to do interactive teaching you're going to have lots of discussions.
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Not SyncedSo, people think Oh, interactive teaching means you just let the students do everything
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Not Syncedand just kick back. No, it's actually much harder.
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Not SyncedAh, because you have - it's - your now - you've changed it back from
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Not Syncedbasically, playing prerecorded tape - which is what a lot of lecturing is
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Not Syncedyou just get out and read the book.
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Not SyncedThat's what one of my lecturers did.
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Not SyncedAh, to - it's now a stage performance - a stage performance in the old days -
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Not Syncedin the Elizabethan Theatre - where the audience interacted with the stage
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Not SyncedAh, so that's much harder.
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Not SyncedYou have to have to really know - you have to "know your lines"
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Not SyncedNot that you're going to say the same lines no matter what
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Not Syncedyou have to really feel the lines, you have to really understand the feel - so it is harder
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Not SyncedYou're going to be producing lots of
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Not Synceddiscussions and at a place like MIT the students -
-
Not Syncedwho are very curious and their gonna think
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Not SyncedWell, oh what about this
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Not SyncedWell, that's fine so you want to use
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Not SyncedAh, sort of Ikedo - so if someone suggests something
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Not Syncedyou hadn't thought of don't dismiss it.
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Not SyncedYou say Oh, I hadn't thought of that - that's a really good suggestion
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Not SyncedWhich and usually - maybe - I'll use that next year.
-
Not SyncedAh, when I teach the course.
-
Not SyncedThank you.
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Not SyncedSo, if you just think about the students as your allies.
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Not SyncedThen your reaction - that you'll intrinsicly produce -
-
Not Syncedwill be much less confrontational and much less worried.
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Not SyncedOk, uh.
-
Not SyncedSo, I'll give you one example of where I was very, very nervous
-
Not Syncedand - ok - what I did.
-
Not SyncedSo this was - I was lecturing thermodynamics and there were 200 students
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Not Syncedand I was doing the Carnot Cycle
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Not SyncedSo this was the last lecture - so we were doing the Carnot Cycle -
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Not Syncedand I drew it up on the board
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Not Syncedand you know I'd encouraged questions
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Not Syncedthroughout the whole lecture and throughout the whole lecture course
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Not SyncedSo, of course someone raised their hand and said
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Not SyncedOh, excuse me, I think that this box should be - is not right
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Not SyncedThey didn't know what was wrong with it - they said
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Not SyncedOh, that box isn't right
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Not SyncedSo, I looked at it, and I thought
-
Not SyncedOh my god, they're right.. So, I have now just drawn rubbish
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Not Syncedon the board in front of 200 people and
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Not SyncedI had a buch of my colleages that day who happened to decided
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Not Syncedthat was the day to come visit my lecture
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Not Synced[laughter]
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Not SyncedAh, so I think that was probably why I was a bit nervous to begin with.
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Not SyncedAnd then, that probably contributed to me writing down the wrong diagram.
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Not SyncedSo, I realized, I needed some time to actually think.
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Not SyncedSo, I said, You know, you're right.
-
Not SyncedLet me just think. And I just turned my back,
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Not Syncedand - for a whole minute - I sorted out what was wrong.
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Not SyncedAnd then, everything was fine after that. But I still remember that.
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Not SyncedI still remember the feeling in my body, just that sinking feeling of
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Not SyncedOh, my god, disaster has happened. Right, I have just been exposed.
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Not SyncedReally I should have been one of the students in the class.
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Not SyncedAh, so pausing is immensely valuable.
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Not Synced[calls student's name][inaudible answer]
-
Not SyncedOh, right, so when you - often when you want to do something more interactive
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Not Syncedin your teaching the counter arguments are, well you're going to harm the top 5%.
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Not SyncedWell, one counter argument - so, first of all
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Not Syncedit doesn't often help to counter argue
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Not Syncedcognitive reasons if there is an emotional underpinning.
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Not SyncedSo, generally I try to step aside from those arguments.
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Not SyncedBecause, they - unless the people have a sense of humor, I find.
-
Not SyncedIf the people have a sense of humor then you can actually say
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Not Syncedyou can present things in a humorous way that challenge their view.
-
Not SyncedAnd they can take it on board.
-
Not SyncedBut if they don't have a sense of humor or you don't have a good way of presenting it
-
Not Syncedthat way, I find it's just wiser to step aside and see if you can find some way
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Not Syncedaround it maybe try half of what you wanted to do
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Not Syncedor say, well yea, you know I worry about that too, a bit.
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Not SyncedSo lets leave the main course alone that way.
-
Not SyncedLet's try an experiment and see how it goes.
-
Not SyncedUh, we can agree on some questions that all the students should be able to do.
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Not SyncedYour trying to make it cooperative. So that's one thing.
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Not SyncedBut, if you can, if you do want to sort of go directly into cognitive discussions and reasons
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Not Syncedone is - and this has scope for making humor - is that
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Not SyncedWhat's a top student? I mean the tops student is the top 5%
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Not Syncedwhen the top 5% by the current system of testing and homeworks
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Not SyncedSo, they're often the top 5% in regurgitating canned formulas or
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Not Syncedby the time they get higher and higher and more selections happen
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Not Syncedthey're good at pattern matching and solving problems they don't even understand
-
Not SyncedI mean certainly, the final exam in Cambridge - ah, that people took in their final year
-
Not Synced- if I just sat down, I would not have passed it in the physics department.
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Not SyncedAnd so, there are students who did really really well on it
-
Not Syncedbut I'm sure I understood more physics then them
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Not SyncedAh, and it's because if you train for those kinds of questions
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Not Synced- even if you don't understand what you are doing -
-
Not Syncedyou can actually answer them.
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Not SyncedSo, now, the top 5% at that. Well, is that so valuable to preserve?
-
Not SyncedMaybe I should [inaudible] change the rules of the game
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Not SyncedSo, now if you just say it as directly as I've said it
-
Not Syncedthen you'll trigger the meaning of - cause alot of the times you'll - those 5% became the people you
-
Not Syncedare talking to
-
Not SyncedAh, so you have to - ah, maybe do it slightly differently
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Not Syncedand say, look what is the thing you are most concerned about?
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Not SyncedAbout the students not knowing. Whether they are the top 5% or not
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Not SyncedAnd a lot of times people - they'll just give you a big long list
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Not SyncedThey'll say oh - on their own before you can say it - they'll say oh
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Not Syncedwe can never use anything outside of the class.
-
Not SyncedSo, people will just outright conceded that
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Not Synced- not even conceed - they'll say, yea it's so terrible,
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Not Syncedand people will talk about this all the time
-
Not Syncedsay look, we all agree to that, but look is there a way that we can make people really good at that
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Not SyncedCause, even the top 5% I find are not like that
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Not SyncedSo, now you've opened the door and now you can
-
Not Syncedhave a shared discussion
-
Not Syncedbased on something like that.
-
Not SyncedOk, so that's how you can reach, sort of the 80% who are not sure, but are willing to listen.
-
Not SyncedYea
-
Not Synced[student] I was wondering what you think of the serveys that they have at MIT
-
Not Syncedby which the students evaluate the professors and teachers
-
Not SyncedAnd also how to interpret the results of those?
-
Not Synced[professor] Oh [inaudible] I'm glad you said that
-
Not Syncedfor several reasons, one of the other reasons
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Not Syncedis that - heh, this course has one too [laughter] - So, it's - the way that I'll put it on the course
-
Not Syncedwebsite - ah, just after class. Ah, so it's 595 is one of the course numbers.
-
Not Syncedbut it's also 6.92 or something, so all core 6 point classes have an online evaluation system
-
Not SyncedSo, for everybody we-re doing it that way.
-
Not SyncedSo, everybody who is registered for the class is listed as a possible
-
Not Syncedservey filler-outer. So, I encourage everyone to -
-
Not SyncedI'll put the link on the website, just click on the link
-
Not Syncedand if you have your MIT certificates installed, it'll just
-
Not Syncedtake you to the online servey
-
Not SyncedSo, I think the serveys are very useful.
-
Not SyncedNow, the numbers, the numbers are sort of a ballpark of whether things are working or not.
-
Not SyncedBut I think the most useful part of the serveys are the comments that people make.
-
Not SyncedSo, again, I encourage you to make comments in the comment boxes
-
Not Syncedwhereever they are. Ah, for example there is one that says,
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Not Synced"What would you suggest for people next year."
-
Not SyncedAh, so part of that, I'm going to learn by reading these.
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Not SyncedAh, so I'll [inaudible] good ideas from how you would do this course.
-
Not Syncedfrom your homeworks. But the servey should actually help with that.
-
Not SyncedSo, I think the serveys are really useful if used properly.
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Not SyncedI don't think they are very useful for say, ok, you get tenure
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Not Syncedyou don't get tenure. Ah, because the numbers - and people just use the numbers -
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Not Syncedfor that. I don't think the numbers are super-reliable.
-
Not SyncedI mean 7 is probably significantly better than 4 or 5.
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Not SyncedBut, there are a lot of ways to get 6 and a half from 7, say, 6 or 5.
-
Not SyncedHow did that happen? Well, you want to really look into the course and see that
-
Not Syncedand the course servey doesn't really address that super-well.
-
Not SyncedBut, the comments give you space - if you really listen closely - to understand them.
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Not SyncedSo, I think they are quite useful. But what I really like to see is
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Not Synced- cause those are surveys right after the class.
-
Not SyncedAnd you know my goal - what I've been trying to stress this whole time is -
-
Not Syncedhow can you construct teaching for long-lasting learning
-
Not SyncedYou know, questioning and reflecting, ideally, for long-lasting learning.
-
Not SyncedWell, if it really lasts long, people should remember something a year later
-
Not SyncedSo, I think actually a policy should be changed to do feedback sheets
-
Not Syncedat the end of each lecture - so you get the quick feedback you need as the lecturer
-
Not Syncedand then by the end of the course you have a lot of feedback
-
Not Syncedand you can really improve things next time and then do the servey a year after the course is finished
-
Not SyncedAnd if people don't remember anything from the course - right away
-
Not Syncedthat's a pretty important peice of feedback
-
Not SyncedSo, I fear that the results from that kind of servey would be quite distressing
-
Not Synced'Cause people would - you'd ask thinkgs like which of the ideas from the course do you really use?
-
Not SyncedAnd, people have done serveys like that.
-
Not SyncedAh, in physics majors - so there's serveys of physics majors in the job
-
Not Syncedwhether they're in research, or in industry, finance - well before that ended
-
Not SyncedAh, what do you use from your physics degree?
-
Not SyncedAnd very rarely do you find people saying - if you just average across all the jobs -
-
Not SyncedMaxwell's Equations. It's just not on the list, it's very low on the list.
-
Not SyncedAh, it's things like general problem solving, quantitative skills, working in groups...
-
Not SyncedNow, it's not necessarily true that therefore we should just dump all of our classes
-
Not Syncedand teach people how to work in groups - that's not what I'm saying
-
Not SyncedBut, it's useful to know that you can take that into account
-
Not SyncedSo, that would be my ideal: serveys 1 year, 5 years, 10 years later.
-
Not SyncedAnd there are a few of those at MIT - alumni serveys.
-
Not SyncedMeckie - I know - has done a few of them.
-
Not SyncedOk, other questions? Yes?
-
Not Synced[student] Ah, [inaudible] [professor] Yea, 2-3 years. [student] You got [a course] down pretty well.
-
Not SyncedDoes it become boring?
-
Not Synced[professor] Good question.
-
Not SyncedYea, so, so the question is: you make a new course, 2 or 3 years, you have refined it
-
Not Syncedah, after 5 years, does it become boring?
-
Not SyncedMy guess is probably yea. Ah, unless you keep changing it.
-
Not SyncedSo, I've taught Art of Approximation for almost 9 years now.
-
Not SyncedAnd every 3 or 4 years I figure out a completely new way of doing it.
-
Not SyncedAnd now it's finally converging, I would say.
-
Not SyncedFinally, realized the main thing - because I didn't know this when I first started.
-
Not SyncedAh, because I was a new teacher. Ah, so organize it around large ideas
-
Not Syncedmain themes, transferable techniques.
-
Not SyncedSo, I finally converged to that - now, I'm changing the examples
-
Not SyncedAnd so, it's probably converging, but I could probably keep doing that for another 3 or 4 years
-
Not Syncedbut if you just do it - so you refine it for 2 or 3 years - and just keep doing it
-
Not SyncedI would say, yea, for another couple years
-
Not Syncedmaybe just thinking about other courses.
-
Not SyncedAnd I already have a sign that tha's happening, cause I'm now thinking
-
Not Syncedhum, you know I would like to make a physics of music class
-
Not SyncedYou know and they may be related to the other class
-
Not Syncedcause we just did the wood blocks and the xylaphone in my approximation class
-
Not Syncedand I'm thinking oh, you know, a whole class in the physics and music would be
-
Not Synceda lot of fun to make. Organize it around demonstrations
-
Not Syncedand you could bring in the physics as needed for the demonstrations
-
Not Syncedand choose all the denomstrations
-
Not Syncedso all the main physical ideas in acoustics and electromagnetism, mechanics, and sound
-
Not Syncedare all combined. Oh, well that would be a really nice design problem.
-
Not SyncedSo, maybe I am converging with the art of approximation one after 9 years.
-
Not SyncedSo, it depends how often you keep changing things.
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Not SyncedYea, and that's OK. Because you'll find that that's the natural life cycle.
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Not SyncedSo, for example, if you are a faculty member, say, in almost any university in the country
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Not SyncedEvery - after 6 years you get a sabattical.
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Not SyncedSo, in the sabattical, you would be very well advised - I mean you could teach if you want -
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Not Syncedbut you would be very well advised to not show up on any committees,
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Not Syncednot teach - and generally, you are pretty much required not to - and just leave
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Not SyncedBecause otherwise you will be dealing with all of the normal run of the mill things
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Not SyncedYou won't be able to have a block of time to really think.
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Not SyncedSo, if you've developed this course - after 5 or 6 years - it's automatically going to have to be
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Not Syncedgiven to somebody else.
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Not SyncedAnd that's fine. Cause that's around the time that you''ll be thinking about other stuff
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Not Syncedand a sabbattical is the time to reorient yourself towards other stuff.
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Not SyncedSo, looking ahead towards that. What you want to do is write up what you do.
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Not SyncedSo the first year, it's pretty hard, you're just barely scrambling - your trying to breathe - it's like
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Not Syncedhaving four children - as having quadruplets. Ah, well maybe - I don't know - I haven't had that happen
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Not SyncedBut, ah, the first year you do a course - a brand new course - especially a three days week one -
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Not Syncedit's pretty hard. So I can tell you, this is two hours a week, but it's the first time I have taught
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Not Syncedthis course, so it's a lot of work.
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Not SyncedAh, and that will be true. So the first year, yea, you just want to survive.
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Not SyncedThe second year, you start to figure out what to do, what to write, and just
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Not Syncedstart writing stuff up bit by bit. Ah, you know lecture notes
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Not Syncedproblem sets that are, you know type set.
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Not SyncedThings that other people can reuse pretty easily.
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Not SyncedSo then, when the course is handed off to somebody else, they can continue
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Not Syncedthat and refine it based on what you've done.
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Not SyncedAnd everything you did doesn't just vanish.
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Not SyncedYea
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Not Synced[student] So, you've mentioned [inaudible] about teaching [inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] The grunge? [student][inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] Yea, so the question is - so I like to use lecture time
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Not Syncedfor the larger ideas, concepts, for the chunks - for example the teaching equation one
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Not Syncedand leave the derivations, the detail manipulations, the mechanics of stuff.
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Not SyncedThe mecha-grunge, let's say, for the textbook.
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Not SyncedAh, do I have any suggestions for how to choose a good textbook?
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Not SyncedWell, ah, it becomes less - it is important to choose a good textbook
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Not SyncedBut it becomes less important if the classroom is focusing on concepts and chunks.
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Not SyncedBecause that's the differentiator generally between the good and the bad textbooks
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Not SyncedIs that the good textbooks do more of that.
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Not SyncedSo, if your focusing on that in the classroom
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Not Syncedthen you have more freedom - not freedom to use bad textbooks - but the bad textbooks don't do you as
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Not Syncedmuch harm. Because the students don't need so much out of the textbook
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Not SyncedThey need to basically have a place where the derivations are correct
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Not Syncedand that's an important part. And it has the derivations you need, sure.
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Not SyncedAh, so right away you can relax about choosing a textbook slightly
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Not SyncedAh, but how do you find good ones?
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Not SyncedNow, I look at the reviews online and see what students say about them.
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Not SyncedAh, so I do a web search for books and I see what books people are using, what people are commenting
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Not Syncedon. I look at - on the online book stores - the various reviews of books. Ah, that helps a lot.
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Not SyncedNowadays, often people put the first chapter and the table of contents online. The publisher's do.
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Not SyncedAnd ideally they would put the whole book online - some are doing that, too.
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Not SyncedAh, so have a look at that. From the table of contents, you can really tell alot about a textbook.
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Not SyncedYou say, hmm, is this organized right? Does it have the right philosphy that I'm looking for?
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Not SyncedSo, look right away at the preface, where the author talks about why this book - and if they have no
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Not Syncedgood reason for why this book? It's probably not the book for you.
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Not SyncedUh, sometimes you don't have a choice about the book.
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Not SyncedPeople will just say, well this is the book that we always use.
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Not SyncedOr, it's the first time that you have taught the course.
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Not SyncedFor example, you're hired in July - you're hired, say, in March - you start your job in July.
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Not SyncedAnd in August they come to you and say, oh, professor blah is on sabbatical teaching X,
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Not Syncedyou're up. The course book is already there, so you can't do much about that.
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Not SyncedSo, someday you don't have freedom, but then when you do want to do it.
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Not SyncedSo look at the preface and the online reviews are quite helpful.
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Not SyncedBut, don't worry as much if your classroom is interactive, that mitigates a lot of
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Not Syncedtextbook problems.
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Not SyncedYea?
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Not Synced[student][inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] Uh huh?
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Not Synced[student][inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] Right.
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Not Synced[student][inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] Ok, so let me unpack those. So, there were several questions in there.
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Not SyncedFirst, is there a difference between - are there any studies on the difference between results
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Not Syncedproduced by the European - say - educational system versus the American.
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Not SyncedThe European where people just do their one subject.
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Not SyncedTo first order. Where the American one where you take many different courses across many different subjects.
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Not SyncedAh, I'm not sure about that. But, ah, also the notion of effectiveness is not clear.
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Not SyncedSo, the goal - what's the goal?
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Not SyncedI think the historical reasons why it's different is that education in America
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Not Synced- early on - back in colonial times - [inaudible] - just post-colonial times.
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Not SyncedEr, early 1800's was seen as a democratic thing. The idea was that this is a democracy and all the
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Not Syncedcitizens are expected to participate in that and so ok they had a narrow definition of citizens.
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Not SyncedJust white males - but within that definition - the idea was that everybody had to participate, or was
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Not Syncedgoing to participate. So, to that end, they needed a broad education.
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Not SyncedThey couldn't just specialize in one thing, because it would be too narrow to actually
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Not Syncedhelp govern society. Because society is multi-farious and multi-disciplinary intrinsically.
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Not SyncedWhereas, in Europe that idea of democracy came hundreds of years later, if at all.
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Not SyncedMaybe at the end of Wolrld War 1.
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Not SyncedSo, the European educational system is much more trained for producing people in a -
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Not Syncedmuch more oriented towards producing people that would fit into a particular slot in society.
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Not SyncedAh, so now - if you want to measure how effect each was at it's historical goals.
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Not SyncedI mean, that's a fair question.
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Not SyncedTo measure how effective each is at producing people who are trained for a particular slot in society.
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Not SyncedI don't think that's a very useful analysis, the historical origins of the two systems are different.
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Not SyncedAh, it's much more fruitful, I would say, to think about the goals. Which goals do we agree with?
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Not SyncedCan we get the benefits of the American goal with some of the benefits of the specialization in Europe?
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Not SyncedAnd I think at places like MIT you do that. I mean, students will come out of MIT they have a broader
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Not Syncededucation than the students that come out of European universities, and they actually know a lot.
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Not SyncedNow, I would like it to be much more conceptual and long-lasting, but that's true of the European ones,
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Not Syncedtoo.
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Not SyncedSo, I would take the question back from just studying the end results to
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Not Syncedthink carefully as a society about the purposes.
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Not SyncedNow about the physics of music, I would say, actually I could imagine
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Not Syncedteaching and intro to physics course that's physics of music
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Not Syncedwhere students would learn all the fundamental ideas of, say, first semester physics, but through the
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Not Syncedphysics of music. And I don't think it would be - So they wouldn't actually be deprived of
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Not Syncedthe essential knowledge of physics. They would actually be contextualized.
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Not SyncedSo, they might actually learn it for longer lasting - might have a longer lasting value.
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Not SyncedOk, other quest --- Yea?
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Not Synced[student][inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] Yea, the're in the math phobic mode or phobic mode.
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Not SyncedSo, this is a really interesting question, so the comment was that a lot of people at MIT
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Not Synced- a lot of students - one of the emotional barriers they have is that they feel - I would call that a
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Not Syncedmeaning barrier. If you, let me rephrase it in the three levels of conversation
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Not SyncedSo, their emotion is that they are very tense and anxious.
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Not SyncedAnd the meaning is that they are feeling - when something doesn't go right for them:
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Not Syncedthey get something wrong on a problem, or in class. They feel like, they think that's exposing how they
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Not Syncedreally don't`belong here. Ah, and that creates a lot of anxiety and tension, and misery.
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Not SyncedSo, at CalTech there was a saying that, oh yea, CalTech is a terrible place for the bottom half of the
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Not Synced99th percentile. You know, which captures that pretty well.
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Not SyncedLike, all of these people who - all the undergrads who went to CalTech
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Not SyncedRight? They were probably validictorians in their high school and [inaudible] above and doing science
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Not Syncedfair projects then everyone else around them. And now they come to CalTech, and they feel terrible.
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Not SyncedLike, what are we doing that produces that? It's crazy.
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Not SyncedUh, so how can your teaching, can you take account of that?
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Not SyncedYou know, so that, I would say also relates partly to the misconceptions
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Not SyncedYou know, they have this misconception, or this conception about themselves
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Not SyncedAnd what can you do, well, ah, phobias are very difficult, ah you have to work around them
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Not SyncedSo, one thing is you don't want to trigger them
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Not SyncedAh, so every time you trigger them you reinforce them.
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Not SyncedBecause [inaudible] so, any neurobiology people in here?
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Not SyncedI forget, PCS?
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Not SyncedA fundamental rule of neurobiololgy - ah brain - neurons -
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Not Syncedso this is of course - I teach the art of approximation, so forgive me for approximating the
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Not Syncedwhole brain with one sentance: is neurons that fire together, wire together
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Not SyncedOk, so if wiring together, that means, ah, they activate - they increase their coupling
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Not SyncedAnd so increasing that - so when they fire together - so for example, they
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Not Syncedyou, create classroom environment - or something happened in the classroom
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Not Syncedthat, they get something wrong.
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Not SyncedAnd now that is still wired somewhat to the bad feeling, and their thoughts
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Not Syncedof oh my god, I don't belong here.
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Not SyncedSo, now you've reinforced that, they are going to wire together more
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Not Syncedreinforces that pathway. So, what you have to do is actually prevent those guys from wiring together.
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Not SyncedAh, and one thing is, create an environment where, whenever people get things wrong, it's actually great!
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Not SyncedRight, so, that wasn't right, great! Now think of how much you are actually going to learn!
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Not SyncedOr, when you get things wrong - you want to model that, too.
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Not SyncedYou say, oh, you're right! Thanks! Oh, I've learned something from you.
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Not SyncedAh. You know, so try not to be defensive - because that will help
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Not Synced- because if you are defensive then that triggers them wiring - that wiring -
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Not Syncedand that firing together builds up the wiring together.
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Not SyncedSo, creating a classroom environment where feeling bad and competing against other people
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Not Syncedisn't the goal, is one way to minimize it.
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Not SyncedSo, minimize the importance of, like, defined destinctions of homework
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Not SyncedDid I get a 95 - oh this person is getting a 95, I'm only getting a 90.
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Not SyncedSo, that's one reason MIT was PASS/FAIL - er for a whole year it was pass/fail.
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Not SyncedAh, and that was to mitigate the pressure that students were coming in feeling like
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Not Syncedoh my god, now I don't belong here.
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Not SyncedWe said, look, we don't care about your grades in the first year
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Not Syncedyou are really here to adjust to university - to a different way of learning
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Not SyncedAnd now, it was actually done in a way that
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Not Syncedsomehow the competition was partly the students reinforcing the culture of the upperclassmen
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Not Syncedas well
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Not SyncedIf you could actually try to mitigate that, you would go a long way towards
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Not Syncedmitigating the wiring together. But you can do it in your own classroom, too.
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Not SyncedDeemphasizing the things that trigger that.
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Not SyncedAnd so when you call on people, I - so for example, for that reason MIT - I almost never
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Not Syncedwhat's called cold calling - if you've ever seen that old movie, what's called the Paper Chase
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Not SyncedSo, the paper chase is what's called the - is about the - what's called the -
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Not Syncedwhat we could call today the terroristic socratic method.
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Not SyncedAh, so the law schools all use the socratic method
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Not Syncedwhere you ask people - you read a case, and you ask them about things.
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Not SyncedThings about it.
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Not SyncedOk, Mr Jones, what do you think - what were the findings of law?
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Not SyncedMr Smith, ah, or Mrs Dartmouth, what do you think about that?
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Not SyncedAh, do you agree with that? Or is that pure rubbish?
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Not SyncedAh, so people were just put on the spot repeatedly.
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Not SyncedAnd it just produced terror in the students.
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Not SyncedAnd that was considered part of the hazing ritual basically.
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Not SyncedSo, at MIT, I just don't do that at all.
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Not SyncedBecause I think, it just triggeres that.
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Not SyncedI'd rather, just create a structure where my students feel ready to participate.
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Not SyncedAh, by interactive teaching giving them time to think to each other, and then say something.
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Not SyncedSo, you can do stuff and it's hard it's an important problem.
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Not SyncedUh, yea? Sure.
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Not Synced[student][inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] Yes. So really good point. So the point was that it's worthwhile making it explicit for the students.
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Not SyncedAh, and realy naming the feeling that they're going through.
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Not SyncedLike look, you may be feeling really terrible, and feeling like you are an impostor.
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Not SyncedWell, let it be known that I've felt the same way too for a long time.
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Not SyncedAnd describe it to them, and talk to them about why they may be feeling that.
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Not SyncedSay look, we have a competitive - this is - there is a culture of competition in the society and the
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Not Synceduniversity and it's actually harmful for your learning. And share with them some readings about that.
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Not SyncedAh, help them see that yea, this is something that they are going to have to struggle with, but there
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Not Syncedis help to do that, and they are not alone. And that. So yea, definitely, be explicit about things like that.
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Not SyncedOk, so one more question. Yea?
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Not Synced[student][inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] Good question! Do I think contextualizing the course is a way to fight that?
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Not SyncedI think it is, because - ah
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Not SyncedWhen the course is not contextualized it generally tends to be really abstractly focused.
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Not SyncedAnd the - the interest and the orientation towards doing things first abstractly is very rare.
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Not SyncedI don't have it, and I've gone really far in math and physics.
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Not SyncedMy office mate had it - in graduate school. He was the only person that I've ever met who
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Not Syncedwould rather have a proof than a picture.
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Not SyncedAh, and now he's a professor at Cal Tech and he's also doing well.
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Not SyncedAh, but, it's pretty rare. So, by contextualizing the course, for almost everybody -
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Not SyncedI would say even for my friend and office-mate.
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Not SyncedYou are actually connecting to a much larger part of their mind and their experience.
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Not SyncedSo you are actually making people much more intelligent and much more equal in that way.
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Not SyncedSo, that's one more reason I would actually like to teach the physics of music class.
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Not Synced[student][inaudible]
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Not Synced[professor] Interesting, yea. So if someone gets around the phobia you might have -
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Not Syncedpardon?
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Not SyncedInteresting, so that wasn't - so I was there 10 years ago and that wasn't true then.
- Title:
- Lec 10 | MIT 5.95J Teaching College-Level Science and Engineering, Spring 2009
- Video Language:
- English
- Duration:
- 01:13:29
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