I like to observe the atmospheres of classrooms. Last summer’s o chem class at the UW wins the anomie award. About 80 of us sat in lecture hall, nobody talked, and many derped around on their iPhones or laptops throughout the lectures. Granted, no lab went along with the class, and labs build camaraderie rather quickly. Something about open flames and combustible materials encourages communication. Even though I was an undergraduate at a giant public university, my major was odd enough that my classes were more like graduate seminars. I now feel for the poor slobs that have to attend classes of 80, 100, or a lot more.
My current class at Seattle Central is 24 people. The instructor is engaging, but she is low-talker and would benefit from microphone or subtitles. We all strain forward to catch her words. I am delighted that my study/lab mate is the tall girl I first noticed in a microbiology class last spring. She asked questions that I wish I had thought of, they were so insightful and deep. We have to give a group presentation in o chem, which I think is a great way to encourage cross-pollination of students.
I loved Adam Grant’s article in the New York Times “Why We Should Stop Grading Students on the Curve.”
He talks about how limiting the amount of students who can excel sends a message that success is a zero-sum game. Grant tried to encourage collaboration and community in his class at U Penn, and found that mastery of class material increased when the class culture rewarded helping others. He did something quite clever on his final exam’s multiple-choice section, the most difficult section of the exam. Students could pick the question where they were least sure about and fill in the name of a classmate they thought might know the answer. Both would earn points if the classmate gave the correct answer.
That motivated students to study together in groups, then to share information among the different groups. Grant notes that in the real world, employers “…reward people who make the team and the organization more successful.” Grant also has studied the differences between “givers” and “takers”, those who like to help others and those whose aim is to come out ahead. “In the short run, across jobs in engineering, medicine and sales, the takers were more successful. But as the months turned into years, the givers consistently achieved better results.” Results in the real world are what we’re supposed to be aiming for, and not just a good grade in a class.
The instructor in my math class last winter had us sit in groups of four, do group problem solving, and then rotate seats every two weeks in order to work with new people. That worked for the first few rotations, but then I landed at a table that had really good rapport. We said, fuck it, we’re not rotating, and no one seemed to notice. We were definitely a motley crew: a 17-year-old who looked about 12 and smelled like he slept outside in a pile of leaves (not bad, just kind of funky); a guy in his mid-twenties who had the florid completion and booming voice of a 19th-century English tavern keeper; and a young woman in her early twenties who had the odd habit of fanning the pages of our math book over her nose-I’m not sure if was for the sensation of the pages touching her face or the scent of the book; and me. The young woman was clearly the brains of our island of misfit toys and generously dragged the rest of us along in understanding the material. I didn’t get much from the instructor, but I got a lot from my classmates. I grew fond of them—thanks, guys.
Successive Approximation 