For anyone who has read my “Tale Out of School” (link in top menu above), Washington Univesity’s press release about their grants may seem strange. Here is the link to their news release, http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/25566.aspx
Before reading quotes from the news release (which I put at the bottome), it might be useful to remember what I was told by the Chair of the Math Department:
“There is a bit of an issue with the university and relationship.”
“The way we have always taught it, it’s not a problem. If I wanted to impart more mathematical understanding, this would not be the course that I would pick.” he laughed.”
“Differential equations is a cookbook course and always will be.”
“I have promised the Dean that we would give the same grades as usual…”
“Face it, Engineering is always a problem. We just wrested [a course] from them, which we teach better, and we don’t want to have to give up Dif. Eqns.” (Keep this qoute in mind when reading about “collaboration” below.) ….
Now some quotes from the release,
““This proposal allows for the collaborative development of teaching strategies
in our STEM curriculum that will bring benefit to all universities that prepare
future leaders in STEM fields,” said Washington University Chancellor Mark S.
Wrighton.
“Evaluation of our education innovations through collaboration between CIRCLE [ Center for
Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education ] and faculty across the university ensures that innovations improve student learning and retention in STEM majors,” Wrighton said. “These evaluation studies will help identify key features important for the widespread and effective
implementation of empirically validated teaching practices in STEM classrooms
and effective mechanisms of support for institutional change.”
“Washington University … since the early 1990s…[has] used a series of Howard Hughes Medical
Institute (HHMI) undergraduate education grants to implement critical changes in
course work and teaching methods designed to get students more engaged in their
own learning process in areas such as biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics
and engineering.”
Back to the Math Chair’s statements to me that fit in with this idea of getting “..students more engaged in their own learning process…”. Here is what he told me “…Try to make the lecture more concrete so that the students are absolutely certain how to do the problems…” I asked if he meant for me to show them exactly how to do the problems so they could just copy what I did and use that to do the problems. He said, yes.
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