Update: Something befell one of the paragraphs. Anyway, it’s back now, so hopefully the post will actually make sense.
Call me a cynic, call me a curmudgeon, but the recent and burgeoning crop of “educational technology” programs scares the bodily substances out of me. It’s not that I have anything against technology - Youth of Today, remember? - but the very word seems to make Important People froth at the mouth, and that’s usually a bad sign. It seems to me that the technology these people implement too often ends up being a) gratuitous, b) distracting, or c) irrelevant - but I also suspect that the programs get an undeservedly bad rap. So I thought I’d take a look at a few of the fancypants “innovative learning” schemes I’ve encountered. Today’s installment: MIT’s beloved pet, TEAL.
First, though, here’s a little background. MIT requires each of its undergrads, regardless of major, to take or receive credit for two terms of physics: classical mechanics and electromagnetism, aka 8.01 and 8.02. Both of these courses were once taught in a traditional format, with three hours of lecture and two of recitation (smaller q&a/review/explanation sessions). The problem was that something like 15 to 20 percent of students were failing the classes. A group of professors came up with several potential reasons for the failure rate:
- too much theory and not enough hands-on work
- formulaic mathematical problems requiring little physical intuition
- poor attendance at lectures
- too little interaction with professors
So they devised a system emphasizing collaboration and interaction, meeting five days a week with mandatory attendance, and they called it TEAL: Technology-Enabled Active Learning.
TEAL classes are taught in specially-designed classrooms rigged with whiteboards and projection screens. Students sit around circular tables in groups of nine and subgroups of three. Each subgroup has its own laptop. Lectures are presented in short bursts of 20 minutes or so. Interspersed with the lectures are various activities intended to reinforce the lecture material: simple desktop experiments using the computers - carts on tracks and the like; classwide questions with personal buzzers, like the poll-the-audience thing on game shows; playing with 3D simulation software; and so on.
The admins and professors consider TEAL a wild success. They point to lower failure rates, consistent attendance (which is mandatory), and better learningz. They write glowing articles in glossy magazines. They give TEAL tours to important people.
BUT! The students themselves - at least those I’ve talked to - are decidedly less enthusiastic. Their reactions range from the disgusted:
TEAL sucks.
They try to do too much. We end up rushing through and just trying to get things done.
It’s boring.
If one person in a group knows the answers, the others can just goof off.
Through the resigned:
It’s like high school all over again.
The experiments are simplistic and juvenile. Nobody really cares about them, but they’re not bad.
To people who think TEAL’s actually pretty decent:
It got me through physics. And I hate physics.
It was more fun than a lecture.
I should note that TEAL is not entirely mandatory: MIT offers alternative, lecture-style versions of mechanics and E&M, 8.012 and 8.022, that are more mathematically rigorous and present more challenging problems. Most physics majors, myself included, have taken one or both of these; relatively few have taken the TEAL versions. But now that TEAL is the only alternative, 8.012 and 8.022 are PACKED at the beginning of term - but they’re hard classes, and gradually people switch over to 8.01 and 8.02.
What troubles me most, though, is that I have yet to hear anyone emerge from TEAL and say “DUDE physics ROCKS and all this time I thought it was EEEVIL.” But I’ve heard plenty of people say “Damn, I’m glad I passed…no more physics EVER AGAIN.” And then I want to shake the admins by the shoulders and whack them on the head and black out the words “failure rate” in all their Important Papers, because this sucks. Physics is cool. Physics is gorgeous. And if introductory physics classes don’t convey that awesomeness to at least SOME of the students, then, you know what, world? THEY ARE NOT WORKING.
Next installment: TEAL’s problems & possible solutions
Meanwhile, here are some links:
Filed under: education |
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An MIT undergrad lusts after physics. Meanwhile, life happens. Excitement and high drama ensue.
I went to WPI, just down the street from MIT - well, 45 minutes in a car, anyway. One course was taught with computer help. The computer was used to create problem sets individually for each student. There were thousands of problem sets. Even frats couldn’t build answer libraries to let many (if any) cheat.
The course itself was then taught with some lectures (optional) and independant study, with tons of time for getting a prof to help you out (there are essentially no grad students at WPI). There was a suggested milestone schedule, but no penalty for being late.
In 1980, we got a new computer, and i ended up translating the software to run on it. The Fortran source needed changes because the old system had some non-standard extensions to help run the too-large application. The new system had enough memory (about 10 MB) to run it all at once. The new system also had a totally new pen plotter - allowing color plots.
Computers today are something like 10,000 times faster than they were back then. And even then, the computer could generate a problem set with answers at about one per second (though the actual plotting took longer. Still, after a little pen optimization, it could do a new plot every couple minutes.). Today, a web based system could allow each student to get their own assignment. The student could enter answers, and the computer could grade it, even suggesting what help might be needed. Unlike problems sets in a printed book, all answers could be correct. Need more exercises? Not an issue.
But, one must gaurd against eye candy and other distractions.
I agree. It’s one thing for people at some large state university to leave their intro physics class thinking, “Wow, physics sucks, I’m glad I never have to touch that again,” but it is a completely unacceptable accepted-norm for a high caliber technical institute—especially one supposedly leading the world in physics research.
I don’t think the technology in and of itself is a problem; it’s the attempt at using the technology to replace teaching. Teaching should replace teaching, see …
If MIT successfully iterates the TEAL program, it might be successful. I suspect the problem may be that the people who designed or implemented the software used in class were simply people who did not know how to teach physics effectively, if at all. A new program isn’t going to be good just because it uses new technology; they need to recognize and correct the flaws with the teaching program, and that probably means developing the feedback system to really understand why students feel the way about it that they do.
It’s not a technology problem that’s holding them back, it’s a people(/organizational resistance to looking for the Right Way) problem!
Was there a final report on TEAL, in terms of student tests with control and experimental groups?