At 08:19 AM 03/21/2000 -0500, Herman Rubin wrote:
>The purpose of any course should be the development of
>knowledge and the ability to use it. Even the use of
>assignments for any other purpose does not contribute to
>education. Assignments for the purpose of having the
>students do assignments, or even for the purpose of grading
>beyond the minimum necessary, are very common and in my
>opinion helping to lower the quality of education.
>
>It a student already knows how to do it, that student
>should not have to do it. It becomes busy work.
this sounds great ... but, how does the instructor KNOW this if not through
some form of work that you have students engage in and let the instructor
look at?
not admitting that the projects i give to students amount to busy work (i
am sure many students would claim that) ... but, much of education and by
that i mean LEARNING ... IS busy work ... busy to the extent that you
practice something sufficiently so that it becomes 'natural' to you ... to
think that way, to write that way, to solve problems that way ... etc.
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