Massive Education

I was cleaning my office this morning and came upon this standard introductory physics textbook:

It is a typical, massive, introductory physics text.  Its mass is somewhat more than a ream of copier paper.  It is 1088 pages long.   The current edition sells at Amazon for, brace yourself, a massive $268. The core content of this book is essentially identical to the book I learned freshman physics from in 1979.  

This book is a symbol of the massive problems facing modern university education.  First, in an attempt to be meaningful (whatever THAT means), it is filled with superfluous "applications", historical anecdotes, philosophical reflections, and photographs.  Here, for example, is the last paragraph of page 1088: 

It expresses some nice sentiments.  But one senses the emotion of the author, having made it so far, is being released in a final poetic burst to the line.  I doubt that the fatigued student, recognizing immediately that there is no content in this that will be on the test, will read it. For the student, the effective finish line was likely hundreds of pages earlier. Maybe, tragically, a thousand.

Second,  in my opinion the actual relevant content of this book, and its many twins, is about 200 pages worth.  The trouble facing the student is--which are the important 200 pages?  I confess to you that the instructor can't answer that question either.  I think I know the key ideas of freshman physics, but I can't FIND them in the morass.

What precipitated this post is the business card taped to the front cover of the book by the saleswoman (who I like a lot--this is not her fault):  

Did you notice--"Concise presentation"?!?  Are you kidding me?

A third problem the book serves as a symbol of, at my university at least, is the context in which this book is used: a massive course with hundreds of students.  We pack 200 students into the lecture hall two times a week and preach at them.  It is a very unsatisfying experience for everyone involved.  To our credit, we also break them up into small 25 student groups led by graduate students where the real learning occurs.  But it is a very difficult situation and most students transfer their hatred of the massive  course to the subject matter, which is a real tragedy.  We know what we should do--break up the class into a large number of smaller classes where the students get individual attention.  We've done this with our introductory course sequence for physics majors, and doubled our number of physics majors as a result (I consider this one of my major contributions to my university).  But we just don't have the money (facilities, people), to do this for the literally thousands of biology and engineering majors who are required to take introductory physics each year.

One irony of this situation is the current excitement about MOOCs--Massive Open Online Courses.  These promise to solve the money problem.  Students will, from the comfort of their living rooms, watch a "master" teacher present the material.  They will then log into the electronic homework system where their work will be automatically graded by computer.  Human interaction?  Electronic chat rooms will do!  

Education is an intensely human activity.  People need to interact.  Even at the most advanced levels of research, THE most effective learning occurs in small workshops where experts interact face-to-face.  Massive books and courses don't, and won't, get the job done.