Atlantis Tutorials and the Sciences

The Atlantis Project was set up to examine the possibilities of alternate teaching structures for universities in general. Naturally one aspect of our research is the teaching of “hard” scientific subjects. Many of the problems the science and engineering faculties face are pertinent to the Atlantis proposal.
While North American universities have a deserved reputation for science and engineering, most of them are also faced with financial crises. The quality of classroom teaching suffers as a result. Given that it’s not practical to communicate the bulk of necessary technical knowledge through tutorials, the best use of tutorials will be as a complement to the current lecture-based approach.
Based on past experience, the addition of tutorials should raise student energy and enthusiasm, while reducing stress and the high drop-out rates. If student enthusiasm can be stimulated, more work can be done in the same amount of time, increasing efficiency and lowering costs.
One of the main tenets of the Atlantis system is the notion of “operating temperature“. If there is an atmosphere of interest and excitement in an academic community, large or small, its productivity will almost always increase. What Atlantis proposes for the teaching of the sciences is to create an environment where this “chemistry” is encouraged.

So we raise the following points:

▪ The lecture-based system by itself can no longer be considered an efficient use of time, energy, and resources, given the publication and favorable reception of Richard Light’s Second Report of the Harvard Assessment Seminars (1992), as well as the more general findings of the organizational studies by W. Edwards Deming, Martin Rutte, the Socio-Tech group, as well as many others.
▪ Tutorials should be considered a primary teaching method, given that commerce and industry are increasingly looking for staff with both personal initiative and experience in working in project teams.

▪ Basic science and engineering courses can now be studied through textbooks, videos, and computer programs. Listening to lectures and taking notes are no longer the only way to absorb scientific knowledge.

▪ Increased efficiency can be achieved through students actually giving lectures or seminars themselves, rather than simply noting things down.

▪ Senior students can be employed as tutors, either for academic or for financial remuneration.

▪ College and faculty ambiance encourage should promote student-initiatedorganized discussions groups.

▪ If present methods remain unchanged, we lay ourselves open to the charge thatwe are training high class technicians rather than thinking individuals. In an age when technology is the predominant force this trend could be considered negligent at best, and possibly dangerous.

Some science teachers are already experimenting with tutorials:

▪ Michael Robinson, (Magdalen College, Oxford, Org. Chem.): Reports that at Oxford six tutorial topics spread through year permit deeper investigation of selected topics in organic chemistry.

▪ Gillian Christie: Touche Ross management consultant on change in McGill University reports that use of practical and stimulating exercises in chemistry classes, demands creative use of lecture material: eg. "Why is swimming pool water blue? Why has asphalt been found so suitable for road construction?"

▪ Michael Brown, Supervisor in Physics, Robinson College, Cambridge reports on his use of small group tutorials.

▪ Professor Anthony Whitehead, Department of Chemistry, McGill finds that small group teaching is possible for more senior students, who can be challenged to lecture on the new material, rather than be lectured at.

There was an important series of articles entitled “Innovations on Campus” in SCIENCE, vol 266, 4 Nov 94, pp. 843-93. A scan of these articles reveals that many of the problems cited by Atlantis are now widely recognized in science faculties, and that many elements of the solutions we advocate are being tried out here and there.For instance, there seems to be fairly widespread criticism that:

— traditional courses don’t prepare [students] for the real world and traditional teaching methods don’t engage their attention.”(843)

— Lecture courses and “cookbook style labs” do not nurture critical thinking (845).

— The wastage factor is becoming serious: 40% of PhD students drop out.

— A large proportion of faculty members are indifferent to the innovative practices, or just too busy to consider new methods (857-8, 884).

Solutions, too, run in parallel to these problems:

— Mentoring in smaller classes, and a more intimate ambiance offers advantages over large classes on big name campuses (850).

— Serious research for undergraduates, working in teams rather than scrambling for the higher places on the Bell curve, seems to be working successfully (851, 857, 870, 875, 883).

— Students are not always seen as a troublesome burden in an otherwise interesting career: “The old “weed-em-out” mentality is now passe in many places.”

— The internet is being used as a forum for the exchange of new ideas, and even “computer tutorials.” (858) Computer graphics are being used as a powerful adjunct to the verbal explication from the podium (893).

These are all good first steps, but they fall short of our more radical Atlantis proposals. There is no real sense yet of the undergraduate being invited in to the collegium as, from the first day, a kind of junior faculty member, with its corresponding privileges and responsibilities. There is no requirement yet for a student to prepare for his studies with something of the same intensity as a teacher preparing to give the course. There is no concentration yet on one main topic each term, with one central tutorial on which everything focuses, so that the student has a chance to build up a personal dossier of truly first-class work. And there is yet no tutor to enter into that Socratic dialogue with the tutorial group, which appears tobe the most efficient — as well as the most humane— mode of advancing knowledge and of nurturing educational maturity.

ATLANTIS TUTORIALS AND THE SCIENCES

Based on past experience, the addition of tutorials should raise student energy and enthusiasm, while reducing stress and the high drop-out rates. If student enthusiasm can be stimulated, more work can be done in the same amount of time, increasing efficiency and lowering costs.

So we raise the following points:

▪ Tutorials should be considered a primary teaching method, given that commerce and industry are increasingly looking for staff with both personal initiative and experience in working in project teams.

▪ Basic science and engineering courses can now be studied through textbooks, videos, and computer programs. Listening to lectures and taking notes are no longer the only way to absorb scientific knowledge.

▪ Increased efficiency can be achieved through students actually giving lectures or seminars themselves, rather than simply noting things down.

▪ Senior students can be employed as tutors, either for academic or for financial remuneration.

▪ College and faculty ambiance encourage should promote student-initiatedorganized discussions groups.

▪ If present methods remain unchanged, we lay ourselves open to the charge thatwe are training high class technicians rather than thinking individuals. In an age when technology is the predominant force this trend could be considered negligent at best, and possibly dangerous.

Some science teachers are already experimenting with tutorials:

▪ Michael Robinson, (Magdalen College, Oxford, Org. Chem.): Reports that at Oxford six tutorial topics spread through year permit deeper investigation of selected topics in organic chemistry.

▪ Michael Brown, Supervisor in Physics, Robinson College, Cambridge reports on his use of small group tutorials.

▪ Professor Anthony Whitehead, Department of Chemistry, McGill finds that small group teaching is possible for more senior students, who can be challenged to lecture on the new material, rather than be lectured at.

— traditional courses don’t prepare [students] for the real world and traditional teaching methods don’t engage their attention.”(843)

— Lecture courses and “cookbook style labs” do not nurture critical thinking (845).

— The wastage factor is becoming serious: 40% of PhD students drop out.

— A large proportion of faculty members are indifferent to the innovative practices, or just too busy to consider new methods (857-8, 884).

Solutions, too, run in parallel to these problems:

— Mentoring in smaller classes, and a more intimate ambiance offers advantages over large classes on big name campuses (850).

— Serious research for undergraduates, working in teams rather than scrambling for the higher places on the Bell curve, seems to be working successfully (851, 857, 870, 875, 883).

— Students are not always seen as a troublesome burden in an otherwise interesting career: “The old “weed-em-out” mentality is now passe in many places.”

— The internet is being used as a forum for the exchange of new ideas, and even “computer tutorials.” (858) Computer graphics are being used as a powerful adjunct to the verbal explication from the podium (893).