Saturday, March 7, 2009

My 1st Lecture

Hurst, the professor I am the TA for, was out of town this yesterday so he asked me to fill in and lecture for him. I’ve been teaching an optional homework help session since I got to OSU, but this was the first lecture I’ve had to give. It went surprisingly well. I thought so anyway. I’m going to try to ask my recitation students how they thought it went when I see them next week. I couldn’t tell what my speed was like. Whitney said I probably didn’t have quite enough material to cover the time. When I got there I felt like I was rushing it though and still didn’t quite get through everything I wanted to.

I’m the TA for sophomore level dynamics. These are students who are intending to go into one of the engineering programs, but have not yet declared and been accepted to their respective departments. This course has covered basic physics material, forces on bodies as they are in motion, as well as the concepts of energy and momentum. My lecture introduced them to rotational kinetic energy. I went back through a derivation of translation kinetic energy from the equation for work and then on the other half of the same board showed how the derivation of rotational kinetic energy is pretty much the same. I then talked a bit about the parallel concepts of mass and mass moment of inertia in translation and rotational reference frames respectively. I showed how the final velocities for a block sliding down a slope will be different from that of a disk rolling down a slope, as well as that of a hoop rolling down a slope. I then started a more practical example, got it setup on the board, but didn’t have time to actually go through and solve it. Far enough along that they should have been able to solve it themselves though.

My lecture was not very interactive. Partly by choice, I prefer that style of lecture myself. Partly because I don’t really know how to involve and actively engage the students. I did ask students to help me determine what the initial and final energy states of the each of those three systems would be, but for the most part I just talked (and wrote on the board). There were a few questions from them, which were on a level that seemed to indicate some comprehension of the material. There was one question that stumped me for a minute. Unfortunately, I do not think aloud well at all, so there was a long pause as I puzzled it out, gave an answer that was only half correct, and then saw my error and fixed it. An hour later a much better answer to that question came to me of course.

I didn’t hate it, I’m not sure I liked it and would want to spend my life in front of a classroom. It was certainly more enjoyable than grading though. And less frustrating. I walked away feeling that they may have learned something. They will see this material in a latter class but it is actually from a chapter not even in their version of the book. I choose not to announce that this wouldn’t be on the exam until about the middle of the period after I had explained the concept and had begun to go through my examples.

I take a much different philosophy on teaching than all of the modern theories that I’ve had pushed on me in various teaching seminars and what not. I won’t speak to the high school and prior levels, but at the college level, it is my expectation that the students are here to learn. I am there (as a TA with office hours and as a lecturer) to provide my take on certain material, insight that might facilitate understanding above and beyond just reading the textbook. I do not feel it is my job to provide motivation. I do not feel it is my job to find a way to relate to the students current position. I speak from my experience as to where, why, and how information will be useful to them in the future. It is there job to generate the interest to actively understand. In a lecture setting (30+) people, I have no expectation of classroom participation. The professors I found most valuable at Mudd, were not those that asked the class what the next step in their on-board derivation might be. They were those who brought insight to the derivation, related it to something previously taught, or some other piece of knowledge such that from that insight, I was able to further my own intuition of the material. It was a rare textbook that could provide that sort of insightful commentary. As to whether students will find my take on this useful… I’m not sure the sophomore level (at this school) is the place to find that out. They are only just beginning to realize that engineering is hard, and there is still much weeding through their ranks that must be done. At Mudd we learned this within the first two weeks, and those that didn’t get it by then, realized it by our first test less than a month in. But this is OSU not Mudd.

• Posted by jfs at 10:39:24 in Life As A TA
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