Education
Category archives for Education
Bad Reporting About Women in STEM
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 27, 2012 This is apparently my day to be annoyed at the reporting of pieces about gender differences in STEM, because a bunch of people are linking to this PBS NewsHour article about women in engineering, which is linked to an interview with Maria Klawe of Harvey Mudd College, who I ran across a few weeks back…
A Brief History of Timekeeping: Final Notes
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 10, 2012 Between unpleasant work stuff and the Dread Stomach Bug wiping out the better part of five days, I only got my student evaluation comments for my winter term class last week, and I’m only getting around to writing the post-mortem now. This was, for those who may not have been obsessively following my course reports,…
Two Women-in-Science Notes
Posted by Chad Orzel on April 5, 2012 Two things I was forwarded or pointed toward this week, that interact a little oddly. First chronologically is from the New York Times, which has a story about how Harvey Mudd College has boosted the number of female computer science majors, by committing serious resources to reforming the intro course (which is required of all…
The Uneasy Balance of Residential Academia
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 27, 2012 I mentioned this in the Links Dump this morning, but Timothy Burke’s post on the inherent tensions in the residential part of small college life is really excellent stuff, and deserves more than the 1000 characters I can quote in Delicious: At Swarthmore this semester, for example, some students were deeply annoyed that the administration…
Scientific Commuting: Some Answers to “How Much Faster?”
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 23, 2012 So, the previous post poses a physics question based on some previous fooling around with modeling my commute: A car starts from rest at the beginning of a straight 1km course, accelerates up to some speed, cruises at constant speed for a while, then decelerates to a stop at the end of the course. A…
Scientific Commuting: How Much Faster?
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 23, 2012 Back in the summer, I did a post mathematically comparing two routes to campus, one with a small number of traffic lights, the other with a larger number of stop signs, and looked at which would be faster. Later on, I did the experiment, too.) Having spent a bunch of time on this, I was…
It’s Not Finished, It’s Just Done
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 15, 2012 There was a nice piece at Inside Higher Ed yesterday on the myth of more time: A lack of confidence in one’s abilities as a writer, researcher, speaker, etc. is at the root of the myth of more time. When a deadline looms, we become acutely aware of the imminent reception of our work by…
How to Give a Good PowerPoint Lecture, 2012
Posted by Chad Orzel on March 5, 2012 My timekeeping course this term is a “Scholars Research Seminar,” which means it’s supposed to emphasize research and writing skills. Lots of these will include some sort of poster session at the end of the term, but I decided I preferred the idea of doing in-class oral presentations. Having assigned that, of course, I felt…
Final Notes on a Toy Model of the Arrow of Time
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 27, 2012 We’re in the home stretch of this term, and it has become clear that I won’t actually be using the toy model of the arrow of time I’ve talked about in the past in my timekeeping class this term. These things happen. Having spent a not-insignificant amount of time playing with the thing, though, I…
Most Difficult Course?
Posted by Chad Orzel on February 16, 2012 Regular reader Johan Larson sends in a good question about academic physics: You have written about teaching various courses in modern physics, a subject that has a fearsome reputation among students for skull-busting difficulty. That suggests a broader question: what is the most difficult course at your university? Or even more broadly, how would one…
