Replying to LO28752 --
I think there are a lot of teachers who subscribe to this forum. There
are a couple of things I'd like to say about learning. In secondary
school I had a big problem with the Australian education system. I
couldn't sit in a class and endure the repetition of material we had
learned in previous years, before new material was introduced. Rote
learning, is in my opinion a pain in the neck, and stupid repition is a
complete turn-off.
A friend who recently completed an engineering dgree from the Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology mentioned that most students couldn't
solve a problem from first principles, they had to remember and
(correctly?) apply the little rules they had learnt. In preparing for
exams several lecturers (whose payment depended on maintaining a high pass
rate) simply taught the exam content for several weeks before the test.
Seems to me you don't get competent engineers this way.
Several years ago I attended a Department Of Defence Management Seminar in
which we used the syndicate (team based) method of problem solving. The
groups had to prepare a spokesperson (elected) to make a presentation of
findings. I found this participation to be a much more effective method
of learning.
I mentioned in another posting that I attended school to 57 years of age.
In the last few years I have lectured at tertiary level. One exercise I
require for every class of students, is presentation of a paper on subject
related matter by each student. I simply give them a list of keywords
associated with the subject, and ask them to plug any two into Altavista,
and then to prepare a short paper from the results. It's amazing how many
students at tertiary level have difficulty with this.
Best Regards,
Alan Cotterell
--"Alan Cotterell" <acotrel@cnl.com.au>
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