3 ms·

Start emphasizing problem solving and applications and creative thinking over rote regurgitation of data. My favorite engineering professor was all over this d

Start emphasizing problem solving and applications and creative thinking over rote regurgitation of data. My favorite engineering professor was all over this decades in advance. You could bring any reference material you wanted to take one of his tests. We couldn't find the solutions to his test problems in a search engine. If you can nowadays, maybe student and professor both need to reconsider your career path because you may not have one for very long.

iteria 3y ago
There are rote concepts that underpin stuff like that. There is a certain amount of rote you need in order to be creative. Calculators are great, but knowing how to multiply has more value than just knowing that 3 times 4 is 12. This same idea applies to so many disciplines and I'm wondering if we're going to go back to a more tedious kind of learning where long periods of supervision are necessary to keep sure you know the foundations necessary for the higher level more conceptual classes.
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  Everbody on the planet has a smartphone and access to a world of information and data at their fingertips. Unless you are a contestant on Jeopardy, being able to recall lots of little pieces of data no longer has a lot of inherent value. What does still have significant value is understanding what the data represents and how it can used and manipulated and combined and applied in creative ways in order to make good decisions and solve problems.
  - rincebrain 3y ago
    There are some limits on that, I think. If you can't figure out how to describe your question, for example, because you haven't memorized enough vocabulary to express it, it becomes problematic. Similarly if you aren't familiar enough with the topic to verify that the output of any such tool is reasonable, and you end up posting "rm -rf /" as an answer to a question of "how do I free space on my hard drive" because it's a common shitpost answer to the question. And a lot of people have gotten through the education system, in my experience, by rote regurgitation from memorization without deeper understanding, so I think the changes around this are going to make much clearer to some a gaping divide between how well people learn right now versus how well people think others are learning.
  - nirse 3y ago
    I quite stormy disagree with you here: in order to reason about complex things it's absolutely necessary to have ready knowledge so that you can combine those bits and draw conclusions, see bigger pictures etc, you just can't do that by googling some facts.
  - airbreather 3y ago
    yes and the problem is the world is awash with answers, the real skill is knowing the question to ask, so assessment should be more based around this.
    - Xorakios 3y ago
      was Socrates an airbreather? ;)

iteria 3y ago

There are rote concepts that underpin stuff like that. There is a certain amount of rote you need in order to be creative. Calculators are great, but knowing how to multiply has more value than just knowing that 3 times 4 is 12. This same idea applies to so many disciplines and I'm wondering if we're going to go back to a more tedious kind of learning where long periods of supervision are necessary to keep sure you know the foundations necessary for the higher level more conceptual classes.

jqpabc123 3y ago
Everbody on the planet has a smartphone and access to a world of information and data at their fingertips. Unless you are a contestant on Jeopardy, being able to recall lots of little pieces of data no longer has a lot of inherent value. What does still have significant value is understanding what the data represents and how it can used and manipulated and combined and applied in creative ways in order to make good decisions and solve problems.
- rincebrain 3y ago
  There are some limits on that, I think. If you can't figure out how to describe your question, for example, because you haven't memorized enough vocabulary to express it, it becomes problematic. Similarly if you aren't familiar enough with the topic to verify that the output of any such tool is reasonable, and you end up posting "rm -rf /" as an answer to a question of "how do I free space on my hard drive" because it's a common shitpost answer to the question. And a lot of people have gotten through the education system, in my experience, by rote regurgitation from memorization without deeper understanding, so I think the changes around this are going to make much clearer to some a gaping divide between how well people learn right now versus how well people think others are learning.
- nirse 3y ago
  I quite stormy disagree with you here: in order to reason about complex things it's absolutely necessary to have ready knowledge so that you can combine those bits and draw conclusions, see bigger pictures etc, you just can't do that by googling some facts.
- airbreather 3y ago
  yes and the problem is the world is awash with answers, the real skill is knowing the question to ask, so assessment should be more based around this.
  - Xorakios 3y ago
    was Socrates an airbreather? ;)