Dear Editor,
As an MIT alumna, I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the March 24 article "Universities, including Harvard and MIT, experiment with innovative physics lectures." The article paid lip service — a few vague, deeply buried sentences — to the unpopularity of MIT's Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) program among students while giving a large amount of space to the views of TEAL's developer, who has every reason to portray the program as a smashing success.
If the Daily had bothered to interview actual MIT students, it would have found that much of the student body absolutely hates the program. They hate the high school-esque participation points and required attendance. They hate the group work sessions that allow the most advanced students to do all the work while the weaker ones sit back and don't learn anything. They hate the assumption that fewer students failing means that students are learning more, without any consideration to the possibility that the material has been dumbed down. Perhaps most of all, they hate that MIT is so enthralled with the idea of being "innovative" that it seems to brush off negative student opinion about the program. As it happens, I liked TEAL — I thought the positives for my own learning experience outweighed the negatives — but I know that I am in the minority (and I don't believe that it should be mandatory for people taking the mainstream versions of the required physics classes).
If the Daily truly wants to "discuss" these programs in a thoughtful and balanced way, why only interview their creators and backers? Why not talk to the students who actually have to take the classes that result?
Sincerely,
Jessica Lowell
MIT Class of 2007
