Earlier this year, Eric Mazur, esteemed Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, joined UBC for a discussion on Flat Space, Deep Learning. Eric discussed his recent team-based and project-based approach to an introductory physics course at Harvard. The talk was part of the ISoTL Invited Scholar Series, and was a joint event hosted by the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology and the Science Centre for Learning and Teaching.
“If I were to design from scratch, an introductory physics course, what would it look like?” Eric presented this question as the original motivator for taking a year off to focus on education and best practices for teaching. During that year, he visited a variety of schools across the world, from MIT to McMaster to Melbourne, in order to see best practices in teaching and learning. One book that piqued his interest, “Who Owns the Learning” by Alan November, recounted a time when the author was called to the high school he taught at, to investigate a break-in over the weekend. This was during the early 1980’s, at the beginning of the PC era. Alan walked into the classroom and noticed a student, sitting at one of the computers. When he inquired why the student was there, the student responded, “I want to learn how to program the computer.” This example demonstrates the strength of intrinsic motivation; it is so strong that a student would even go so far as to break the law in order to learn.
“We’re all born curious about the world – if anything, education does a really good job turning off that intrinsic desire to learn,” Eric noted. He was deeply interested in how one can create an environment where students learn because they want to, not because they’re told to. “I really need to come up with some kind of Trojan horse that hides the physics,” explained Eric. Just as the computer was the Trojan horse that hid the learning for the aforementioned break-in student, Eric came up with his own Trojan horse for his introductory physics course. It comprised of two components: one, a team-based approached that fostered a social responsibility aspect to the learning, and two, a project-based approach where students use physics concepts to complete fun, competitive projects.
In this approach, Eric also envisioned redesigning the physical learning space for optimum student engagement and ownership. He explained the innate flaw of the lecture hall design. With the lecturer at the front of the room, the audience member takes a passive role of sitting quietly. This is ironic because people learn much better by doing, than by listening. Eric ended up using a space from the library, and converted it into a classroom with no walls, only glass windows, no installed technology, and mobile furniture and whiteboards. The goal of this classroom was to create an environment that was as unfriendly to lecturing as possible, as well as a flexible environment that could be modified at a whim to meet a variety of needs. For example, the mobile whiteboards could be used to create cubicles to isolate groups during competitive projects.
Next, Eric decided that the classroom should be a space for deeper learning, not a place for first encounters with the course material – meaning there would be no lectures and no examinations in his class. In lieu of this, he made annotated readings a mandatory assignment. This way, the students would read the course material and engage with it meaningfully. The readings were online, in a format where students could highlight and write comments and questions visible to their classmates. This was done so that other students could answer the questions. Eric described it as “asynchronous, online peer instruction.” The annotations needed to be timely, distributed throughout the text, and thoughtful for students to receive a full grade. This also ensured that students were prepared prior to the class.
For classes, Eric decided to have them twice a week for three hours, instead of having separate sessions several times a week. This was done so that students didn’t have to constantly get in and out of “physics mode.” Each session was an aggregate of the discussion and lab (since lectures were essentially eliminated and replaced with the aforementioned text annotations). One component that Eric felt was important, was to get students to develop estimation skills. To do this, he gave out worksheets with vague questions, no specific numbers, and told students to “imagine you’re at a dinner party and you want to impress your friends with how smart you are.” Eric also likes introducing competitive aspects into his classroom. “It is absolutely amazing what that word ‘wins’ in a team environment does,” he stressed. “I want to be the facilitator, the coach; I don’t want to make the students responsible to me for the learning, [but] to themselves and their teammates.” Eric found that team-based learning brings an aspect of social responsibility that motivates students to finish their readings. Students come to class prepared, because they don’t want to let down their fellow teammates.
Eric finds his teaching to be most effective when his projects have real life applicability and relevance. He has effectively created this “Trojan horse” that hides the physics – he devises fun, competitive projects in which students must grasp and use physics concepts to successfully complete it. He also changed the approach to homework. “If I tell them the goal is to get the right answer, they’ll do whatever is necessary to get the right answer,” (including copying off classmates, googling answers, etc.). But the goal isn’t to get the right answer, the goal is to work through the problems and for the students to articulate their steps throughout. Eric shared a student’s comment about this method: “I felt less pressure to get the right answer and more freedom to explore.” Eric felt that this showed how assessment methods often stifle creativity and learning.
“There is beauty in trying to understand the world around us – why is it that it creates such resentment?” Eric asks. His work thus far with peer instruction, learning catalytics, and team-based and project-based approaches is revolutionizing the classroom setting, and bringing ownership of learning back to the students.
This article was published in the March 2015 CTLT Newsletter, Dialogues. Below is a list of articles included in the issue:
- Registration Now Open for STLHE 2015!
- Biology 121: Using Community-Based Experiential Learning to Engage Students Outside the Classroom
- Exploring the City Before the City
- Giving Ownership of Learning back to the Students: Flat Space, Deep Learning (currently viewing)
