Computers in school

Rosemary Michelle Simpson rms at cs.brown.edu
Tue Aug 7 21:57:41 UTC 2001


On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Rev Aaron wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Aug 2001 14:35:56 -0400 (EDT) rms at cs.brown.edu (Rosemary Michelle
> Simpson) wrote:
> 
> >On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Rev Aaron wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, 7 Aug 2001 12:45:17 -0400 guzdial at cc.gatech.edu (Mark Guzdial)
> >wrote:
> >>
> >> >By "boredom" I mean a bunch of things that make a class
> >> >un-interesting.  Assignments that have no real purpose or don't lead
> >> >to real artifacts can lead to "boredom."  Being forced to use
> >> >strategies that don't work for you can lead to "boredom."
> >>
> >> That's the impression my SO has of the majority of college classes she's
> >> taken in the last two years. Especially in the lower level, intro classes,
> >> where they try to cram tons of somewhat-useless information into your
> >> head, and grade you on how well you can regurgitate it.  That's how
> >> the first two years of college seem to go, you get judged on how well you
> >> can tell the prof what s/he told you, but no real synthesis.  And that can
> >> be done with a good book or two, making the entire multi-thousand year
> >> of college education a giant waste of money.
> >
> >That wasn't my experience at all of the core curriculum when I went to
> >college, although that certainly does describe my high school experience.
> >The reason I changed from an entering Chemistry major to History was the
> >quality of the required freshman European History course.  It was
> >fascinating - the lectures showed that history is a time-based framework
> >for exploring all of human experience and the exam questions made me probe
> >and analyze and think about the connections and implications of what I had
> >studied.  I left those exams knowing more than when I went in.  As a
> >result of that experience I am a supporter of core curricula because it
> >introduced me to areas that, based on my previous experience, I would
> >never have explored.
> 
> I'm not taking about having to take (what we call here at UMD) the
> required "liberal education" courses, but the intro-level material even for
> the major you're involved with.  It's a matter of student perception and
> attitude but also one of the way it's taught. My CS I (programming in C)
> and Biology I courses were taught in the same room, with the same amount of
> students.  The material had the about same dry/cool potential. The Bio
> course was 100x better because of the way it was taught.  The prof actually
> took questions from the 300-odd lecture room and managed it very well.
> Even with 300 kids, there was interesting dialogue between the students
> and the lecturer.
> 
> By contrast, the CS I course was just slide after slide and ended with 
> the prof just finishing talking.  There was no incentive to go to class;
> you learned nothing more going to class than you could've reading the
> text and looking at the slides, which were posted on-line.
> 
> When teachers start adding silly questions about "On the 2/4 lecture, I
> mentioned I have a pet; what is it's name and what kind of pet is it?",
> it's a sign that the lecture time and the lecturer is superfluous as
> implemented.

Completely agree!  The quality of the teacher is critical to the kind of
experiences I had and that you had in Biology.  I was taking issue with
your general statement about "how the first two years of college seem to
go" and college education being a giant waste of money.  

My hope with the work that is going on in the Squeak community as well as
in the multitude of distributed education research projects elsewhere is
that (1) people stuck with bad teachers can find inspiring resources
online, and that (2) teachers who want to provide better, or more
individualized, experiences for their students can find resources beyond
the brain-dead bureaucracies they typically have to deal with.

R.






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