Multi-section Freshman Classes with Laboratories: Lecture as Intro vs. Lecture as Wrap-up

摘要

A common instructional model for freshman engineering is the lecture/laboratory model. In this model, students usually spend two to four hours per week in a large lecture section typically of one hundred or more students, and three to six hours per week in small laboratory (or recitation) sections typically of twenty or fewer students. Although not universal, the most common implementation of this instructional model is that lecture introduces material of a given "unit" while laboratory (or recitation) sections are used to provide hands on, detailed experience with applying knowledge introduced in assigned readings and lecture. The paradigm on which this implementation is rooted would be along the lines that students need a framework for understanding before they can apply material of a given unit, and that such a framework is best developed by students reading assigned material then hearing a professor go over the same material to emphasize important points. There is a critical flaw in the standard lecture-before-lab implementation: it depends on students reading assigned material before lecture. If not, then lecture is unintelligible to students who have not read the assigned readings supposing the instructor hits the "high" or "hard" points of a unit, or lecture becomes a replacement for assigned readings supposing the instructor simply "plows through" material from the assigned readings. Neither of these two results is desirable, and neither places the freshman learner in a position to actively engage in her own learning.