Chapter 3 Learning to Teach in a Technologically Complex Setting
¶During this decade of hiring new faculty, the setting for the paradigms courses had changed. The ‘dedicated paradigms classroom’ that the initial faculty had argued for so passionately and finally obtained during the first decade had served small classes of 15 to 30 students. This classroom had a 'cozy' feel, with students sitting together in groups of three at rectangular tables, with each table furnished with a computer. The instructor could circulate among these tables with ease, keeping an eye on almost all of the groups while working momentarily with one. The instructor also could readily engage the whole class in conversation or have groups present their work on large whiteboards to one another, all speaking in a normal way. The instructor also could choose to write on a long blackboard in a traditional fashion, place transparencies on an overhead projector, or use a computer projector with which to project simulations or other engaging demonstrations on a large screen that all could readily see.
Now with larger classes of nearly 40 students, the paradigm courses meet in a big oblong room with a ‘distant’ feel. Students sit at large round tables, where they work in three groups of three, each group with its own laptop computer. The instructor can circulate among the tables but not easily maintain a sense of what is happening across the room. The instructor wears a wireless microphone so all can hear what the instructor is saying but students need to be reminded to project their voices during a whole group discussion or be passed a portable microphone as each one speaks. The distance between students at opposite ends of the room thus makes developing an atmosphere of sharing ideas in a conversation difficult.
The instructor can write in the traditional fashion on a series of three large whiteboard surfaces; the camera projects a video of the instructor to multiple screens on the walls around the room; students watch a nearby screen to see what the instructor is writing on a whiteboard that is too far away to see well from many of the tables; each table has a control that students can switch to show the particular whiteboard on which the instructor is writing. When turning to face the class, the instructor often is talking to the back heads of students looking away at screens on the wall. Making eye-to-eye contact is difficult as is interpreting informal feedback expressed through students' faces and body language. These aspects of the classroom inhibit developing a feeling of community among the students with one another and with the instructor. The most recently hired faculty have been learning to teach the paradigms in physics courses in this technologically complex setting.