We live in a fascinating Universe. There are things we can see with our naked eye. There are also things we can’t see with our naked eye. Scientific equipments, such as telescope, infrared detector, microscope and particle accelerator are employed as an effective means to assist us to probe the worlds lying beyond our naked eyes.
To appreciate the scale of the Universe we are living in, let’s take a look at some pictures that illustrate the sizes of things in the hierarchy of their associated scales.
Scale of things from human size ascending by a factor of 1000 times can be pictured as followed:
A human’s size -> A city’s size -> continent’s size -> Earth size -> Moon’s orbit around the Earth -> Earth-Sun orbit -> Solar system -> Milky way -> cluster of galaxy.
In the descending order, shrinking by a factor of 1000 times:
A human size -> hair -> cell -> cell organel -> DNA molecule -> atoms -> nucleus -> nucleon -> quarks -> ???.
It is amazing that human being could understand the principles and laws that govern the worlds with sizes spanning such a huge range, or order 10^(-19) m – 10^(36) m.
This is mainly due to the ability to probe these structures using equipped that goes beyond our naked eye. Due to the lack of such equipments the Greeks and olden day scientists are hampered in their endeavour to understand the nature of things larger or smaller accessible by their naked eyes are very much hindered.
Since we are talking about the Universe, then what is the definition of the Universe? One of the simplest definitions is: Everything is inside the Universe. Alternatively: nothing can exist outside the Universe.
Roughly, Universe has two aspects: The physical aspect, i.e. matter, energy and interactions, and the non physical aspect, e.g. consciousness and spirituality. Since science can only access things or phenomena that has physical attributes, it can only provide answer to questions pertaining to the physical aspect of the Universe, such as how stars evolve, what are matter made of and how things behave under certain interactions. On the other hand, science can’t answer questions to things or phenomena that can’t be physically accessible, such as the existence of ‘qi’, the existence of GOD or ‘biological field’ that do not manifest themselves physically. If heaven is not accessible to us by any physical means (such as it exist in another dimension that has not any physical interactions with us) then there is no way we can understand them with our scientific methodology. Another example: consciousness can’t be quantified or be measured with any empirical means, hence it doesn’t belong to the convention domain of science.
So, science’s is a rather restricted discipline that is omnipotent and is not suppose to be able to answer every single questions, particularly those that lies outside the domain of its scope.
21.5.11
Richard Feynmen as a role model for physics teachers
Overall, the study atmosphere among students in the physics courses in USM is not that satisfying. Specifically, the students follow a chronic pattern of rote learning. Lecturer also seldom, if not never, initiate innovative method in their teaching. Many things I attempted in my teaching initiative are a result of personal motivation. I simply enjoy the mere act of making others to apprehend knowledge that is otherwise incomprehensible.
I admire Richard Feynman, and am particularly impressed by his character as a physics teacher [Feynman’s enthusiastic adherence to physics teaching can be felt very strongly in the compilation of his letters by his son, in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman, published by Basic Books in 2005.]. His enthusiasm and ability to make his audience comprehend the otherwise incomprehensible physical laws has inspired me to be one of his “followers”. He was able to make abstract ideas tangible, complicated matters become crystal clear. He certainly was a master of making explanation and story telling, skilfully using many “tools” to assist his explanation, such as analogy, simile, humour, contrasting cases, contradictions and, most importantly, daily language understood by ordinary people. Throughout my teaching years, I have gradually acquired some personal “insight” in the art of explanation, thanks partly to the inspiration Feynman has imparted in me. I made effort to make my lectures a pleasant learning process to the students. I will devise interesting and comprehensible ways to illustrate a concept, for example, by creating funny analogy, reminding them of certain previous knowledge they had learned before but was forgotten, or even performing clown-like act. Very often I play computer simulation to visualise the actual scenario of how a physical laws is in action. Of course not every student would agree with me that I am a successful physics teacher (many still say they don’t understand what I say in the class). However, I am quite confident that at least my physics class is among the less boring ones.
Finally, let me quote the following:
I admire Richard Feynman, and am particularly impressed by his character as a physics teacher [Feynman’s enthusiastic adherence to physics teaching can be felt very strongly in the compilation of his letters by his son, in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman, published by Basic Books in 2005.]. His enthusiasm and ability to make his audience comprehend the otherwise incomprehensible physical laws has inspired me to be one of his “followers”. He was able to make abstract ideas tangible, complicated matters become crystal clear. He certainly was a master of making explanation and story telling, skilfully using many “tools” to assist his explanation, such as analogy, simile, humour, contrasting cases, contradictions and, most importantly, daily language understood by ordinary people. Throughout my teaching years, I have gradually acquired some personal “insight” in the art of explanation, thanks partly to the inspiration Feynman has imparted in me. I made effort to make my lectures a pleasant learning process to the students. I will devise interesting and comprehensible ways to illustrate a concept, for example, by creating funny analogy, reminding them of certain previous knowledge they had learned before but was forgotten, or even performing clown-like act. Very often I play computer simulation to visualise the actual scenario of how a physical laws is in action. Of course not every student would agree with me that I am a successful physics teacher (many still say they don’t understand what I say in the class). However, I am quite confident that at least my physics class is among the less boring ones.
Finally, let me quote the following:
It may seem incomprehensible to many that physics and mathematics are comprehensible. Therefore, I find that it is indeed a refined pleasure to be able to make people comprehend the seemingly incomprehensible. Such an acquired pleasure makes the teaching of physics and mathematics a source creativity, liveliness and enjoyable endeavour.
My weakness in teaching
I still rely quite heavily on exam to evaluate student’s level of understanding, despite frequently condemning the students for being over exam-orientated. In practice it is also the single most important way to motivate a student to “learn” albeit forcefully. I am like kind of forced to deploy exam in my teaching process. Exam serves as a bait to, and a price of penalty to be paid by, the students. Exam could be the most controversial aspect in teaching. How to evaluate objectively and efficiently (e.g., within a 3-hour time slot) a student’s level of understanding if not via paper based examination? There may be other better method, but at this point of time assessing our students via non-exam method is not an option due to pragmatic considerations. Currently in our undergraduate level evaluation system, no such alternative exist. Exam (with a 70% weight) is mandatory for theory based courses. Frankly, I know no alternative to examination. I am likely to stick to it for many years to come.
I still stick to instructor-cantered teaching style, for I don’t know how to teach in student-cantered or problem-based approaches. Everyone knows that it is extremely hard if not impossible to squeeze words or reaction out of students for responses. Having student-cantered learning or problem based learning methods necessarily requires more reactive participants, whom our students are not. Until I know of a better option, I will continue to stick to instructor-centered teaching style.
I often made mistake, including conceptual error in the lecture notes, even in the final exam questions. However, I learned from my mistake and have improved over time. I try to be a humble person, apologise and make joke of myself for the wrong physics concepts taught in the lectures. Intentionally, I wish to show to the students a role model who is sincere to admit his weakness yet able to learn and to proceed beyond the mistake made.
I still stick to instructor-cantered teaching style, for I don’t know how to teach in student-cantered or problem-based approaches. Everyone knows that it is extremely hard if not impossible to squeeze words or reaction out of students for responses. Having student-cantered learning or problem based learning methods necessarily requires more reactive participants, whom our students are not. Until I know of a better option, I will continue to stick to instructor-centered teaching style.
I often made mistake, including conceptual error in the lecture notes, even in the final exam questions. However, I learned from my mistake and have improved over time. I try to be a humble person, apologise and make joke of myself for the wrong physics concepts taught in the lectures. Intentionally, I wish to show to the students a role model who is sincere to admit his weakness yet able to learn and to proceed beyond the mistake made.
My strength in teaching
Richard Feynman is my role model as a physicist and a physics teacher. He enjoys teaching physics and has commented that his Nobel Prize in QED is of less significance as his contribution to teaching physics. He is a true physics teacher who finds great pleasure to make his audience understand the abstract concepts of physics to convey. He commented that if one really understands something well, he must be able to explain them well. Otherwise, he/she does not understand them.
As a subject personal judgement, I would like to make a list of what I think are the strength as far as teaching physics are concerned. First and foremost, I know my undergraduate physics very well. To me, a good physics teacher is logically impossible for anyone who does not know the subject matter well. A person who knows his physics well may not be a good physics teacher. But to be a good physics teacher he / she must know his /her physics well. By the way, in my personal opinion (which could be possibly not objective), many physics teaching in secondary and undergraduate level physics were of poor quality because the instructors simply don’t know their stuff well.
I took extra effort to well prepare my lectures to effectively deliver the knowledge and the thinking process leading to this knowledge. I bother to take initiative, sometimes innovative ones, to improve my teaching. Many different experimentation on teaching and evaluate methods were attempted. All these initiatives in reality cost me much extra work which in principle could be simply avoided with no negative pragmatic career consequences.
As a subject personal judgement, I would like to make a list of what I think are the strength as far as teaching physics are concerned. First and foremost, I know my undergraduate physics very well. To me, a good physics teacher is logically impossible for anyone who does not know the subject matter well. A person who knows his physics well may not be a good physics teacher. But to be a good physics teacher he / she must know his /her physics well. By the way, in my personal opinion (which could be possibly not objective), many physics teaching in secondary and undergraduate level physics were of poor quality because the instructors simply don’t know their stuff well.
I took extra effort to well prepare my lectures to effectively deliver the knowledge and the thinking process leading to this knowledge. I bother to take initiative, sometimes innovative ones, to improve my teaching. Many different experimentation on teaching and evaluate methods were attempted. All these initiatives in reality cost me much extra work which in principle could be simply avoided with no negative pragmatic career consequences.
Liberalisme in teaching
As a matter of principle I do not agree forced attendance on students. Such stand is consistent with my core belief in liberalism. The undergraduates must be treated adult who shall shoulder the consequence of their own action. Whenever an opportunity present itself, I always grasp it to inseminate the realisation that they must always keep bearing in mind that their action always bear consequence, and they have to learn to take into consideration the possible consequences when the act. They are constantly reminded to internalise such understanding in their learning attitude.
When they are treated as respectable individuals, and when their basic rights are respected, realisation shall grow in them that it is non other than they themselves who must bear the sole responsibility for their own actions. Treating them like primary school children, as many university academics are doing right now, deprive the undergraduates from growing into maturity. Our learning culture tends to overstuffed with threatening instruction such as “you must attend the lecture!”, “you must not be late to class or I will disallow you to enter”, etc. The motivation to learn may be novel, such as learning only for the sake of knowledge. It could also be less novel, such as out of fear of failing the exams. In reality, our culture tends to over impose force, regulation and constraints on student to “motivate” learning. Such authoritarian measures, in my personal opinion, are often counter productive. Students may obediently “learn” to pass the exams. As soon as they leave the university, the learning habit simply ceases, because learning has been successfully turned into a strongly abhorring ordeal by their university system. Learning is a very personal process. It should ideally be an initiative that is spawn from within a learner’s willingness. I always tell the classes that I will treat them as adult and trust them for their preparation to bear whatever consequence resulted from their attitude. Then I let them choose whether they want to learn or leave. Liberalism here does not mean ignore them and set them to loom free without any moral constraint. It means allow them a chance to explore in their own way with minimal interference from the “authorities” who almost always tend to exercise over enforcement. Students shall be allowed to err or even fail as part of the growing pain, for the sake of their intellectual maturity in the future. If their actions lead them to deprived states, let them learn the lesson the hard way so that they can appreciate from within what is ultimately the right thing to do in the future. In relation to this, designing effective and quality exam question is essential mechanism to discriminate those who have taken the initiative to learn from those who haven’t. I constantly “brain wash” them they are always free to do anything, but they will surely sreceive the deserving consequence in the exam hall. I don’t penalise students for not attending my classes or handing up assignments. In short I don’t use authoritarian measures to force student to learn. Whether they choose to cut corners (which is allowed under my “liberalism policy”) or the down-to-earth learning attitude, the final exam grades shall judge them objectively. Penalty for not attending classes, handling assignments and paying no serious effort to study during the semesters will take place in the form of blank answer scripts in the exam hall. Reward will present itself in the form of confidently filled answer scripts, plus a brain loaded with intellectual bliss. Verdict would be delivered at the end of the day. It is up to the student themselves to determine the outcome.
When they are treated as respectable individuals, and when their basic rights are respected, realisation shall grow in them that it is non other than they themselves who must bear the sole responsibility for their own actions. Treating them like primary school children, as many university academics are doing right now, deprive the undergraduates from growing into maturity. Our learning culture tends to overstuffed with threatening instruction such as “you must attend the lecture!”, “you must not be late to class or I will disallow you to enter”, etc. The motivation to learn may be novel, such as learning only for the sake of knowledge. It could also be less novel, such as out of fear of failing the exams. In reality, our culture tends to over impose force, regulation and constraints on student to “motivate” learning. Such authoritarian measures, in my personal opinion, are often counter productive. Students may obediently “learn” to pass the exams. As soon as they leave the university, the learning habit simply ceases, because learning has been successfully turned into a strongly abhorring ordeal by their university system. Learning is a very personal process. It should ideally be an initiative that is spawn from within a learner’s willingness. I always tell the classes that I will treat them as adult and trust them for their preparation to bear whatever consequence resulted from their attitude. Then I let them choose whether they want to learn or leave. Liberalism here does not mean ignore them and set them to loom free without any moral constraint. It means allow them a chance to explore in their own way with minimal interference from the “authorities” who almost always tend to exercise over enforcement. Students shall be allowed to err or even fail as part of the growing pain, for the sake of their intellectual maturity in the future. If their actions lead them to deprived states, let them learn the lesson the hard way so that they can appreciate from within what is ultimately the right thing to do in the future. In relation to this, designing effective and quality exam question is essential mechanism to discriminate those who have taken the initiative to learn from those who haven’t. I constantly “brain wash” them they are always free to do anything, but they will surely sreceive the deserving consequence in the exam hall. I don’t penalise students for not attending my classes or handing up assignments. In short I don’t use authoritarian measures to force student to learn. Whether they choose to cut corners (which is allowed under my “liberalism policy”) or the down-to-earth learning attitude, the final exam grades shall judge them objectively. Penalty for not attending classes, handling assignments and paying no serious effort to study during the semesters will take place in the form of blank answer scripts in the exam hall. Reward will present itself in the form of confidently filled answer scripts, plus a brain loaded with intellectual bliss. Verdict would be delivered at the end of the day. It is up to the student themselves to determine the outcome.
Conscientious Teaching
I stand by the principal to not compromise in academic integrity. In other words, I don’t pass a student who could not demonstrate the minimum knowledge required (which is ultimately measured by his examination score). As a result, failure rate in my classes were consistently high throughout the years, at the level 30% ~ 50%. (In the USM standard, 39 marks or below out of 100 is considered partial failure, whereas a complete failure if under 24 marks). However, mostly the distribution curves were healthy (in bell shapes), despite the average is peaked at the low side (C or C-). (The only exception is a second year statistical mechanics course where the distribution displays a M shape. I reckon that was because the course was a rather difficult subject, and a large population of the class simply could not follow the highly demanding mathematics and the abstract language used in statistical mechanics.) In a way the high failure rate in my class reflects my reluctance to compromise in the evaluation standard. This is to be contrasted in the light of the fact that many courses never fail a single student, a situation which is rather contrived. Students should be evaluated based on how much they understand, not how much they can memorise. Exam questions should be designed in such a way to really sort out those who know and those who know nothing. Hence I make effort to ensure that the exams I set are objective measuring tool that manage to discriminate the students based on their levels of the knowledge gained in the courses. Often I reiterate in the class that I never fail any one. The person who fails them is the students themselves.
According to my observation, many students practice only rote learning, at least in the physics school. On the other hand many professors and lecturers, mainly for their own interest, routinely recycle past year questions in the final exams. Some design poor quality exam questions. As a result, students who know next to nothing pass and even score in the exams by blindly memorising past year solutions or the lecture notes. It’s the lectures who “allow” such the rote learning practice to permeate as norm among the students, and I don’t call this “conscientious”. Should every lecturer practise conscientious teaching, students would start to change their learning attitude and avoid cutting corners. Conscientious teaching leads to real quality learning, which is what learning and teaching knowledge is all about.
According to my observation, many students practice only rote learning, at least in the physics school. On the other hand many professors and lecturers, mainly for their own interest, routinely recycle past year questions in the final exams. Some design poor quality exam questions. As a result, students who know next to nothing pass and even score in the exams by blindly memorising past year solutions or the lecture notes. It’s the lectures who “allow” such the rote learning practice to permeate as norm among the students, and I don’t call this “conscientious”. Should every lecturer practise conscientious teaching, students would start to change their learning attitude and avoid cutting corners. Conscientious teaching leads to real quality learning, which is what learning and teaching knowledge is all about.
“Self-reading initiative”
In one of the linear algebra classes, I attempted an unconventional approach which lasted for a period of three week. In this initiative, a text book on linear algebra (Matrices by Frank Ayres, Schaum’s Outline series) was selected and students are directed to prepare and study the few selected chapters before coming to the class. Assuming that the students have done their preparation when they entered the class, I would only conduct a very brief introduction to these topics (say for 10-15 minutes). After the brief introduction, I would make the students to attempt problems (which are made known to the students on or before the class) DURING the rest of the lecture hours. Of course I will be guiding them and give hints of how to answer the problems. In the following session (i.e. the next class to come), I would discuss the problem sets attempted by students in the previous session in a more detailed manner. Randomly selected students will be asked to pass up the solutions for grading. Ideally, all students must make preparation for the pre-scheduled topics before coming to the classes, in which they will be forced to attempt questions without going through any formal lecture on these topics. Hence, students will have to understand the contents of these topics by doing the reading and studying for themselves before going to classes, failing which will result in their failure to submit the solutions when asked to do so. This initiative is a bold attempt to provoke self-study pro-activeness in our fellow first year students who are used to the chronic habit of spoon-feeding. Such initiative hopes to promote an active form of learning, (although somewhat forcefully) in which student themselves shoulder a major portion of responsibility in the process of acquiring knowledge. In comparison, learning through lectures (which is the most conventional way teaching is done) is a relatively passive mode of learning. In this initiative, I have to spend quite a bit of effort to specially design a set of original “designed questions” based on Ayer’s book. Ayers’s text book is, like many great mathematicians, highly condensed, precise, no-nonsense yet “unfriendly”. Its “explanations” were mostly in the form of concise mathematical statements beyond the levels for most first year students. My job was to interpreter the theorems using my own approach, basically to illustrate the essential ideas of the theorems via working examples. To this end, a coherent set of problems specially were designed, which were then attempted by the students under my guidance during the lectures. In this learning process, instead of me spending all the time on lecturing, students were asked to go directly to attack the designed questions, after which they will acquire the essential ideas of theorems Ayers tried to tell in his otherwise incomprehensible text book.
I find this approach effective and deliver real understanding, as students were actually playing an active part in the learning process. And it was not as boring as in other mathematics classes as the students were occupied: They were forced to attempt these questions during the lectures as names would be called randomly asking the “lucky ones” to present their answers. I would call this initiative a successful one. However I reckon that not every subject is suitable to adopt such teaching approach. The relatively simple structure of the linear algebra concepts make it easy for students to study by self-reading. In Ayers, the topics were presented in the form of a sequence of theorems, hence was also quite easy to design questions to illustrate them one-by-one. The successful case on linear algebra could be just an incidental result. If this “self-learning” method were to be adopted for other subject, a lot of extra preparation could be required. Anyway, I derived a good sense of personal satisfaction for initiating the experimental approach of teaching. I think many, if not all, of the students in the class had enjoyed a unique learning experience in those three weeks of linear algebra course.
I find this approach effective and deliver real understanding, as students were actually playing an active part in the learning process. And it was not as boring as in other mathematics classes as the students were occupied: They were forced to attempt these questions during the lectures as names would be called randomly asking the “lucky ones” to present their answers. I would call this initiative a successful one. However I reckon that not every subject is suitable to adopt such teaching approach. The relatively simple structure of the linear algebra concepts make it easy for students to study by self-reading. In Ayers, the topics were presented in the form of a sequence of theorems, hence was also quite easy to design questions to illustrate them one-by-one. The successful case on linear algebra could be just an incidental result. If this “self-learning” method were to be adopted for other subject, a lot of extra preparation could be required. Anyway, I derived a good sense of personal satisfaction for initiating the experimental approach of teaching. I think many, if not all, of the students in the class had enjoyed a unique learning experience in those three weeks of linear algebra course.
訂閱：
文章 (Atom)
