Intellectual Property Law

Freshman Science is not a spectator sport

Submitted by LA based contributor, Bob Coleman:
According to the New York Times, top American universities are changing the way they teach freshman science?especially physics. check here Reasoning from the fundamental truth that most of us learn by doing, MIT's professor Eric Mazur is pushing to replace the 300-student freshman physics of (for many of us) painful memory with small groups of students working collaboratively and interactively:

"'Just as you can?t become a marathon runner by watching marathons on TV,' Professor Mazur said, 'likewise for science, you have to go through the thought processes of doing science and not just watch your instructor do it.'"

Schools as diverse as Harvard and the University of British Columbia seem to be joining the movement, and the new movement strikes me as sensible and even exciting.

What do you think? Is the old style of transcribing somebody else's high-speed chalkboard-based lectures on its way out? And is it good riddance?

Full post as published by Idea Lawyer Blog on January 17, 2009 (boomark / email).