| General > General Technical Chat |
| An observation on homework problems |
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| coppice:
--- Quote from: tooki on August 25, 2020, 05:32:11 am --- --- Quote from: pgo on August 17, 2020, 09:52:04 am ---As an educator I am often amazed and how much effort students will go through to remember things rather than understand them. Personally I have a poor memory so unconnected facts are hard to remember. Connected reasoning is much easier. --- End quote --- One problem I see is that the educational systems cram in too much material to actually go at a pace that permits all the students to actually truly understand. So the ones who need more time end up memorizing, because it’s that or failing. I had this exact problem with the “ballroom dance” class I took at university to fulfill a physical ed requirement: long before I had truly gotten the hang of one basic step, they added on another, and then another, until by the end of the thing I was hopelessly lost. And this is exactly what I saw happen with many students in various academic subjects. --- End quote --- I had courses where the lecturer wrote so fast that we spent the entire lecture trying to keep up with writing our own notes. and had no time to think about and properly absorb what was being said. |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: coppice on August 25, 2020, 10:04:23 am --- --- Quote from: tooki on August 25, 2020, 05:32:11 am --- --- Quote from: pgo on August 17, 2020, 09:52:04 am ---As an educator I am often amazed and how much effort students will go through to remember things rather than understand them. Personally I have a poor memory so unconnected facts are hard to remember. Connected reasoning is much easier. --- End quote --- One problem I see is that the educational systems cram in too much material to actually go at a pace that permits all the students to actually truly understand. So the ones who need more time end up memorizing, because it’s that or failing. I had this exact problem with the “ballroom dance” class I took at university to fulfill a physical ed requirement: long before I had truly gotten the hang of one basic step, they added on another, and then another, until by the end of the thing I was hopelessly lost. And this is exactly what I saw happen with many students in various academic subjects. --- End quote --- I had courses where the lecturer wrote so fast that we spent the entire lecture trying to keep up with writing our own notes. and had no time to think about and properly absorb what was being said. --- End quote --- All of my courses were like that. The solution is to scribble notes, and then within a couple of hours write them out neatly. That has two major benefits: * you end up with good revision notes * as you are rewriting them, you are thinking about what you do and don't know, and can add in extra points where beneficial |
| coppice:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on August 25, 2020, 10:28:34 am --- --- Quote from: coppice on August 25, 2020, 10:04:23 am ---I had courses where the lecturer wrote so fast that we spent the entire lecture trying to keep up with writing our own notes. and had no time to think about and properly absorb what was being said. --- End quote --- All of my courses were like that. The solution is to scribble notes, and then within a couple of hours write them out neatly. That has two major benefits: * you end up with good revision notes * as you are rewriting them, you are thinking about what you do and don't know, and can add in extra points where beneficial --- End quote --- That's a coping strategy, not something desirable. In the early 70s, when I was at college, handing out materials was a lot more expensive than today. This was used as an excuse for not handing them out by a lot of people. However, anyone running a training course in industry at that time would have been kicked out for using such an inefficient strategy. |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: coppice on August 25, 2020, 10:34:37 am --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on August 25, 2020, 10:28:34 am --- --- Quote from: coppice on August 25, 2020, 10:04:23 am ---I had courses where the lecturer wrote so fast that we spent the entire lecture trying to keep up with writing our own notes. and had no time to think about and properly absorb what was being said. --- End quote --- All of my courses were like that. The solution is to scribble notes, and then within a couple of hours write them out neatly. That has two major benefits: * you end up with good revision notes * as you are rewriting them, you are thinking about what you do and don't know, and can add in extra points where beneficial --- End quote --- That's a coping strategy, not something desirable. In the early 70s, when I was at college, handing out materials was a lot more expensive than today. This was used as an excuse for not handing them out by a lot of people. However, anyone running a training course in industry at that time would have been kicked out for using such an inefficient strategy. --- End quote --- There I will disagree. Very very few people grok complex stuff when it is first presented to them - and then only if they are partially familar with the subject matter. Most people think they understand it, but frequently they are fooling themselves. There are a few good ways around that: * repetiton and recapitulation - but there is insufficient time for that in a decent course. Solution: repeat/recapitulate yourself * explain it, since you only know how little you know when you try to explain a subject. Solution: explain to yourself * revision. Solution: revise while creating your own material for later I always wanted handouts, at school and university. Now I realise they are a negative. People don't concentrate because "it is in the handouts", then just file the handouts on the principle that "it is all there and I'll come back to that later." Grokking takes hard work and concentration; there are no sugar-coated short cuts. |
| coppice:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on August 25, 2020, 11:09:46 am --- --- Quote from: coppice on August 25, 2020, 10:34:37 am --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on August 25, 2020, 10:28:34 am --- --- Quote from: coppice on August 25, 2020, 10:04:23 am ---I had courses where the lecturer wrote so fast that we spent the entire lecture trying to keep up with writing our own notes. and had no time to think about and properly absorb what was being said. --- End quote --- All of my courses were like that. The solution is to scribble notes, and then within a couple of hours write them out neatly. That has two major benefits: * you end up with good revision notes * as you are rewriting them, you are thinking about what you do and don't know, and can add in extra points where beneficial --- End quote --- That's a coping strategy, not something desirable. In the early 70s, when I was at college, handing out materials was a lot more expensive than today. This was used as an excuse for not handing them out by a lot of people. However, anyone running a training course in industry at that time would have been kicked out for using such an inefficient strategy. --- End quote --- There I will disagree. Very very few people grok complex stuff when it is first presented to them - and then only if they are partially familar with the subject matter. Most people think they understand it, but frequently they are fooling themselves. There are a few good ways around that: * repetiton and recapitulation - but there is insufficient time for that in a decent course. Solution: repeat/recapitulate yourself * explain it, since you only know how little you know when you try to explain a subject. Solution: explain to yourself * revision. Solution: revise while creating your own material for later I always wanted handouts, at school and university. Now I realise they are a negative. People don't concentrate because "it is in the handouts", then just file the handouts on the principle that "it is all there and I'll come back to that later." Grokking takes hard work and concentration; there are no sugar-coated short cuts. --- End quote --- Nobody understands as much of something as they think they do after their first pass. Note taking helps somewhat, but its not that great. What REALLY sorts you out is application. Working through problems is one route. The smartest in the group can gain enormously by helping the weaker people in the group, if they have to take what they have learned and regurgitate it for the others. When I was at college we asked one of our tutors about a point in EM theory none of us had really understood. He told us he did great in his EM theory studies at college, and needed a lot of that knowledge to do his PhD. However, it wasn't until his first teaching job where he actually had to explain EM theory to others than he finally really got to grips with it. Note taking is a bit like explaining something to yourself, but to a fairly easy target. :) |
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