Monstrous class sizes unavoidable at colleges

Movement for reform
Wieman is at the vanguard of the reform movement, but it’s really his second career. In his first he was a researcher with a rare distinction: He produced a new state of matter. Most people know the three most common states of matter — solid, liquid and gas. But cooling rubidium nearly to absolute zero, Wieman and Colorado colleague Eric Cornell formulated the first Bose-Einstein condensate, a state in which several thousand atoms align perfectly and behave as a single “super atom.”

After his Nobel, Wieman could easily have focused on lab work or training a cadre of elite graduate students.

But Wieman uses his clout to secure invitations to talk to his fellow scientists — about teaching. He has become one of several physicists to take up the cause, along with Eric Mazur at Harvard, Edward Redish at Maryland and Robert Beichner at North Carolina State.

Wieman wears tennis shoes and walks everywhere like he’s in a hurry. He is.

“I have ridiculous, grandiose visions,” he said, speaking in his temporary office overlooking Colorado’s football stadium. “I want to change how everybody learns science. I won’t get into how this will save mankind, but it may.”

The problem, he said, is that scientists stop acting like scientists when it comes to their own teaching.

In their own research, scientists hypothesize, measure — then use data to figure out what works. But for teaching, “they’re immediately willing to make generalizations about the thousands of students who’ve been through their class based on the two that talked to them last week,” Wieman said.

There’s no magic bullet, but measurement is the key.

“We’re in this new era of engaging in this as a scholarly enterprise,” said Noah Finkelstein, a young Colorado physics professor who has worked with Wieman to revamp a class he teaches. “Most faculty haven’t been taught education is a scholarly enterprise. Most faculty have been taught education is an art, not a science.”

Unique solution
One of the tools of the new science is “clickers,” handheld voting devices now used on at least 700 campuses nationwide, according to manufacturer eInstruction. They let teachers pose mid-lecture multiple choice questions and instantly evaluate if students are grasping the material.

During a recent morning lecture in Colorado’s General Chemistry 1131, Professor Robert Parson spoke for a few minutes, then posed a multiple-choice question to the class of about 250. The question, like others he used, was designed by a team of science-learning experts with trick choices that signal if students are falling for common misconceptions. The results of the “vote” popped up on an overhead screen. Then, before revealing the answer, Parson had students break into small groups to discuss the answer and vote again. The group did well, and he moved on. If it had performed poorly, he would have reviewed the material.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in college teaching is bridging the gap between an often brilliant expert and students new to the subject. Clickers help remind teachers how a novice sees their material.

“You realize how many people don’t know something you forgot you didn’t know 20 years ago,” said Barbara Demmig-Adams, one of four Colorado professors who teaches a general biology course with 1,300 students and who introduced clickers this year.

Other campuses are trying different ideas, but a common thread is making big classes more of a two-way street.

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