The Yale Physics 36th Hanan Rosenthal Memorial Lecture was given October 27, 2009 by David Pritchard, MIT.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - Are They Really Learning, and What Seems to Help?
Are students learning? If so, what activities are they learning from? What learning do they remember at graduation? What student habits are helpful or detrimental to learning? We must be able to answer these questions in order to improve our educational process. I will describe data that answer these questions, as well as a software tutor that measurably helps students learn. Finally I shall address a key question - what do we really want students to learn? These studies were done in introductory college physics.
The Hanan Rosenthal Memorial Lecture was established in honor of physicist Hanan Rosenthal, a brilliant graduate student at Columbia University and instructor at Yale. This annual lecture in atomic physics, Rosenthal’s field, is given by a distinguished leader in the field. Originally, the lecture series alternated between Columbia and Yale, which were both significant in Hanan Rosenthal’s career; in recent years, the lecture has been held only at Yale University.