This is an open thread to collect comments, suggestions, and observations on studio physics at UA by our LAs and TAs. If you are a current LA or TA, email me and I can make you an author if you would like to create your own posts.
In your comments, please note whether you are a GTA or LA, and whether you are a US or international student. This will keep you anonymous, but give us some context for your comments.
In your comments, please note whether you are a GTA or LA, and whether you are a US or international student. This will keep you anonymous, but give us some context for your comments.
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ReplyDeleteAs a long-term tutor and LA in the physics department, I have good experience with a wide range of teaching styles and learning formats. I have seen many productive groups of three around the tables, and I've seen a lot of situations where students fail to take the potential of the class into their hands at all. Most of this seems to be laziness on the students' part--a group member or two will duck out, and hope that the others know what's going on. In my mind, one of the greatest strengths of the studio classes is the ability for TAs/LAs to walk around so freely to both check up on this behavior and guarantee that everyone in each group is involved.
ReplyDeleteLaziness on the professor's part is also often an obstacle to studio classes working as well as they could. Only a handful of professors teach lectures interwoven with labs and worksheets to where the class is always engaged and using a multitude of strategies to focus in on understanding on subject. This is what studio classes are built for. All too often, professors teach for an hour and then have a lab/worksheet for an hour. This has always seemed to leave students bored and never engaged in the lesson, which they proceed to teach themselves from online notes as they go through the worksheet. If problems could be sprinkled throughout the class, whether on worksheets or with clickers or whatever, I believe it would work much better then a simple lecture-worksheet format. Even the best professors teach occasional classes like this, and in the studio rooms I think it's a waste--a well-thought-out class using the available computers, lab setups, freedom for TAs to walk around and answer questions, AND a standard lecture all within two hours would be difficult to plan for two hours. However, the more that I see teachers stretch for a creative way of getting a concept across, the more I see students caring about what they're learning. It's possible for a good TA or LA to amend a lot of these problems by going around and explaining things more thoroughly on an individual basis, but it's not nearly as efficient as if the whole class period was used as productively.
I definitely agree with the sentiment here- I've seen professors intersperse short lectures with clicker questions and small activities, and I've seen them lecture for an hour then hand out a worksheet. It's striking how much of a difference this will make in the students' level of engagement, their ability to remember what was talked about, and their willingness to work together as groups. Studio classes are unique in that they have the ability to address the problem that students' attention spans simply can't endure an hour of lecturing. If you have the resources at your disposal to get around that problem, why wouldn't you use them?
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