I love cracking open the morning newspaper and reading about somebody I’ve met (except, of course, if they’ve died or been arrested). Yesterday’s nerdy pleasure was a story in the New York Times about improving undergraduate teaching at Harvard that quoted physicist Eric Mazur. Professor Mazur was on a task force at Harvard that called for a new focus on learning and teaching, recommending that innovation and success in instruction be valued as highly as research and publication. It’s important, the task force report notes, that renowned scholars engage with students rather than just lecture to them.

This was the subject of a lunchtime brown bag talk that Professor Mazur gave to staff at the Exploratorium a few months ago. (Stephanie Chasteen, a postdoc at the Exploratorium recorded his talk which you can download from her website, along with Eric’s power point presentation). Eric Mazur is an advisor to the Exploratorium’s Nano project, part of a network of museums and science institutions funded by the National Science Foundation to improve the public’s understanding about nanoscience and technology. In his talk, Eric described how he gave up lectures in his introductory physics courses when he realized they weren’t working and that his students had failed to assimilate basic knowledge. Then he tried something radical: instead of providing answers, he started asking his students questions and giving them problems to solve in class. The students input answers in hand-held devices, consulting each other on possible solutions and then, as a class, they discuss the problem and its solution. In this model of inquiry learning, the students’ role is to think and discuss problems; the teacher’s role is to guide a deeper understanding of the underlying principles. This fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills rather than rote memorization. As Professor Mazur is quoted in the Times, “You have to be able to tackle the new and unfamiliar, not just the familiar, in everything.”

Just for fun, here’s one of Eric Mazur’s typical class exercises—can you solve this simple circuit problem more accurately than Harvard physics students?