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I started teaching this week. I taught my first "real" class on Wednesday (with due apologies to my former students whom I "only" taught lab and discussion section – I know you all thought it was real, but it was not quite "real" real for me.) I am teaching an introductory Physics class for non-science majors at DePauw University. The class is called "Physics for Poets", as perhaps a way of making a sciency class more palatable to those who would have otherwise had severe anxieties about it.

It is very exciting to be able to teach people something new and help them learn it. I am a big fan of technology, and I am trying to make a great use of it as a learning tool, both in classroom and outside of it. A few years ago I attended a lecture at UIUC by Carl Wieman. A Nobel Prize winner, he is still very passionate about undergraduate teaching. His lecture was about the best techniques to transmit the knowledge in a classroom setting, and ensure the maximum retention of the information by listeners. What impressed me the most at the time was the demonstration of the use of "clickers" by students during the class. These simple devices allow students to instantaneously take polls during the class on concepts that have just been taught. The advantage over raising hands is that, since submissions are anonymous and there is no penalty for a wrong answer, students are much more likely to answer questions and be active participants in the class. An instant feedback on projection screen is another advantage that lets students understand how their answers compare to the others in the class.

I was hooked. Ever since seeing that lecture, I dreamt about the day when I will be able to use something similar in my own classes. So when I was hired to teach at DePauw, I started to brainstorm about possible ways of implementing this dream of mine. Fortunately for me, Dave Berque, a CS professor at DePauw, developed and implemented a dynamic teaching platform called DyKnow. In its fully implemented mode DyKnow is a clicker on steroids. During the class students are given tablet PCs, which makes many more possible forms of interaction than just simple polls. Students are able to work on the problems from their seats and have them projected at the main screen. So far, students seem to like being able to interact this way, although I am not sure how thrilled they are when called to present their work in front of the class.

Another teaching tool I am using is Moodle. It's an online environment that lets me post timed quizzes and polls. I am using it to get students to submit a brief preflight quiz before the class. This forces them to open the textbook and read a bit about the material that will be covered in class that day. I am also using Moodle as a general class website to post notes, homework problems and solutions.

As an extra credit, I also allow students to write a poem about concepts that they just learned in class. It is, after all, a Physics for Poets. So far I have not had any takers on that assignment. I will keep hope up though.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of weeks ago I was at Borders and I noticed a provocative cover of the Newsweek magazine, declaring that the Global Warming was a hoax. My first thought was oh, Newsweek of all places is actually going to take a long hard look at the data and come up with an alternative viewpoint that flies in the face of all the conventional wisdom. Then I noticed an asterisk. The fine print on the same magazine cover was basically saying "Just kidding, the hoax part is what a well-funded anti global warming machine would want you to believe." I wanted to read a bit more, so I opened up the magazine and took a look at the article. The article starts with a story of Barbara Boxer, and her rude realization that the evil anti-global warming machine is not swayed by the hard scientific proofs. I decided not to read any further. Any article that uses Barbara Boxer as a model of sensible, centrist impassioned thinking seriously undermines the credibility of its findings.

The discussion of merits, or the lack thereof, of scientific case for global warming and its purported human origin would take us too far afield. My biggest contention in the case of Newsweek article is that they are trying to contrast the supposedly high-minded, objective scientists who work only in order to further our knowledge, putting their own personal interests aside, and a supposedly greedy, corporate types who will stop at nothing in order to further their nefarious agendas. In practice, things are much more complicated than that. Science has become a cut-throat competitive arena where untold numbers of highly qualified individuals are competing for a very limited number of highly lucrative grants. It is a zero-sum game with wide gaps between winners and losers. Most of the money worldwide comes from government agencies with vested interest in political agendas. It is highly doubtful that those political considerations are not on the minds of both granting agencies and recipients of grants. This was more than obvious during the Cold War when largest grants went to strategically important military research.

Furthermore, once a lab or an agency is awarded a grant, it will try to keep it and renew it indefinitely. There is no full-proof method of keeping the grant, but a fairly certain way of losing it is to report that the effect you studied does not really exist. The pressure is overwhelming to show that the reason for the grant's original award is real. If you spend several years doing research trying to prove that there is life on Mars, you are not likely to say that there is definitely no such thing. You and your coworkers will be left without funding for several years, maybe longer. The worst that is usually reported is that "findings are inconclusive and further research is needed." Many academic careers are completely based and sustained on "further research needed bases".

So what is the point of all of this? Yes Newsweek is right there is a well-funded machine involved in the global warming debate. But this well-funded machine is nothing else but the scientific community itself. Global warming may or may not be happening, but it is in the vital interest of this machine that it in fact is happening. Compared to the scientific community, all other "well funded machines" are nothing but toy trucks.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 03:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have not been posting much on my blog lately, and with a good reason (I think). It's been a very busy summer for me. I've been getting ready to teach at my new job as a professor of Physics at DePauw University, and I've also been helping Sharmin with her research. On top of that, I've been dealing with a lot of administrative issues that accompany transition from a student to a real job.

One of the best things that I did get out of all this work this summer is that I've been playing with a lot of computer-related technologies (Dreamweaver, Photoshop, PHP, new Word, Mac OSX, virtual machines, etc., etc.) and hopefully I've gotten that much more proficient in that realm. I have also had access to the latest Microsoft Office tools, and it's been fun exploring how to hack those little darlings in a new and creative ways. Today I stumbled across this option of writing my blog entries from Word, and decided to give it a shot. Hopefully, if it all goes smoothly, this will help me with impulse-blogging.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)