Issue 6, Spring 1993

William A. McEachern, Editor

Odds and Ends

• As a check on your effectiveness as a lecturer, ask a few students chosen at random after class if you can read their notes for that class. Do this a few times during the term just to see how well you are communicating.

• "Education is what survives when what was learned has been forgotten."
  
  B.F. Skinner

  I know of instructors who skip all the introductory chapters, including the chapter on supply and demand, and begin the course right in the middle of things. Then they wonder why students don't get it.

  We should be teaching students how to think, not what to think.

  Here is a test of rational expectations for Star Trek fans. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Counselor Troi, and some new guy make up the away-team that has beamed down to the planet to examine a strange disturbance in the force field. One of them never makes it back to the ship. Which one? (Incidentally, isn't the Enterprise a great name for a future vessel of exploration?).

  Although our bias in the classroom tends toward the orderly transmission of information, a little more chaos might promote more learning. Why not encourage students to call out their questions and comments at any time, but especially when you do not notice a raised hand? For example, a student may need a clarification when you are writing on the blackboard (and your back is toward the class).

  Phil Saunders of Indiana University years ago argued that we should use mnemonic devices to help student grasp and retain new terms, such as perfectly Elastic curves and perfectly Inelastic curves.

  "It is the supreme art of a teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
  

  Albert Einstein

  "A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."
  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes

  "The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods. Such methods are designed to help average teachers approximate the performance of good teachers."
  

  Margaret Mead

  "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
  

  H.G. Wells

Top                                                                                                                                                                                          Next