Nobel Laureate gives talk on teaching

Every year, the School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt hosts an Arts and Science Teaching… Every year, the School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt hosts an Arts and Science Teaching Excellence Lecture, open to anyone who is curious about well-recognized and accomplished professors. Guest lecturers can be from any of the many fields in SAS, but this year’s lecture was focused on science education.

On March 14, an almost-packed lecture room in Alumni Hall listened to the lecture titled “Education for the 21st Century.” The atmosphere was largely academic, because of the overwhelming majority of Pitt science professors in all areas of research.

Most of the attendees were interested in hearing new ways to teach their sometimes-difficult subject matter to an array of students, but all of them wanted to see professor Carl Wieman in action.

Wieman was a Nobel Prize Laureate in 2001 for his work in atomic research. His brief teaching resume includes faculty work at the University of British Columbia, from where he moved on to the University of Colorado, where he continues to teach physics to this day.

During his professional career, Wieman took an interest in studying different teaching and learning approaches.

In his lecture on Wednesday, the Nobel Prize winner discussed how he first realized that his graduate physics students came in with little tangible experience in the physics field. This posed a problem, for it seemed that on the undergraduate level, there was a lack of fundamental teaching and subject absorption in the classroom.

“One of the biggest problems in the classroom is due to the dreaded ‘curse of the expert.’ Novices and experts think differently,” Wieman said. Professors fully understand their information and subject, but tend to forget that their incoming students think on a different level with the same information.

Most students simply use their short term memory capacity during lectures. This means that a typical student during a physics lecture can only retain seven processes and up to four ideas at once before others are lost to the ever-flowing circuit of information in the mind.

“We need to be able to redirect this short term information into the long term memory,” Wieman said.

Biology professor Nancy Kaufmann felt that Wieman’s lecture made her think differently about how she possibly fell into the “curse of the expert” trap.

“I assume that when I present information that when students go home and look their notes over that they will almost automatically see connects in the material. It seems that this is how I assume they will learn, not how students actually see the given information,” Kaufmann said.

Wieman said some of the most effective methods of 21st century teaching are hands-on visual experiments and communication between professor and student. With new technology on the rise, new computerized teaching methods are also effective.

According to statistics, less than 30 percent, on average, of new information presented throughout a semester is actually retained by the students.

Traditional science courses do a poor job of developing expert-like thinking. Wieman wants to focus on establishing professors to facilitate thinking and engaging in the material to help improve students’ understanding of the subject.

“Do you produce a house by telling others about the building? No, you give out hammers and nails,” Wieman said.

Wieman suggested two different simulations that may be beneficial in the classroom. One technological instrument is the clicker. Clickers can be installed in the seats of lecture halls. This tool can help with speedy attendance taking, class participation and pop-quizzes.

The second major method to improve teaching science is with interactive simulations, such as a build-your-own-circuit construction kit done on the computer. These modern technological simulators can cover many subject areas and most run on a typical Web browser. Interactive simulators have the potential to make learning science fun and intriguing to students in any major.

After his lecture, Wieman spoke of various ways for students to improve their overall approach to learning.

First, students should start a dialogue with their professor. This will give their instructor an opportunity for open communication to better direct the material to fit the students’ needs.

“Students should collaborate with peers. This does not mean split the problems up and exchange answers, but actively discuss the material to help reinforce it,” Wieman said.

Science and math skills are not innate, but they can be developed if a student believes it can be done.

“Work smarter, not harder, then students can achieve so much more,” Wieman said.