Sean Kelly wrote:
== Quote from BCS (a...@pathlink.com)'s article
Reply to Walter,
Sean Kelly wrote:
Some professors seem to think that lecturing about material that
isn't presented anywhere else will force students to attend class.
But in my experience it also creates a class that takes notes
furiously rather than engaging the material and asking questions.
Overall, I think it's a counterproductive strategy.
In my experience, the lack of a textbook for the material was mostly
the result of the professor generating his own material and thinking
the existing textbooks were all inadequate.
The next step (down) from that is the class where the professor wrote the
text book. That's a bad thing because if you don't understand the lecture,
the book won't help
My Physics courses were like this, and it was incredibly frustrating. I think
it was probably the reason that Physics at my Uni was reputed to be so
difficult.
My College Physics teacher wrote our book. I never found it good. But
then, he was a bodybuilder. Once he had connected a heavy iron core coil
in series with a lamp and a battery. And he had an iron anchor, which he
removed from the coil. The lamp blew, and he said "gee, what a
coincidence". I remarked dryly, "that's what you get for removing the
anchor". From that day on, he hated me. Later in a big exam, he came to
my desk and said "well, einstein, just see to it that you get full
points". Thaks a lot.
