A Magical Sage in Action: Physics Professor as “Web Star”

As if on cue, this New York Times article on physics professor Walter Lewin of MIT extols his "Web Star" status though his lectures offered through MIT’s OpenCourseWare project. My first take is that his lectures offer a lot of insight on the appeal and the limitations of the magical sage approach to learning.

The NYT article describes Professor Lewin as an “international Internet guru” who is one of the most popular professors on iTunesU. Examples of class demonstrations and letters from several avid and grateful fans/learners suggest that if there is such a thing as a magical sage, then Prof. Lewin is one of them.

So I downloaded one of his lectures to find out for myself. I chose the first lecture from the 803 course (Physics III) . In particular, I wanted to compare his lecture with the OpenYale ones I previewed earlier this week. (When I get a chance (perhaps not until after the holidays), I plan to view one or two OpenYale physics lectures for a more direct subject-to-subject comparison with Lewin’s.)

OK, I get it now – a little more, anyway. Normally I don’t like to watch online video for an extended period, but I watched 45 minutes of his 80 minute lecture and would have probably watched more if it hadn’t been time to go and put up the Christmas tree. Prof. Lewin is clearly a highly engaging lecturer, but there were also even more important differences in quality:

• Production values -- Although the MIT course video was not as high in visual quality, the difference in production values was huge. The MIT course used multiple cameras and camera angles, and clearly there was professional-quality post-production editing so that transitions between shots were usually clean and seamless. As a result, the viewer of this lecture could see the lecturer, blackboards, apparatus, and occasionally the student audience itself. Blackboard notes could clearly be seen while being written and afterwards. Cameras showed effective close-ups of apparatus during demonstrations. There were also screen graphics at the beginning to introduce the lecture and its purpose, as well as an on-screen correction of an equation written on the blackboard, both additional indicators of post-production effort.
• Activities -- The first few minutes consisted of some lecture interspersed with a series of demonstrations and verbal examples to illustrate the principle of periodic motion. It was an impressive display as Prof. Lewin used tuning forks, a bottle bobbing in water, human speech, and many other examples in rapid-fire succession.
• Audience participation -- Rather than exclude the student audience from the experience as happened in the OpenYale lectures I viewed, the camera occasionally panned the student audience and also focused on them when they were asked to participate. At one point, Prof. Lewin asked individual students for ideas to explain a discrepancy between the predicted and observed results of an in-class experiment he had just conducted. At another, he asked the whole class to report on what frequencies they could hear. In both cases, the camera included the students.
• Design, choreography -- Student participation and demonstrations were interspersed strategically with lecture throughout the class. Actual lecture comprised a minority of the time. This is no surprise since, as the NYT article noted, “he spent 25 hours preparing each new lecture, choreographing every detail and stripping out every extra sentence.” It takes time to create richer educational experiences. Prof. Lewin also had lots of props – I especially liked the timer with the large digital readout – and helpers in the wings to take certain props on and off stage on cue. It was more like watching a performance of, say, Gallagher on Comedy Central than your average college lecture.
• Dedication –- Prof. Lewin is clearly dedicated to teaching, as illustrated by his comment “that what really counts is to make them love physics, to make them love science.” Or more succinctly: “Teaching is my life.” He is also a skilled classroom teacher, as illustrated by how he responded to student ideas which were both on the mark and off the mark.

So what to make of this experience? As NYT readers’ comments (most of which have to do with Prof. Lewin’s physics course rather than with the stated question “What do you think of taking courses online?”) indicate, clearly there are a lot of people who appreciate the opportunity to have watched his lectures, and thus there is clear benefit to having these lectures preserved for posterity as several readers noted. Prof. Lewin’s lectures reminded me of another physics professor I knew of in the 1980s (Jearl Walker of Cleveland State University) who was also noted for making his physics lectures fun and accessible (lying on a bed of nails in one class, for example). I wonder if anyone has captured any of his lectures on video.

As Stephen Downes noted in his OL Daily newsletter (thanks to Stephen for alerting me to this article), “the world is filled with fascinating and compelling people,” and Prof. Lewin is clearly one of them. Should we then conclude that what the educational world needs most is more lectures by more magical sages such as Prof. Lewin?

Um, not so fast. The appeal is clear, but so are a number of limitations. More on that in my next post ...