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That's not the worst thing in the world, since most pedagogy that works is of the basic format "You should know X. What should you know? Class repeats X. Goo
by patio11 15y ago
That's not the worst thing in the world, since most pedagogy that works is of the basic format "You should know X. What should you know? Class repeats X. Good, because you should know X. Timmy, if I say Y, what do you say? Timmy repeats X. Good job Timmy, because you should know X. Susan, if I say Y, what do you say? Susan repeats X. Good job Susan, because you should know X. You should also know that if Y', X'. What should you know? Class repeats if Y' then X'. Billy, if Y', what do you know? Billy says X. Can anyone point out Billy's mistake? June does. Good job June, because if Y', X'. Billy, try it again. Billy does. Good job, Billy. What if Y instead? Billy says X. Good job Billy. Billy got the right answer because Billy knows X, except when Y', then X'. Class, what have we learned? Class repeats X and if Y', X'."
While it is true that they don't know how to code, the more specific status is that they are presently learning to code. That's not the worst thing in the world -- so am I, and I get paid for it fairly regularly.
- apsurd 15y agoEssentially you are saying something is better than nothing. I wholeheartedly agree. As a person whose purpose in life is more and more "Free information in order to Free Education", all I'm saying is I think we can do better; a lot better. Rote memorization certainly works. But I don't think anyone anywhere, has ever proved that it's an efficient or even particular good way to learn something. And yet modern civilization takes this for granted. p.s. I never went to college so this is all outside-in.
- nosignal 15y agoAt the risk of being pedantic, it's worth noting that some things benefit from memorisation (e.g. the alphabet) and some things benefit from "higher" learning (e.g. understanding the concepts of programming). I don't think patio11 is necessarily saying "something is better than nothing"; sometimes it is _better_ to teach someone 'if you see the shape O, you say "oh"'.
- apsurd 15y agotouché =) I understand that very clearly when you put it that way. I remember my dad beating the alphabet into my head. It was the only way that he could eventually teach me how to read. Thanks for that.
- chii 15y agoi agree too - the foundation stuff should be memorized so well that you know it like you would know the back of your hand. This way, the instant recall of information can then help the higher level learning that goes on. Think maths - if you can't add/subtract/multiply/divide fast, you will have a hard time doing algebra and calculus.
- SkyMarshal 15y agoYou bring up an interesting point about whether outcome-based education is effective in learning programming. On the one hand, as apsurd points out, programming is probably not something that can be done without understanding what you're doing. It's one thing to program HTML, CSS, simple Javascript where you're getting instant visual feedback [1], another to write C, Python, Java, etc. where the feedback is not so instant or visual and requires you to keep a constantly updating mental model of what's going on. On the other hand, learning something new involves doing it enough that your neural pathways rewire to become more proficient at it. As you pass the stages of constantly thinking about what you're doing to how and why, leaps or breakthroughs in understanding become more likely and frequent - jumping from plateau to plateau so to speak. Question is, what's the best way, and can it be abstracted to web-based tutorials? I don't know what current state of the art Cogsci research says about this, though it's on the todo list [2]. 1. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3948737 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3948737 2. http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/search?q=education&restrict_sr=on http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/search?q=education&restri...