TRANSCRIPT OF TAPED INTERVIEW
with
Professor T J KEMP
Key:
TK
Tim KELLY
HN
Hilary NESI
PTJK Professor T J Kemp
HN
O.K. Is the seminar a mode of delivery in the sciences?
PTJK
Well it’s not a method of delivery in quite the same sense that it is in the
Humanities. This is very much, I guess, a cultural part of the subject. In
science one is trying to help students understand different concepts, to be
able to employ problem solving skills, and these don’t lend themselves to the
development of student opinion on matters, but rather student understanding.
And so, although we really don’t have anything quite like a seminar, we have
a variety of class discussion situations where there is strong student
interaction and there is expected to be a student contribution. Now the probably the smallest group would be the tutorial, and in a typical science
department - you know, such as Warwick, you would probably have a little
group of maybe four, five or six, and you would ask the students to prepare
for tutorial by either reading something - a chapter in a particular textbook, to
talk about some concept, or very often you would give them a number of
problems to solve, all of which would focus in a particular area. And you
would be wanting the students to tackle the problems and then, often, to hand
in 2 or 3 sheets of their attempts at the problems, even if they are sort of very
imperfect. At least it gives the tutor some idea of where they don’t
understanding things, and, of course, if they hand in nothing at all, then the
tutor won’t be able to be in that sort of very useful position. So they are
encouraged to hand stuff in a day or two before, so the tutor can look at it,
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and then when the tutorial class starts the tutor might say, “Well, everyone
was able to do this particular problem, so there is no need for me to go
through that. However, most of you really got stuck halfway through the
second problem and clearly the idea of - you know - abstastentropy, or
something like that, is really quite difficult. So I’d like maybe to talk a bit
about that. But I did notice that somebody was almost there. Maybe you
could tell me really how far - you know - where you found the difficulty,
because clearly you understand part of the problem.” So you then draw that
student into the discussion if you possibly can.
Students, of course, are human beings and they are a bit shy, particularly the
ones in the first year, but I think a sympathetic and kind tutor can be
successful in drawing them in. But although the students, you know, make a
contribution, they are expected to talk and you can ask them questions
directly, the aim of this classroom is really to convey understanding of
difficult, you know, concepts in science, ????, medicine or whatever. Rather
than, as in a humanities subject, getting them to read, say, a particular book,
say a novel by George Elliott or something, and then to discuss what the
author was trying to convey.
So it’s a more of an objective approach. You’ve got an objective subject,
with a hard, factual, conceptual base, and you’re trying to help the student to
understand the basis of the subject. And these can be quite difficult
concepts, and you’ve got quite a job in hand to do this, but that - you know what a tutorial aims to do. And it supports the lecture courses. You - you
have the - you’ve had lectures in this topic area, and the problems are directly
centred on that, and it’s really a kind of test for the tutor how well they’ve
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understood the lecture material, and indeed for the student likewise. So, this
is how the tutorial works for it.
Now you - there are other modes of delivery which are focused on some
rather larger classes. For example, if you had perhaps a topic in the final
year, which was really quite advanced, and specialised, and maybe there
weren’t very many academics who could profitably give tutorials in that area
themselves, you would perhaps go to a problem class situation - where again
you give out to the students before the problem class, 3 or 4 problems on a
sheet, and you would divide the class perhaps up into groups of 6. And each
group would take one of the questions, and it would be different from the
ones the other groups took. And so the idea here is that the students work it
out as a team on, say, this particular question, which might have several
parts. And then you ask the teams to work on this and about a week later you
have the problem class. And what you try and do here is to ask each team to
nominate a leader. The leader will come forward and they will then deliver to
the rest of the class their responses to the question and the tutor, of course,
will encourage them all the way through - particularly when they are right.
But when they have gone grievously wrong, of course, he then has to
intervene and indicate where they have gone wrong and where they might go
right. And all the time, of course, he’s trying to encourage the students to
take a kind of positive view of all of this. And this actually works really
quite well, I think with students particularly, you know, in their later years
because they’ve got to know each other rather well. They’ve gained in
confidence from maybe a tutorial situation, and so this is really quite a good
way of handling quite a large class. You can take a class of maybe 30 or 40,
split them into 6, and you could then give maybe 10 minutes to each group to
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deal with their question. And of course the rest of the class is listening
avidly because they know these sorts of questions are the questions that
might well feature in examination papers, and part of the outcome of the
sciences: “Can you do this sort of thing?” And so this kind of problem
solving class is a way of doing it.
Another variation is the workshop. And in the workshop you have - well,
again it can take a couple of forms - but for example, I guess in physics or in
chemistry in particular, you have often the problem of students understanding
how to interpret spectra. Now these - this is information about substances
obtained with various machines, and you end up with a kind of picture, with
a series of peaks and so forth, measured against frequencies, and you
measure maybe intensities versus frequencies, and you have all these peaks.
The students are asked to try and understand, explain where they have come
from. And in particular what is a molecule? What’s the substance that has
produced all these peaks? And to organise such a class, what you do is to
split the class up into again groups of maybe 2s or 3s, so there would be quite
a lot of these groups. And then you would have an assistant teacher, maybe
in charge of 3 or 4 of the group. So each teacher would maybe have 4 groups
of say 3, 3 students. And as the students begin to work through these
spectras interpretations - and you often give them little manuals to sort of
help them get started, because basically it’s not a knowledge or textbook, it’s
a skill, I would say rather more. And as the students begin to work through
if they get stuck this person is constantly moving around, the assistant
teacher, and guiding them forwards. And the spectrum interpretation is a
very important part of chemistry, and it features strongly in physics and in
fact modern aspects of biology as well. So it’s an all-round skill, and this
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kind of spectrum interpretation class is a good example of a workshop, and
where it works quite successfully.
The other area where it works rather well is a computer workshop, and in a
computer workshop you are trying to train the students to maybe use some
really quite difficult software that is specific for scientific discipline - like
modelling enzimes. Enzime drug interaction - or something like that, will
come in. Biochemistry, chemistry, maybe molecular biology, and here you
have the class in a room with maybe 25 PCs and you probably again have 4
or 5 assistant teachers as well as the class leader, and basically the class
leader will explain to the students at the outset what they are trying to do and
then - and every student will have their own PC - so you take a class of 25 at
a time, and the assistant teachers will maybe have a group of 4 or 5 of these.
And they move around between them trying to help every student get on to
the next line, or the next command, or to understand the next thing they are
supposed to do.
And these kind of workshops, again, are really quite valued by the students
because it helps them, you know, progress their knowledge in a kind of
friendly environment. They feel they’ve got their own personal trainer, if
you like, seeing them through their - what looks like rather a daunting
software package at the start. So that’s another vehicle for students to have a
direct contact with the teacher. The student can - you know - progress at
their own rate, and the classroom teacher knows how each student is doing
and can identify those who are really struggling, and they can maybe arrange
extra sessions for them. So that’s, you know, another avenue for teaching out
side the formal lecture situation.
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HN
Are students assessed - either formally or informally on their performance?
PTJK
Yes. Yes. I think that’s both formally and informally. Informal assessment
- I think all the tutors always keep a record of attendance, of course. But also
a record of how they have fared in preparing for the tutorial. You know,
what effort they’ve put into it. You know, even if they’ve made a lot of
mistakes, you know, they will get credit for effort. And then at the end of the
year when you are assessing the student’s overall performance, the tutors will
put in an element saying you know “The student’s worked very hard.”
“They’ve struggled quite often, but they have put in real effort. They have
improved their understanding.” On the other hand, if there’s a student has
shown poor attendance - always seems to have colds; always seems to have
some sort of excuse - you would say, you know “Well, there are signs of, you
know, detachment, if you like, from the whole process and you would make a
note of that as well.
In the problem solving classes say the computer workshops - there is a kind
of grade given for performance in these. Because it’s - you know, I suppose
to a degree subjective - it’s not a very large component. It maybe for a
whole year, if you do one workshop a week it might count for, say, 5% of the
whole credit for the year. But it’s a very useful 5% to have. It’s a 5% you
can’t really afford to throw away - and yet it’s not subject, I suppose to wild
variations in marking, you know, from the tutors. No, the contributory
component is not highly significant, such as would really influence the final
outcome, and we still rely in the sciences very much on unseen examinations,
because - we want to know, can - do students understand this? Can they
explain how this is converted to that? And can they solve such-and-such a
problem? And I suppose the - many of these classes I have talked about are
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geared towards imparting the skills, so the students know what is expected of
them when the examination time comes round. And, you know, this is the
thing one always tries to persuade them to make the effort that they are
improving these problem solving skills, but science at the end of the day is a
problem-solving discipline. And I think it’s because scientists know that at
the end of such a training they are rather good at solving problems, they tend
to get job offers from a huge range of employers - anything, you know, from
financial analysis in the City of London, right across to getting vocational
jobs in hospitals or hospital analysts or something like that. So if you are you know, if you pick up a good degree in chemistry or physics or biology,
you are not restricted to being a scientist - although we would, of course,
very much hope, you know, a lot of them would become practising scientists.
You can do many other things because you’ve acquired these skills. You
have this sense of numeracy, - you know, a sense of balance, a sense of
analysing the whole complexity of a problem because some of the problems
in science are really very complex indeed. And I think all scientists are
always learning. I mean, I would always say that I learn new things all the
time, you know, as a scientist - and quite often you actually learn from the
students, because you know sometimes they will solve a problem in a
different way from what you would expect. And, you know, you just stand
back in admiration at that.
HN
Some students have problems expressing their ideas in spoken language -
PTJK
Yeah.
HN
either because English isn’t their first language, or because they are rather
shy. What kind of advice would you give to a student like that? - about
participation in these circumstances?
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PTJK
It is, you know, I can recognise that as a problem. I think with first year
students in particular - you know a lot of British students are very shy at
expressing themselves. They have probably not been in such a situation
before. I think some overseas students also find it a little bit difficult as
well. I think it’s very much the duty of the tutor to try and help to draw
people in to discussion. And you can often assist the student in doing this
by, you know, NOT for example giving, you know, a rather nervous student
an extremely difficult question. You can often - in trying to develop a line
of argument you can take it through stages, and you can take such a science
student, you can say, “Well, I think today we’re going to talk - we’d like to
talk about - oh - different forms of carbon, and I guess everybody’s familiar
with some forms of carbon. Now what forms of carbon are you familiar
with?” And they can say, “Well, everyone in Kansas thinks of carbon in the
form of coal.” And then you can say, “Well, have you any idea what the
structural array of atoms is, you know, in coal? What is the kind of structure
they adopt?” and you - most people know it’s graphite, so you simply build
up their confidence by asking them questions where there’s a very good
chance they know the answer. You’re not out to humiliate people. You’re
out to try and draw them in. But, as you sort of do this over a number of
weeks and they do gradually develop the ability to talk about things, you can
then maybe put some rather more taxing things their way. So it’s really kind
of highly developmental. They also, of course, in a tutorial situation, they
see the others - the more confident students happily chattering away -
HN
M’m.
PTJK
- and they then see - they know how it’s done, and what is expected.
Because it may well be that where they - whatever country they’ve come
from - maybe there is not a strong tradition of student participation in this
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way. But they can, as it were, learn from fellow students. So, you try and
draw them into this network, really, using the confident students as pacemakers, and you know, and try to develop the shyer, the shyer student.
HN
M’m.
PTJK
Yeah.
HN
And how would you advise a student to prepare for one of these classes?
And what would you expect them to be doing after the class, in relation to
what they’ve done in class?
PTJK
O.K. In prepare - if a class was based around the notion of solving some
particular problems, or reading a chapter about a rather difficult concept and
we were going to talk about the concept - I mean a thing that always baffles I
think first year students in chemistry particularly - but also in physics, is the
duality of the electron. The fact that the electron can behave as a wave, but
also it can behave as a particle, and it is very hard for the human mind to
comprehend how something could be two such diverse things at the same
time. And so you can get them maybe to read a particular chapter in a book
that deals with this rather well, and then you can talk about ???? particle
duality, but then you also try and firm it up by bringing in the key
experiments that were done to show, you know, absolutely the electron can
behave as a wave, because it defracts, but also it behaves as a particle
because you can measure its mass and its velocity. So it’s a bit like a tiny
bullet. Now, if you get the student to read the chapter you can then go
through some of these experiments. They may have come across them, or
they may not. But when you sort of put them - you know - write them up on
the board in a kind of crystal clear way, or you perhaps do an overhead of a
electron defraction pattern, then the students, I think, begin to get, you know,
a better idea of that concept. And so you try and divert these ideas in a
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tutorial, and at the end of the tutorial - well you always close by asking them
- you know - what was the most difficult part of the tutorial? Or, you know,
do you now understand something you didn’t understand before? I’m afraid
they often will say, “Yes.” - even if they don’t really fully understand it, but I
think you’ve got to give them the chance to say, “No, I don’t understand it,
and you haven’t really explained it very well.” And so you try and explain it
another way.
If it’s more of a problem-based class, then what you are trying to do is you
get the student to tackle the problems before the class, to find out, you know,
how skilled they are at doing it, doing the problems, and indeed whether
there are strong deficits in their knowledge. Because if you learn this from
looking at their attempts at the problems, you know where the problem lies,
and maybe in one particular lecture which they have had, from one of the
academics, he hasn’t explained something awfully well. And so, again, you
can take a little group, and you can go through it again. And you can use, of
course, the luxury of having just a small number - to go through the thing
really quite slowly, and keep stopping and asking them, “Do you understand
this? Do you understand that?” And so you can take it through almost line
by line. So the tutorials have that very kind of supportive role in all of this.
But again, as I said at the outset, it’s a far cry, I suppose really, from the
student forming an opinion about an economic policy, or the writing of a
novel, or the quality of a piece of music, or something, which would feature
in the humanities or the social sciences. In science it’s really all about
understanding things.
HN
If you’re a student and you don’t understand something, would it be better
not to say and go away and read it by yourself and try to work it out by
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yourself? And would it be better for the student to admit that they don’t
understand in class?
PTJK
Yeah, I think it’s best to admit it, because I think the tutor needs to know
what particular student is having what particular problem. But also, if it
turns out that a lot of students are having the same problem, then there’s
clearly been a problem in the initial class delivery and the lecture. The
lecture is a very important part of science. There’s a huge amount of - a huge
factual base - a huge conceptual base to communicate, and they have got to
handle this kind of - this mass of knowledge. And it’s therefore very
important if, as a key concept, that a lot of the people in the class are not
grasping, then the class teacher must know about this. And you - and
sometimes you can then put on an extra class -
HN
M’m.
PTJK
- where you simply go through this one thing, you know, very slowly. So we
have these kind of ancillary lectures, if you like - well, we call them revision
lectures - where you don’t have quite the kind of formal didactic sense of a
normal lecture, but rather you say, “Well, I know you’ve all had problems
with this. I’m going to go through it slowly today.” You might give them a
hand-out, so they’re not busy writing. They can simply look at what you’ve
put on the handout. You have an overhead. And you work through the thing
line by line, by line until - you know - you believe that they have actually got
it. And you pause at points and say, “Now, do you still have any problems
with this?” and, you know, some of the braver ones will say, “Yes.” And so
you say, “Right, I’ll go through it again.”
HN
So it’s good to be brave?
PTJK
It’s good to be brave, yes. I think you go - if you say, “Right, I’ll read it up
myself.” - well, that’s certainly an approach, but you can’t do that too often
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because you’ll then saddle yourself with such a huge reading digest to work
through that you’ll simply won’t have the time, and the subject will actually
get on top of you. And perhaps rather depress you. And I think if it turns out
that, you know, that there’s a particular topic that’s really hard to convey,
and the class really hasn’t got to grips with it at all, the class teacher must
know about it. And steps must be taken to help the class through this, by
maybe putting on, you know, one of these rather informal - almost workshop
type - of revision lectures, if you like - where you go over the same material a
second time, much more slowly, maybe with more examples as well. So,
you know, if you’re brave you will get more of a service.
HN
O.K. Thank you very much.
TK
Yes, thank you very much.
HN
I don’t think we’ve got any more to add. Thank you. That’s very useful.
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