Teaching: Finding Good Problems

I am a lowly teaching assistant, but since I have taught my particular class (Introduction to Electromagnetism) now four times, the professor in charge of the class has given me a great responsibility--to choose the problems we teach to the students.

I love this responsibility. I love to pick a variety of problems, ones that will demonstrate a key point, or one that will spark the students interest in the topic. There's just one problem. The textbook we use does not share  my philosophy. I pulled out my old text to compare. The book I learned from had 50 - 60 problems per chapter, with not very many that were repetitions. The book is thin, but dense, and well written. It has simple diagrams, and no web links.

The textbook I now teach from is more than twice as thick, but does not cover as much material, is full of pictures and QR codes, and although it has about a hundred problems per chapter, they really only have 3 or 4 problems per topic and then repeat with new numbers or a slightly different configuration. Yes, people learn by repetition, but the writers ended up not giving the students anything really challenging, and they (the students) get bored. With a few exceptions, their idea of a hard problem is to reference a famous experiment, simplify it immensely and make an 8 part problem that isn't actually any harder than doing 4 normal problems. The book rates its problems as *,**, *** problems, with *** being the most difficult. There are entire chapters without a *** problem. And a * problem is plug-n-chug. This is frustrating for me, but also for my students, who know when they are seeing the same problem over and over.

Due to a scheduling fluke,  I was given the opportunity to teach some supplementary sections on two topics. I told the professor that I wanted to use problems from some other resources, and he agreed! I've been having a blast looking through my old notes, especially since I can now appreciate all the work that my professor did preparing for class. And my students, with one section down, seem to like being challenged, but in a way that they feel they can actually succeed.

I can't wait til I can choose the text, as well as the problems. Reasons to pass my qualifier and get my PhD.