All right, let's talk a little bit about the rules of engagement for the course. Before we get in that, just one thing I forgot to mention, actually in the previous video on how to succeed in the course. And that is one of my colleagues here at Stanford at the Center for Teaching Learning has a wonderful blog for those of you who are students. Of course, in a sense, we're all students, but students who are actually enrolled in a course of study. You have exams, you have papers and things like that. You have to put in a certain amount of time studying, whether you're a part time student some place or a full time student. And the name of the blog is, The Duck Stops Here, and it's at duckstop.stanford.edu, duckstop.stanford.edu. The name actually comes from so called here at Stanford, they call it the Stanford Duck Syndrome. There are probably similar names, or the same name actually at other universities as well. Because some students here, you look around and everybody around you seems to be just sort of floating through like floating on the surface of water. Like everything's great, getting all their work done, no problems at all it seems like, and yet, underneath the water, if you can see it, they're paddling furiously to keep up. And so it's called the Stanford Duck Syndrome. Everybody seems like they're just floating along when actually, they're working incredibly hard and just trying to keep up with everyone else. And so, the idea the duck stops here is how to sort of stop that syndrome from happening for you, how to improve your study skills, learning more about the process of learning. Because certainly when you come to a place like Stanford, or any university, it's a step up for most students in terms of what they've had to do, and their study skills and so on, so on, and so on. So, duckstop.stanford.edu. Some great blog posts there, a lot of fantastic resources. While we're on the topic, too, let me just mention one other thing that we have here at Stanford. It's called the Resilience Project, resilience.stanford.edu. And this goes along with the growth mindset we talked about last time or in the last video clip. And the idea here is, actually, yeah, it was the last video clip. Resilience.stanford.edu, the Resilience Project. Again the idea is you look at these very successful people and you figure, they just had it great, they never struggled at all. Well if you actually ask them about their life story, and the path they took to get where they are at the moment, you'll find that in most cases they had many struggles along the way. Moments of doubt and so on and so forth. And yet what characterizes them, to a great extent Is this idea of resilience. That it was a struggle, but they persevered. They had the grit they needed, the resilience, and they got through it. And so we have a number of short video clips here of Stanford alums and Stanford professors in some cases who talk about that process. And this can be very enlightening for us and also can give us hope as well, as we face our own struggles to say hey, they went through something similar, they were able to get through it and therefore I can too. Especially in an academic context, but also in life context as well. So, just two mentions there, duckstop.stanford.edu and resilience.stanford.edu. Okay so, Rules of Engagement, number 1 here, Course rules and etiquette. A lot of this, hopefully, is common sense but, given the nature of the Internet, it's good to make sure we're on the same page here. Won't mention a lot of things here, but certainly one, do your own work. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't work with somebody. Either, you know at a distance through our discussion forums or things like that or with a friend, who's also taking the course. But, you know our goal is to understand Einstein. We're not going to understand Einstein better at a deeper level if you're not doing your own work. In fact, Einstein has a wonderful quote related to this, among many, of course. He said, I have little patience for scientists who take a board of wood, look for it's thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where the drilling is easy. I have little patience for scientists who take a board of wood, look for it's thinnest part and drill a great number of holes for the drilling is easy. If you're not doing your own work, your taking someone elses board where they've drilled a bunch of holes and putting your own name on it, as it were. Just making it look like you have the understanding that we are seeking here. So, you want to be doing your own work of course there are no grades in this course. There's a certificate of completion that you can get if you do the quantitive approach and do the assignments in the qualitative approach, but really you should be taking this course, because you want to understand Einstein a little bit better whether that's qualitatively or quantitatively. So, do your own work there. Number two And B here, 1-B is assuming the best of people, of your fellow class mates, as we work through some of this material. You can go all over the internet and get into flame wars and you know, trade insults with people whether they're rude insults or subtle insults or whatever. In fact, maybe we should say that our goal here is or we're going to say, we have an NSZ, a no snark zone. Okay? So no snarky comments in the discussion forums. Assume the best of people. Assume that they're trying to figure out something. You may understand and think it's simple. To them maybe not. They're struggling with it. There may be things that you struggle with that somebody else thinks is simple as well. And so we want, not that criticism is necessarily bad, but you want to make sure it's constructive criticisms, because our goal is to help each other understand Einstein and some of his ideas better. So, ideally a no snark zone in our discussion forums, assume the best of people, that we're all in a sense in this together and of course, Einstein. Many scientists work with each other. They collaborate, they bounce ideas off of each other, but there's also that element they've got to be doing their own work and their own thinking as well. So it's both an individual effort and a community effort to increase that understanding. Okay, so course rules and etiquette, do your own work, assume the best of people, no snark zone. Number 2 here, that we'll do, and this really just is a reminder about the strengths and limitations of a course like this, the strengths and limitations. This strengths of course of something like a video clip and the handouts we have and so on and so forth. You can go back and rewatch things, you can pause them, you can think about that versus a regular lecture. You're furiously maybe taking notes, and you miss something and you get lost, which I've that that experience many times in my studies as well, and then you're just trying to write stuff down and hope you can figure it out later. Here, of course, you can pause. And go back and say, what was that again? I'm not quite sure I got that, and so on. And so there are a lot of strengths to a course like this. The discussion forums bring together, in most cases, thousands of people. There's sort of the wisdom of the crowd effect that can go on here. We can learn from each other. On the other hand, there are clearly some limitations in that. I've taught a history seminar here at Stanford on the life and work of Einstein, so we looked at actually his whole life and a number of his works throughout his life. And that was a small seminar with about 20 people. Clearly, you can do certain things in that type of context that you can't do in a context like this. It will be impossible for me to answer all the questions that maybe come up in discussion forms. That's where other people can fill in and answer as well. And each week I'll try to identify some sort and key questions that come up that a lot of people have and try to answer those. So just remember strengths and limitations of a course like this, and then number three what this course. Is not about. What this course is not about. It's a limited course in terms of what we're covering on Einstein's life and work. We're not covering everything. We're not getting into things like maybe black holes, the beginning of the Earth, the Big Bang, things like that. Those come out of his general theory of relativity, which he actually accomplished about ten years after the Special Theory of Relativity. So, maybe in the future, we will teach another course on those topics, but this course is on the Special Theory of Relativity, so we're limiting our focus on that. It's also not about why Einstein was wrong. Okay, I realize there are sometimes theories that come up, well Einstein was wrong, because of this reason or that reason, an actual fact has been proven correct. So far, sometimes there are people, more or less, there certainly are scientists who think about these things deeply and think about, well, maybe Einstein's wrong about this, that or the other. But there are also people sort of on the fringe of sciences who come up with their own theories, and they're always saying why Einstein was wrong and they have this great theory about it. This course is not about that. So we're not going to be discussing some of those ideas. We want to get an understanding first, just of Einstein and his own ideas, and where they came from and why they are so successful. So that's what this course is not about, just as a reminder. Not that those aren't very fascinating topics, perhaps. We're just not going to be dealing with those in this course. Here's just some Rules of Engagement, there's some reminders, again more or less common sense. Do your own work, assuming the best of people, no snark zone, strengths this limitations course and then things we are going to be focusing on, and then obviously there are many other things we could be focusing on but they are either for other courses or just not something we'll be tackling.
