Colleges Cope With Bigger Classes

This Washington Post article by Justin Pope - requires registration for access - presents some of the issues surrounding mega-classes, students, and learning, with continuing references to a Nobel physicist from the University of Colorado (now, also, the University of British Columbia), Carl Weiman, who is planning ways to fix the system. [He also references the work of Carol Twigg and others at the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT).] The article includes a nice survey of some of the learning measurement research being done at a number of universities. Many thanks to our colleague at APPA, Steve Glazner, for sharing this link.

Wieman is at the vanguard of the reform movement, but it's really his second career. In his first he was a researcher with a rare distinction: He produced a new state of matter. Most people know the three most common states of matter _ solid, liquid and gas. But cooling rubidium nearly to absolute zero, Wieman and Colorado colleague Eric Cornell formulated the first Bose-Einstein condensate, a state in which several thousand atoms align perfectly and behave as a single "super atom."

After his Nobel, Wieman could easily have focused on lab work or training a cadre of elite graduate students.

But Wieman uses his clout to secure invitations to talk to his fellow scientists _ about teaching. He has become one of several physicists to take up the cause, along with Eric Mazur at Harvard, Edward Redish at Maryland and Robert Beichner at North Carolina State.

Wieman wears tennis shoes and walks everywhere like he's in a hurry. He is.

"I have ridiculous, grandiose visions," he said, speaking in his temporary office overlooking Colorado's football stadium. "I want to change how everybody learns science. I won't get into how this will save mankind, but it may."

The problem, he said, is that scientists stop acting like scientists when it comes to their own teaching.