I got the last round of line edits on the book-in-progress Monday night after work, but I haven’t had a chance to do more than leaf through the pages. This is mostly because I had lab reports to grade– the second written report is due Sunday, and I needed to get comments back to the… Continue reading Lab Reports: Threat or Menace?
Category: Academia
Course Report: Historical Quantum Mechanics
In the last report from my modern physics course, we wrapped up Relativity, and started into quantum mechanics, talking about black-body radiation and Planck’s quantum hypothesis. The next few classes continue the historical theme
Dr. Biden Isn’t the Sort of Doctor Who Can Help You
Via Janet, the LA Times gets snooty about titles: “Ordinarily when someone goes by doctor and they are a PhD, not an MD, I find it a little bit obnoxious,” Sullivan said. “But it makes me smile because it’s a reminder that she’s her own person. She wasn’t there as an appendage; she was there… Continue reading Dr. Biden Isn’t the Sort of Doctor Who Can Help You
Denis Dutton Goes On About Art
There’s a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton’s new book The Art Instinct. He was on the Colbert Report last week, he’s reviewed in the Times, and he’s featured in this week’s Bloggingheads Science Saturday: While it’s kind of entertaining to listen to John Horgan struggling to get a word in edgewise, I’m kind… Continue reading Denis Dutton Goes On About Art
Academic Set Theory
Theorem: The set of students who can learn the material of a course without attending lectures or working homework problems is always smaller than the set of students who think they can learn the material of a course without attending lectures or doing homework problems. Years of intense study have so far failed to produce… Continue reading Academic Set Theory
A Finishing School for Third-Rate Burglars
I’m getting twinges in my neck indicating that I’ve been spending too much time looking at the computer, and I’ve got some computer-heavy work coming up in the next couple of weeks, so expect reduced blogging in the next few days. I couldn’t let this essay in the New Yorker (via Matt Yglesias) pass without… Continue reading A Finishing School for Third-Rate Burglars
Pedagogical Poll: Good Results or Historical Accuracy?
This week’s lab (well, half of it– the class is so big that I have to run two experiments in parallel) is somewhat controversial, so I thought I would throw this out to my wise and worldly readers to see what you all think. The problem is this: we have two different set-ups for doing… Continue reading Pedagogical Poll: Good Results or Historical Accuracy?
Grading Methods Don’t Matter
Over at Dot Physics, Rhett is pondering grading curves: Should you grade on a curve or not? If you are student, the answer is clear: go by whatever the instructor does. Otherwise, you have a choice. I don’t like to tell other instructors or faculty what to do because I respect their freedom. For my… Continue reading Grading Methods Don’t Matter
Blackboard and WebAssign
Several other people in the department have started using WebAssign to handle homework assignments in the introductory class, because it provides a way to assign and grade daily homework without forcing the faculty member to do a ton of grading (the college has a policy against student graders). WebAssign takes textbook problems, randomizes the numbers… Continue reading Blackboard and WebAssign
Gatekeeping vs. Bad Teaching
Much of LiveJournal has been sunk in a sea of suck for the last couple of weeks, but there’s a really interesting discussion of science education over at “Faraday’s Cage is where you put Schroedinger’s Cat.” The first post has to do with the idea of “gatekeeping”: In my class today, a very brief discussion… Continue reading Gatekeeping vs. Bad Teaching