TOPICAL DISCUSSION: IS THE DESIGN OF PROFESSOR NORRIS: I have become impressed during the past few years with the notion that primarily a technical school is an educational institution. I find that engineering design as practiced by the engineering companies is largely of an empirical nature. If we teach in such a way as to illustrate simple fundamental principles, we will produce electrical machines which will not be anything like those turned out by the electrical companies, the latter type being designed to sell at a minimum price and maximum profit with reasonably satisfactory performance. As this is the case, machines being designed on a competitive basis, I have found the teaching of design to have become so empirical that the pedagogical value of it has been seriously impaired. As an experiment this year, we have cut out the previously required work in electrical machine design and only give it to men who have expressed a preference for it, about 20 per cent. of the senior class. Of course, something takes the place of design. It is the prediction of the characteristic performance of electrical machines calculated from the dimensions of actual successful types. PROFESSOR D. C. JACKSON: At the University of Wisconsin we never think of putting a man at the designing of mechanical details in the machine design department. I believe that this is one of the few subjects that teachers of engineering are agreed upon. THE FUNCTION OF THE LECTURE IN TECHNICAL EDUCATION. BY JOHN PRICE JACKSON, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Pennsylvania State College. The subject to which the following few words are devoted is rather an old one and quite hackneyed. As it is of much interest to the educator, however, and as there is still a somewhat striking variation in belief concerning the function of the lecture, these words may not be found to be entirely amiss. Further, if an apology is needed for this paper, I would suggest that we are prone to forget, in the glamor of engineering and scientific achievement, that our serious and important duty to humanity is the moulding of intellects, and that pedagogy and pedagogical principles lie at the very root of this endeavor. The lecture as it is made use of in the class room may be conveniently divided into three classes: first, that which is copied by students verbatim; second, that which is delivered at the ordinary rate of conversation or reading and is taken down by the student in written notes as fully as possible; third, that which is given without notes being required. The first type may be omitted from consideration, as it has been abandoned, at least in technical colleges, as inefficient. The second, unluckily, is still somewhat in vogue and it is concerning it that I would speak, as it is apt to prove a snare to the unwary freshman in his chemistry, physics or mechanics and a delusion to the professor who endeavors to use it as an aid in education. Take the example of a class that must absorb a large portion of a technical subject in the form of notes from lectures delivered in the class room. The professor stands at his lecture table and talks sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, illustrating his words by suitable experiments. The class is compelled to scribble down the statements made to them with the greatest possible celerity in order to obtain the required data. Many of the students, if not all, spend so much of their energy in the mechanical process of writing that they get exceedingly little appreciation of the meaning of the professor's talk. Further, though the writing of notes is done at the highest speed possible, the average is not over ten or twelve hundred words in an hour, not more than may be found on a couple of ordinary text-book pages. After leaving the lecture room the students are expected to decipher their hastily written notes, write them up in full, and give accurate descriptions of the experiments. This final preparation of notes means on the average from two and a half to three hours of hard work, the greater part of which is purely manual and of absolutely no value so far as the technical subject under consideration is concerned. That is, in four hours the student covers not more than two octavo pages, and the mechanical labor performed in the greater part of these four hours gives a kind of training which has no relation to the subject. The notes made at the expense of such painstaking labor are not of intrinsic value and I am ready to guarantee are never looked at after graduation except as curiosities. Indeed, a well known professor of mathematics told me a few weeks ago that he possesses, packed away in his attic, something like a score of beautifully prepared notebooks, which he was compelled to make while taking an advanced course in one of the great universities of this country. He said he never thought of referring to them in his work; at the same time he pointed to his bookcases, filled with some hundreds of substantially bound printed volumes, saying that he kept his references there. It must be generally conceded that, if desirable text-books on the subject studied may be obtained, the student can spend his time to much greater advantage than in note-taking and copying. But, of course, it is true that suitable text-books are not to be found in some subjects and also that collateral reading may need binding or correlating. However, admitting these facts, does that give a professor of science a right to turn so large a proportion of his endeavor to the training of a writing or copy-book class? Let the department of English attend to such classes. Certainly any instructor who is not willing to use text-books or other material available can duplicate, either by the aid of printer or mimeograph, notes that will meet his purposes or approval for distribution among the students under his direction-if necessary, the students would gladly bear the expense. Such a course means work, hard work, for the instructor, and if he is unwilling or unable to afford the time for it had he not better use the best textbook to be had, modifying it here and there as occasion demands by some means other than those which are at the expense of the students' time. The instructor who believes it impossible to teach his subject by any method but the note-taking lecture will not, let it be hoped, bring forth the argument against printed or mimeograph outlines that his work is not in sufficiently correct form for permanence, as under such conditions it can hardly be expected that an inexperienced student will be able to formulate notes upon which he can rely. I once knew a competent professor of machine design who was at one time a firm believer in the note-taking lecture system, his sole argument being that it taught his boys to make notes properly. I was entertained to observe but a few years later that he had converted his lecture notes into a printed text-book. His boys are undoubtedly taught as well as before how to keep an engineer's note-book, while they are receiving infinitely greater benefit from their class work and the elucidations of their teacher. What are the advantages to the student of eliminating the taking of notes? In the first place, instead of the contents of about two printed pages the student can prepare and be drilled in the work of from six to ten or more pages. Instead of having to decipher facts from hastily scrawled notes taken under pressure and usually incomplete and full of errors, he has the subject before him either in clear typewriting or in print and is thus in a far better position to get at the truth. Again, and this is the most important advantage, during the hour of the lecture or recitation the student gives his entire and concentrated attention to the subject. The lecturer who places finished discussions or a text-book in the hands of his men, instead of talking to a few score of pencils or notebooks, speaks directly to the minds of his hearers. He is able, therefore, to impress his personality upon them; in the speaking countenance before him he reads comprehension or its lack, and he does not leave his subject until he has made his |