Jim Lemon wrote:
A.J. Rossini wrote:
and perhaps the most important reason for the particular socratic form of teaching on this list...
Golly, anyone who read Plato's Dialogues would realize that the Socratic method involves patiently leading the questioner stepwise through the solution, not simply writing RTFMeno.
Jim
Jim, yes, that way works as long as the number of questioners does not sum up to "a lot":
It is "easy" to teach courses for 20 people and answer individual questions, even if these questions are very basic and have been explained more than once during the course.
Courses for 700 people (e.g. basic statistics for economists) in the biggest auditory aren't that funny and you have to say "read what I/others have written!" - or next month almost each student will be in your office asking question he/she could not work out in half an hour him/herself ...
So it is my very serious opinion that we need to point people to the basic documentation and the FAQ, if they post their first very basic question to the list. If the questioner asks the next basic questions as well, and with him many others, we will have a flood of many hundreds of messages a day!
Uwe
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