Ok, after a month of crazy thoughts, here’s where I’ve (currently) landed for my two courses that start in two days.
Modern Physics
- Still planning on using a free textbook
- Planning on having fake labs help with tangential math material.
- Planning on students doing a mind map the first couple of days
- Planning on folding the lab requirements into the standards list (see the tentative lab standards here).
- Planning on determining the standards for a given day/topic during that lecture.
Theoretical Mechanics
- Still planning (though regretting a little) to use wikipedia as the text
- Planning on determining the standards for a given day/topic during that lecture.
- Changing the 2-week rule to a 1-week rule (probably for both courses).
For both classes, I’m planning on 9 days of oral exams. Right now their in groups of 3, but I might spread them out some more.
How do you fit 9 days of oral exams into these courses? I understand that you make it a priority, but it seems like you must be employing some other tricks to condense everything else.
it’s actually a holdover from what I used to do for every semester exam: one day for review, one day for written exam, one day for oral exams. But, you’re right, it really is a priority for me because it’s where I can get students who have a “4″ to show me they’ve still got it.
Andy, what’s your reason for changing the 2-week rule to a 1-week rule? I used a 2-week rule last term and think I also would prefer a 1-week rule.
I felt that the 2-week rule led to a pattern early on in the semester where they didn’t do anything. that was a hard pattern to break. I think pedagogically that 2 weeks is probably better for the whole “cycle back and repeat stuff” but I just can’t let that pattern develop again. We’ll see how I feel at the end of this semester.
I found something similar. With a two week rule, people simply waited a week to start working on things instead of as soon as the assignment/standard was posted.