This semester was the third set of Compass lectures I’ve organized since coming to Cal and it was probably the best I’ve seen since being here.  The lecture series has always done what they were intended to do- expose undergraduates to current on-campus research.   This semester I found them particularly meaningful, not just because I’m finally reaching the point where I can actually understand most of the content, but because it helps remind us of what science really is.  Being a third year undergrad studying physics is challenging, to say the least, and this semester I found myself taking the two most difficult and time consuming classes I have ever taken in my life.  My school life was characterized by so much self doubt about my ability to be a physicist.  But every other week, going to the Compass lectures reminded me why I’m spending hours in the reading room on work that seems meaningless- because at the end of all of this lies really badass research.  Every lecture inspired me and made me fall in love with physics again, after weeks of frustration.  I know that this sounds like an abusive relationship, but I guess what I am trying to say is that physics is hard.  The path to becoming a physicist certainly is not an easy one, but it is indescribably cool and enables you to do the most amazing things.  Thanks to Josh Bloom, Yury Kolomensky, Geoff Marcy, Feng Wang and Hal Haggard for reminding me of this.  You guys are awesome!

As I evolve in my scientific career, I  understand more and more the incredible importance of group work.  Progress in science depends upon others- the notion of the isolated scientist making breakthroughs with his/her abilities alone, though popularized by mainstream media  (see, for example, Iron Man) is inconsistent with how science actually progresses.  Scientists are, first and importantly, humans.  One of the distinguishing characteristics of our species is our capacity for cooperation and socialization.  This characteristic gives us vast power for taping the collective intelligence of our species to understand nature and engineer technology.  This goes beyond summing up individual contributions.  It is my experience that we are most powerful when working together on a problem.   This experience is corroborated by a recent study published in Science: “Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups”

In this study, researchers presented groups of subjects with a variety of cognitive tasks.  The aim of this study was to understand to what extent the collective intelligence of groups is determined by the abilities of individuals within the group, and what other factors contribute to collective intelligence.  What they found was that groups have a general intelligence similar to the way that individuals do- that is, if a group is good at solving one kind of difficult puzzle, they also tend to be good at solving a different kind of puzzle.  Furthermore, the intelligence of the groups was not strongly correlated to the average or maximum intelligence of the group members.

This is a fascinating result: groups have an intelligence that does not come from the individual intelligence of its members but from something else.

So what does determine group intelligence?  The researchers found that social sensitivity, equality in speaking turns and the presence of females in the group were factors that positively correlated with collective intelligence.   Since the women in their study scored higher on social sensitivity tests (consistent with previous results), the factors they cite are correlated.

In science education, the focus is on content and problem solving knowledge- and there is no question that these are important.  But given the importance of group work in science and the undeniable fact that scientists are people too- and thus subject to human psychology- more emphasis must be placed on learning how to work together.

Hey everyone,

It’s that time of year again!  The Academic Activities Committee has worked hard to put together an awesome set of lectures for this fall’s Lecture Series.  As always, the lecture runs from 4-5 in 325 Leconte (Cyclotron Room) with tea and cookies in the foyer at 3:30.

Here is a list of this semester’s talks:

See you there!

Gina and Isha

This post is a little late:  the 2010 summer program was concluded last Saturday, 8/21.  Which,  in blog time, is like 10,000 years ago.  But I’m going to blog about it anyway, belatedly.

I feel lucky to have worked with the people who made this year’s summer program a success.  We had amazing teachers who were willing to experiment with a new classroom structure, students who, though hesitant at first, really embraced the model of groupwork based learning, and an exciting level of involvement from older Compass students.

For me, there were many highlights of the summer program: climbing above of the Berkeley fog to watch the Perseids meteor shower with students who had never seen the milky way, the water balloon fight at 7 in the morning, the trip to the Altamont Pass wind farm and stargazing on Mt Diablo, the Sunday night swing dance and mixer with the PREP students, seeing the students’ final presentations, and most of all, just getting to know 17  smart, lively, great people.

The program was concluded with a commencement ceremony, where we watched a picture slideshow of the 2 weeks, individually acknowledged each participant, teacher and organizer, and shared pizza and cake.  This is the first year we did some sort of semi-official commencement ceremony, and I think it was a nice way to conclude the summer program.

But just because the summer program is over, does not mean that the 17 students who did it are done with Compass- oh no, as we like to say, once a Compass student, always a Compass student.  There’s much more in store for them.  For the Fall, they’re taking Physics 98, a class designed for Compass students to learn about problem solving; they are matched up with mentors to provide them with advice and support throughout the academic year; there are Compass  lectures to help them learn about cutting edge research at Berkeley; office hours for tutoring;  and of course, opportunities to get involved with organizing Compass activities for the academic year and next year’s summer program….which is only 11.5 months away.

Ordinary class setting
Time in class: 1 hour
Lecture time: 55 min
Hands-on time: Once in a blue moon
Learning: Regurgitate everything you memorized

Coming from a school with 2500 students and 530 students in my graduating class alone, it was close to impossible for teachers to give anything but lectures. The teachers believed that lectures was the most effective way to teach curriculum for the oh-so-dreaded AP exams. Rarely did we have entertaining projects and opportunities to grow on our own.

Since this refers to an AA meeting for lectureholics, I must confess that I liked the lectures. I have always had a good memory, so all I needed to do was write down as much information as possible and come the test remember it. Naturally when I arrived at Compass, I did not know what to expect. However I reasoned that since we’re working with graduate students we were gonna get some interesting lectures. WRONG!!!

Compass is anything but the ordinary classroom. We are truly challenged and encouraged to grow in our logical, mathematical, and conceptual reasoning. This gives us a “feel” of being a real researcher. We have questions and observations with no real idea of what it all means. All in all, it is a giant step away from the lectures. This is something really new to me, but I really like it.

I guess I’ve finally lost my “addiction” to lectures. At first, I was really needing a lecture. After being on “autopilot” for all summer, I couldn’t possibly remember everything. But by the end of the first week I reached an epiphany, thanks of course to the peer collaboration. Now I realize that I don’t need a lecture. I learn by questioning, debating, wondering, collaborating, and solving technical problems.

Thanks to Compass, I’ve been lecture free for 5 days. And I like this change.

Just a quick update on yesterday’s trip to the SSL.

Not even the gloomy August weather could deter the Compass trip to the Space Sciences Laboratory this year! Having gone to the SSL when I was in the summer program, and loving it, I was super excited to lead this year’s students up there.

The bus ride up the Hill line was fairly uneventful, but provided some spectacular views (despite the weather) of the East Bay. Stuart Bale, lab director and professor extrodinaire greeted us at the lab and began with a short discussion about what the SSL is all about. I think it would be great if students interested in the stuff they do took his advice and look for the undergraduate posts up there in April.

The group then proceeded to go look at a couple labs around the facility. I, and it seems many of the students were very amused with seeing a large piece of space-borne equipment (I don’t remember what, exactly) being displayed in a coffin stripped of its outer casing.  We also were able to see the control center and some aquisition of data as a satellite flew over Wisconsin or some other non-California (and thus inconsequential) state.  Unfortunately we were not able to see one of the labs Professor Bale intended us to see.

Finally we got to go see the awesome view from the patio area of the lab, and managed to witness the fury of Berkeley August unleashing dark clouds like molted sheep suspiciously creeping about  the hills. And a great panoramic view.

Hope everyone had fun.

Hey all!

I’m Joyjit (or Joy, as I like people to call me), and I’m a Compass 2010 student from India (yep, that’s right! THE India!). I’ve only had one more experience with a summer program (we don’t do many of those in India), and that was EPGY at Stanford last year. I pretty much expected Compass to be the same, but after the last three days’ classes, I can surely term the two programs as poles apart!

Coming from the Indian education system, I’ve pretty much been deprived of the concept of ‘discussions in class’. I’m used to lectures, and homework assignments, and more lectures, and still more homework assignments, and so on… So what I’m used to is basically being fed the facts, and then working with them to solve problem sets.

The Compass format, understably, is radically new for me. It completely does away with the conventional image of a professor standing behind a desk and teaching a class (comprising of about 10% students sleeping). Basically, we have no lectures. The spectacular thing is that the Compass classes are all about discussions and self-learning processes. We even think about HOW to think (cool, right?)! Whatever progress we’ve made till now in the Compass classes (which is quite significant I think, but I don’t know if the teachers would agree :S) has more or less been been based on deductions made by students! Of course, the discussions always follow an initial prompt, but the whole process of learning induces excellent understanding. We think, we discuss, we debate, and we try our best to come to a consensus. But we keep coming up with just more questions! And that’s what makes it so much more amazing! The system takes time to be absorbed, but its worth the wait…

 The teachers and RAs are great too! What shows this is that I’ve not once felt sleepy in their company ! They’re fun to learn from. (I’ll write more about them later. I’m hungry and I’m heading for dinner now.)

I’ve probably written stuff that is redundant (that shows that I’m really impressed by the Compass Project ), but I didn’t know how much I should write. I’ll ask Anna before my next post.

I’ll write again soon!

P.S. – This is my first ever blogpost, so if you all have any criticism or suggestion, do let me know. Thanks .

Another day has dawned and set on the summer program.

Not much has been written yet about the classes; as neither a student or teacher, I have observed only a little of the classroom action.  But this I can say: the classroom style is unlike anything these students have experienced before.  For instance, there are no lectures.  The teachers only use the chalkboard for writing questions, to prompt student discussion and discovery.  For each prompt, the students first consider the question independently, writing in their notebooks.  Then, they discuss in groups of 3 or 4.  And after that, the whole class comes together in a circle such as this:

As an observer, the discussions seem lively, with many students engaged in debate.  But talking to the students individually, I’ve found that this classroom style is met with varied levels of enthusiasm.  This radical change from the lecture style classroom is an understandably challenging learning environment for some students who don’t feel comfortable speaking in front of the group.  Other students seem to thrive in this environment.   It would be interesting to hear the student perspective on this classroom model- I’ve been encouraging them to post to the blog, so hopefully we will get some of their insight.  Tomorrow we will introduce the jargon buzzers, small electronic buzzers which students can use to stop anyone – teacher or student- from using fancy terms that are only vaguely understood.

After the classes, the afternoon treat was a lecture by Professor Basri, who spoke about the Kepler mission and the search for extrasolar Earth-like planets.  It was an interesting lecture, and I am grateful to Isha for organizing it.

As an extra treat for the students, Joel and Allen supplied doughnuts for the homework time.  Already, plots are being plotted for pranks and talent show acts- so I know Compass will just keep getting better…

This is a guest post that I wrote a few years ago for Cosmic Variance (an awesome physics blog that you should read!) about being a grad student who’s interested in teaching and some of the troubles with traditional physics education.  I decided to link to it rather than repost it here because there were a lot of great comments posted by readers that are worth reading.