Teaching Philosophy: Experience teaching complex abstract and symbolic material many years in this course indicates that lecture on my part does not lead to deep learning on yours, and in fact detracts significantly from it. Once a student has prepared her/his mind (and students are expected to arrive in class prepared or they degrade the measure of their own education) lecture is of much less consequence than believed by common opinion. In fact, the chemistry publishing market has among the best texts available of any discipline. If you can't learn from them it is unlikely you can learn by any other means. Reliance upon someone to tell you what you are to know deprives you of your own opportunity to advance critical thinking skills including reading comprehension and verbal communication, the major skills that will take you beyond college into lifelong learning. Although I love to lecture and explain, this is not always synonymous with student learning.
FOR MAXIMAL LEARNING TO OCCUR YOU MUST POSITION YOURSELF INSIDE THE REALITY YOU ARE TRYING TO CONTEMPLATE.
Many students, when they know that I will lecture, do not study as they should; in fact, lecture serves as a default by which they need not study and by which they come to class unprepared; they put all their assets in my court, so to speak, and turn the responsibility for the learning process over to me, thus abdicating the critical role they themselves alone can play in the learning process. The secondary gain on the part of faculty and students is great--although unconsciously ignored--when the lecture method is used: students can and do slack off, and faculty need not monitor learning as closely by daily assessment of anything but what they have told students to know; teaching to a test is not and never will be considered deep learning, despite the pressures of consumerism and commodification of services within many sectors of the economy.
With symbolic material such as organic chemistry there are more subtle hurdles to individual student learning than the teacher's lecture on the content of the course can possibly address or which the teacher can possibly know from a cognitive standpoint. These include highly individual-specific cognitive abilities as well as psychological proclivities and resistances to the material itself. The unfortunate result of a traditional lecture system is that students can attend every lecture and yet average very poorly on quizzes and examinations--they are relying on someone to give them an understanding of complex material without having to generate their own associations and learning. In short they are not given the opportunity to come to real terms with their abilities and limitations, nor with the course content itself. You need to rely on your own psyche and cognitive mental apparatus with all its quirks and flaws, and need to work with it the rest of your life, both in the individual and in the social sphere. This course is structured in such a manner this semester that I hope you will learn to do this.
Those students who consistently study ahead of lecture are those who do better on quizzes and examinations. Although even they indicate that my lectures are informative if not enjoyable (save the word 'entertaining' for audience/performer venues, please!), they are able to say this only because they came previously prepared to class to--in fact--understand those lectures, otherwise they would not be able to make such a judgment with any substantial validity.
YOU POSITION YOURSELF IN THE CONTENT OF ANY SUBJECT BY SPEAKING THAT CONTENT TO ANOTHER
You may experience a lag period of a week or so before you get the hang of this method. This is to be expected. It may sometimes even seem that you are not learning at all. It is imperative that you continue to devote yourself to the material as diligently as possible, even if you experience difficulty in reading comprehension. You should study with the aim of (1) knowing the organization of the reading assignment, that is, upon closing your book after studying, be able to say "I read this, this, and this," and (2) being able to work content-based problems when they are put before you. You will get out of this course--and any other--what you put into it. Consistent dedication over time is key.
Also, you must be aware that you will be expected to prepare for material to the best of your ability, even though your text may at times be ambiguous and inadequate for you to do so, and your mental apparatus may balk. (The mental apparatus loves to blame the book or just about anything else, rather than get with the ticket). Overcome your resistances early. You may be surprised how understanding can emerge (1) out of earlier skills you procured in the previous semester, skills that owing to the structure of this course you will have to draw upon in the face of such ambiguity, and (2) out of group processing. Do not think, however, that you can pass this course on the merits of your group alone. Do the calculation in light of the grading scale below. While the group percent may provide you with some forgiveness it will not be enough to pass you through this class.
THE IDEAL IS CREDIT FOR WORKING TO LEARN AND UNDERSTAND THE MATERIAL--NOT FOR ABILITY--IF YOU WORK YOU CANNOT HELP BUT LEARN AND UNDERSTAND
One of the major advantages to this method is that you will have to communicate with your peers to pass this class; this you will do in the course of daily group debriefing and quizzes. In order to facilitate this the course structure requires that I will turn your questions back to you. Hence, you will need to speak, listen, and check the technical terminology which you yourselves will create within your group. Contrast this to a lecture-based method in which you may 'pass' entire semesters without speaking the language you are supposedly learning. An advantage of this method becomes that you will be put in a position to have to understand--make sense of--that which you read. It is all too easy to think that because you have heard and followed a speaker that you understand the material on anything but a superficial visual or auditory level; performance on exams indicates as much. Learning requires a great deal more than this, and the true test of learning is the sense you yourself make, not the mistaken illusion that someone else is able to, has, and will create knowledge out of the material for you with your specific and unique learning style. If you cannot learn the material by this method, do not fool yourself; it is highly doubtful you can learn it any other way.
"IT IS THE WORLD OF WORDS WHICH CREATES THE WORLD OF THINGS."
Jacques Lacan, Ecrits I, Paris: Seuil
Another important and overlooked skill that is difficult to test--for teaching has frequently been noted to be the "impossible profession" (see Nietzsche and Freud, not to mention the plethora of contradictory findings of research in higher education journals) owing to the extent and intangibility of its ramifications--is ability to speak the course content. Obviously, unless oral tests are given in which the student responds, this cannot be easily tested. Even though neither will this be tested in this class, your growing skill in this area is an important asset in both communicating your thoughts within your group as well as beyond the walls of this class. It is imperative that you make every effort to involve yourself in the deliberations of your group. The questions may at times be challenging enough that the "smartest" person in the group will not be able to answer them alone. In order that you can do well on the examinations you need to involve yourself every step of the way by asking questions and interrogating opinions of your other group members, and group members who think they know the answer with certainty must be just as diligent in explaining their views to other group members for criticism. Although you will not hear the material from me in the form of the lecture, you will have the advantage of hearing it from many other individuals in many other articulations.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF A SELF IN RELATION TO OTHER SELVES INVOLVES THE ENUNCIATION OF A SERIES OF SPEAKING POSITIONS. THE TAKING UP OF A POSITION ON AN ISSUE THAT DIRECTLY CONCERNS ONE IS ALWAYS DIFFICULT, BUT IT IS POSSIBLE TO MAINTAIN A CRITICAL REFLECTION ON ONE'S OWN EXPERIENCE AND ON THE VARIOUS POSITIONS/LOCATIONS ONE CHOOSES TO ADOPT.
Henrietta Moore, A Passion For Difference, Indiana University Press, 1994.
In the previous semester you may have seen me and other faculty model what it means to think out loud and to write structures and mechanisms. Now it is your turn. Although the method this semester means greatly increased workload on my part, and although I enjoy the ego gratification that comes from delivering lectures, there are higher goals than my own short-term satisfaction (or yours), and one of them is your learning and your development of skills that you can take beyond this class and beyond college itself. It is my responsibility in this method to direct your learning behind-the-scenes, and it is simply your responsibility to learn.
This is not a new method. I have attended seminars on this method, taught a variety of courses using this method, and myself presented local and national seminars on this method. Overwhelmingly, students were both pleased and surprised with what they found within themselves which made them successful learners.
Here is the routine for each class period:
1. 5 minutes to debrief with members of your group on the reading assignment; it may be to your benefit to begin this before the bell rings;
2. 15 to 20 minutes to take an individual quiz on the assignment;
3. 15 to 20 minutes to take a group quiz on the same assignment;
4. 5 to 10 minutes in which I will speak to specific points on the topic at hand, providing a condensate of the principles in the assignment, and grade quizzes for immediate feedback before the class period ends.
Remember: Overstudy is better than understudy. You may be given assignments that are longer than you THINK you can handle. Everyone is in the same boat. It is up to you to exercise your intelligence and growing judgment to extract the material from the text in order to prepare yourself for group discussion and testing to the best of your ability. You will have to be reasonable in your study time allocation; do not study more than your grade is worth to you--the decision is in your hands. Study to think in terms of first level understanding (summarize major points), then second level (finer points), then specific (actual chemical reactions or nomenclature practiced). NO MATTER WHAT THE SIZE OR THE LEVEL OF THE ASSIGNMENT IT IS IN YOUR INTEREST TO GET AS MUCH OUT OF IT AS YOU POSSIBLY ARE ABLE. Everyone is in the same boat, if you are someone looking for consolation, unlike life where the playing field is rarely level. Keep perspective: for a 10 point quiz, 5 hours of study may be to the detriment of your other classes--you alone must be the judge of what your grades are worth to you.
The in-text problems are best to do for daily quizzes. End-of-chapter problems randomly chosen are good for review before exams. Do, however, look at the end-of-chapter problems as you progress through the chapter or you may be surprised.
UNTIL YOU HAVE EXPLAINED WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED TO SOMEONE, IT REMAINS DOUBTFUL YOU HAVE LEARNED AT ALL
Organic chemistry is a language. This means that it is replete with symbols and with meaning that exceeds the symbolization itself. You must put pencil to paper when you study. To know the material means that you should be able to represent it yourself in both verbal and symbolic form as you study, then in verbal form in your group. It may be wise to jot down notes during group work to jog your memory during individual study time.
Final Note: If it has been more than one semester since you had the prerequisite to this course, make good use of the index of the text! There is no excuse for not using the material available to you.