Dr. Tim Cooper on Motivating Students

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Dr. Cooper’s primary method for motivating students is to show as much enthusiasm for physics as possible. He does this by relating what the students are learning in class to real world situations that the students are familiar with or interested in. In a study published by Scientific American/Nature, it found the more science courses the teacher has taken the deeper their understanding of the science, and the better they are at teaching scientific principles. This love of science and enthusiasm is passed on to the students, making it a more positive learning environment.

Dr. Cooper has his first year students do a quiz and hand in homework each week. The quiz questions are handed out at the beginning of the course, and during the quiz only the numbers are changed. The students like knowing exactly what it is expected of them and most do well on the quizzes. This seems like ‘free marks’, but it does mean the students learn how to solve about 40 questions well, and from this knowledge base they can easily generalise the skills to other problems. In addition, the students do at least 10 questions per week that are hand graded. Students appreciate an instructor who takes time to demonstrate the correct way to solve the problems as well as show them where they went wrong in their solutions. Students also value feedback so returning graded homework in the following class is very helpful. It takes organisation but it is very important because the sooner students get feedback from the instructor, the more motivated they are to remember and care about the work they have done.