My mistake in reading your note was to have in mind the local professor, not undergrad or graduate teaching assistants. In our own implementation of a giant course, we did quite a lot of training and support of the TAs, and we structured lab and problem sessions in such a way that the TA needed only to be an assistant and helper, with activities that put much of the responsibility for learning on the students.
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 3:00 PM, Roger Critchlow <r...@elf.org> wrote: > Bruce -- > > I didn't mean to dismiss content expertise altogether. It's impossible to > even begin to make sense of a technical subject without some content > expertise. And you would hope that people who enjoyed facilitating a > subject would continue to deepen their understanding of the subject, and > that will make them better facilitators. > > But I don't know where you draw the line on "deep content knowledge". Did > you ever cancel your lecture course because there wasn't sufficient depth > in the tutorial leaders? Did they need graduate degrees? In my college, > the best students from the previous session of a course were the ones who > led tutorials in the next session, it was a liberal arts college and there > weren't any graduate students or postgraduate fellows around. > > -- rec -- > > > > On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Bruce Sherwood > <bruce.sherw...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> I very strongly disagree with the notion that facilitators need not be >> content experts. In many domains it is crucial that a good facilitator have >> a rather deep knowledge of the material AND experience in getting people >> through courses. Without deep content knowledge It is impossible to "identify >> the key points of lectures, how to gauge whether someone has grasped the >> points, how to recognize the common misgraspings which occur and correct >> them". >> >> We provide very extensive supplementary materials to help physicists use >> our intro textbook, equivalent to "tutorial lesson plans". These resources >> even include a complete set of videos of lectures, clicker questions, >> demos, lab materials, etc. But these materials aren't sufficient if the >> person doesn't have a deep grasp of physics. >> >> I'll mention that in the "Course for HS teachers" section of >> matterandinteractions.org there is an article about a sophisticated >> distance education version of our course which I developed and taught for >> in-service high school physics teachers, to give them a contemporary >> perspective on intro physics. This course is still being offered by >> colleagues at NCSU. >> >> Bruce >> >> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >
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