David Hestenes on the value of lectures: "no evidence
that students who attend lectures learn more than those who don’t" bioliteracy.colorado.edu/Readings/WhoNe (Accords with my n=1 experience: the value was in time spent stuck, time spent solving problem, reading, and talking with others.)
Conversation
The subsequent paragraph is also great! "We should be mindful of intellectual casualties among students who lack the skills to match the inspiration they get from lectures… [One star Caltech student] was so devastated by [Feynman's freshman lectures] that he dropped out"
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Curious: have you used any of the various concept inventories?
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Unfortunately, the well-studied inventories are in subjects that haven't intersected my explorations yet. I think they're interesting, though I'm worried they may *overestimate* student understanding due to the multiple choice modality (sobering given poor medians…).
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The FCI is the only one I've looked much at. But something really bothers me about it. I'm not yet sure what.
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Replying to
Perhaps some piece of it relates to Alan's concerns about misattributing students' inability to explain how seasons work? worrydream.com/refs/Kay%20-%2
Replying to
I actually sorta disagree with Alan there. It's _not_ usually feasible (or desirable) to connect all relevant facts, check for consistency, etc. We satisfice for good reasons. Really committed scientists just satisfice at a different point (& often not in all areas).
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That said, it's probably related in the sense that I have some (as yet unarticulated) sense that what the FCI is testing is _not_ what I would consider even a basic understanding of physics, but something slightly different.
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