Physics teaching

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See Topic:Physics School:Education

[edit] MIT Model

The MIT model of physics teaching involves creating very strong student groups that teach each other physics. The actual teaching takes place not in the lecture hall, but late at night in a dorm room around a problem set which is hand graded. The problem set doesn't consist of a large fraction of the grade, and consists of very difficult problems, making it generally impossible for an individual to complete the problems on their own.

There are a lot of subtle things that contribute to this working. It is not in the student's interest to just copy the answers and hand them in, even though this is theoretically possible. It's not in the student's interest, because if they do that, then they will get killed in the test and final examinations which form most of the grade. Also, because the student gets very detailed feedback in the problem sets, it's to the students benefit to know what their weaknesses are.

The other important thing is that the pass rate is extremely high, and the grades are against some more or less objective standard. Because the pass rate is very high, there is no disincentive in helping someone else learn the material.

One other component is that tests and finals are also all hand graded, with very generous partial credit. The emphasis is placed on understanding the concept rather than getting the right answer.