On Thu, 2011-11-10 at 19:46 -0800, Walter Bright wrote: > On 11/10/2011 7:30 PM, dsimcha wrote: > > Again, pretty insightful. One of the conclusions I've come to in terms of > > pedagogy is that no amount of rote knowledge can ever substitute for having > > a > > good mental model of a system. When I was an undergrad the biggest > > difference I > > noticed between the successful and unsuccessful students was that the > > successful > > ones would try to form a comprehensive mental model of the material, where > > the > > unsuccessful students would focus on rote memorizing facts and procedures. > > Similarly, when I TA'd a course a couple years ago, I tried to encourage the > > professor to ask exam questions that were as hard as possible to get by > > rote (no > > canned procedure would work) but as easy as possible if you had a solid > > mental > > model of the material.
The is why educators are supposed to worry about pedagogy and integrative material. It is well known that rote learning leads to poor mental models of the material, and that good mental models are what people need. Sounds like your professor wasn't interested in education of students. > I agree with this 100%. > > Formula pluggers aren't real engineers. I've encountered many of the former, > who > produced crap because they were unable to understand the limitations of the > models the book formulas were based on. > > For an example of the non-roteness of a good exam, I remember a question on > my > junior math exam. The lectures had covered fourier transforms, which are > based > on sine and cosine. The exam question was to derive the transforms using the > hyperbolic sine and cosines. If you didn't get how the transforms were > derived, > and where to change things for the hyperbolics, you were sunk. The point here, and it is a crucial one, is that if you have a good mental model you can deal with things outside of the things you have met directly before. Having a good mental model of things allows for hypothesis building, for extrapolation and interpolation, basically for reasoning. Sadly far too many folk are not even conversant in the the 3 Rs (*). (*) Anyone who said Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmatic, go in the corner and wear the dunces hat, it's Reading, Recording and Reckoning. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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