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I taught quantum mechanics to third years at Queen's University Belfast but I didn't typeset my notes (it was still the age of blackboards*) and anyway I followed David Griffiths's wonderful text faithfully. Here are one or two morceaux that students may find useful.


* Remark from an old dinosaur: All incoming lecturers have to take a qualification in University teaching. Evidently they are taught that a lecture is a self-contained unit with definable learning outcomes and is delivered using powerpoint as if it were a presentation. The room is plunged into darkness and the students sit passively watching the screen. Lecture rooms with up to six movable blackboards are disappearing as buildings are modernised. However an alternative which is very attractive especially in maths-based subjects like physics is to turn on all the lights, open the blinds and work through the notes on the blackboard, beginning where we left off last lecture; and finishing roughly at a suitable break in the notes. That has been my method whenever I am assigned a lecture room with blackboards. Otherwise I have used whatever comes to hand; usually an overhead projector that projects what I am writing on paper on to the screen. Although this latter method is old fashioned and totally deprecated by modern thinking in education, I find that universally, when polled, even the most recent cohort of students prefers it. They are kept busy taking notes; they have notes to revise in their own handwriting so can recognise that they have experienced it; and they are less bored and the time goes more quickly. But even before the pandemic this method was discouraged, and we are told to expect that students are permitted access to equal resources whether or not they attend lectures. At the pandemic all teaching went on-line and I doubt that we'll ever get back to the collective, congenial atmosphere of an entire class engaging in a blackboard-delivered lecture. I regret this for the selfish reason that I have really enjoyed it.


Last modified: 19 July 2022 (Tony Paxton)