Should laboratory courses require more of the students' time per unit credit than lecture courses?

1926 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 704
Author(s):  
Wilfred W. Scott
Author(s):  
John C. Leylegian ◽  
Mohammad H. Naraghi

Laboratory courses can be, and are often used to provide practical demonstrations of physical phenomena studied in various lecture courses. At Manhattan College, a senior-level Thermal-Fluids Laboratory incorporates a Design of Experiments (DoE) component into the syllabus, in which students learn about development of a text matrix, construction of an experiment to fulfill that matrix, and statistical analyses to confirm hypotheses. This paper describes the entire course syllabus, the portions of the course relevant to DoE, and some of the experiments conducted in recent years.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Howitz ◽  
Kate J. McKnelly ◽  
Renee Link

<p>Large, multi-section laboratory courses are particularly challenging when managing grading with as many as 35 teaching assistants (TAs). Traditional grading systems using point-based rubrics lead to significant variations in how individual TAs grade, which necessitates the use of curving across laboratory sections. Final grade uncertainty perpetuates student anxieties and disincentivizes a collaborative learning environment, so we adopted an alternative grading system, called specifications grading. In this system each student knows exactly what level of proficiency they must demonstrate to earn their desired course grade. Higher grades require demonstrating mastery of skills and content at defined higher levels. Each students’ grade is solely dependent on the work they produce rather than the performance of other students. We piloted specifications grading in the smaller, third quarter course of the lower division organic chemistry laboratory series held during a summer term. Open-ended questions were chosen to gather student and TA perceptions of the new grading system. TAs felt that the new grading system reduced the weekly grading time because it was less ambiguous. Responses from students about the nature of the grading system were mixed. Their perceptions indicate that initial buy-in and multiple reminders about the bigger picture of the grading system will be essential to the success of this grading system on a larger scale.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-125

Three phases in Foucault’s examination of authorship and free speech were essential to him throughout his life. They can be linked to such texts as the three lectures “What is an Author?” (first phase), “What is Critique?,” and “What is Revolution?” (second phase), and the two lecture courses, “Fearless Speech,” and “The Courage of Truth” (third phase). Initially, Foucault merely describes the founders of discursivity (hence, “superauthors”), among whom he reckoned only Marx and Freud, as the sole alternative to his own conceptualization of the author function, which is exhibited en masse in contemporary society. He then modifies his views on superauthorship by making Kant the paradigm and by linking his own concept of free speech to a Kan-tian critical attitude. However, Foucault claims only the half of Kant’s philosophical legacy that is related to the study of the ontology of the self.The article advances the hypothesis that the sovereign power of speech, which can be found in Marx and Heidegger and in generally in the concept of “superauthorship,” becomes unacceptable for Foucault. During the third phase, the danger of a tyrannical use of free speech compels Foucault to make a number of fruitful but questionable choices in his work. He focuses on a single aspect of free speech in which a speaker is in a weaker position and therefore has to overcome his fear in order to tell the truth. Foucault associates this kind of free speech with the ancient Greek notion of parrhesia, which according to his interpretation means “fearless speech”; however, this reading is not always supported by the ancient Greek sources. Foucault’s deliberations bring him to the radical conclusion that free speech transforms into performative “aesthetics of existence.” Foucault’s main motivation for pursuing this line of thought all through his life was to investigate his own abilities and powers as an author


Many of the distinctive and useful phenomena of soft matter come from its interaction with interfaces. Examples are the peeling of a strip of adhesive tape or the coating of a surface or the curling of a fibre via capillary forces or the electrically driven ow along a microchannel, or the collapse of a porous sponge. These interfacial phenomena are distinct from the intrinsic behaviour of a soft material like a gel or a microemulsion. Yet many forms of interfacial phenomena can be understood via common principles valid for many forms of soft matter. Our goal in organizing this school was to give students a grasp of these common principles and their many ramifications and possibilities. The school comprised over fifty 90-minute lectures over four weeks in July 2013. Four four-lecture courses by Howard Stone, Michael Cates, David Nelson, and L. Mahadevan served as an anchor for the program. A number of shorter courses and seminars rounded out the school.This volume presents lecture notes prepared by the speakers and submitted for publication after the school. The lectures are grouped under two main themes: Hydrodynamics and interfaces, and Soft matter.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 74-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Leontiev
Keyword(s):  
Made In ◽  

The object of the reflections proposed in this paper is Merab Mamardashvili’s system of thought explicated in two books: Lectures on Proust (1995) and Psychological topology of the way (1997). Both books are transcripts of lecture courses read in 1982 and 1984/85. They are devoted to the same subject and have multiple overlaps; however, they are textually quite different. The second text presents a somewhat later version of Mamardashvili’s attempts to treat the same issues in a more elaborate form. Mamardashvili’s ideas, especially ideas and views of the last decade of his life, are extremely difficult to summarize. To extract definitions from his texts is equally impossible. Nevertheless, such an attempt is made in this paper.


2015 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Alan J. Slavin

Over the last few years, video assistive apparatus has become available at an accessible price that will allow students who have limited vision to participate almost fully in many laboratory courses at university. This paper presents a survey of the number of legally blind university physics students in Canada for the period 2003 to 2013. It will act as a benchmark to measure the effectiveness, in laboratory courses, of recent legislation mandating the provision of assistive devices in educational institutions. The survey was sent to all 52 physics departments at institutions in Canada that grant physics degrees, with all but one of the departments replying. None knew of any legally blind physicists practising in Canada. The only legally blind physics students reported were one partially sighted student who was awarded a Ph.D. in 2001, and one currently at Trent University. The survey results show that of the 12.5% of blind students who hold university degrees in Canada, very few of them are in physics.


1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasuhiko Tsuruoka ◽  
Katsunori Iio ◽  
Wakio Uchida ◽  
Ichita Endo ◽  
Kazuma Nakazawa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document