I met Chick when he presented a seminar at the University of Michigan back in the mid-1960s. I kept in touch with him through occasional letters and meetings at regional, national, and international conferences over the next six decades. How does one encapsulate all those years with just a few observations? I’ve chosen to pick out a few things that came immediately to mind when I thought about what the world has lost.
To start, he’s indirectly responsible for the intellectual turn I took in
Instructors and students face much heavier cognitive demands in discussion-based class sessions than in more straightforward lecture or structured discussion classes. They face the problem of managing their working memory: being able to hold multiple elements in their minds while actively processing them. In this post, I offer some strategies for easing the burden on working memory by externalizing much of the discussion.
Free flowing discussions enliven classrooms and make college teaching gratifying