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From: AES on 22 Jan 2010 05:37 In article <hj981f$fo3$1(a)smc.vnet.net>, Richard Fateman <fateman(a)cs.berkeley.edu> wrote: > The success of such courses obviously depend on the enthusiasm, energy, > and charisma of the teachers. To what extent does it depend on the > computing aspect? > > In the absence of a controlled experiment, it is hard to convince > skeptics. Even the experiments that might be tried would probably be > flawed -- e.g. two sections of the same course -- may be defective if > the better students self-select to come to the "experimental > computer-based" course. Old (and well-tested) maxim: "All educational experiments are big successes for the first two or three years �� then they disappear forever". [Anyone on this group remember (or use) the Keller Plan for student-paced learning <http://www.mcmaster.ca/cll/posped/pastissues/volume.1.no.1/the.keller.pl an.htm> �� and the hype it got at MIT in the 1970s?]
From: Murray Eisenberg on 23 Jan 2010 07:35 Many pedagogical innovation disappear because those not part of the original innovating group don't want to bother to put in the time or effort to learn new ways of doing things (especially when they have other priorities). Or because grant funding dries up. One thing seems invariant across a number of different pedagogical innovations: students' active involvement increases learning. There are many different ways of facilitating active involvement. Using Mathematica or, more generally, a lab-based course is just one of them. Others are the now-popular use of "clickers" in lecture classrooms. Another, around for a while and, I think, growing, is on-line homework systems. On 1/22/2010 5:38 AM, AES wrote: > In article<hj981f$fo3$1(a)smc.vnet.net>, > Richard Fateman<fateman(a)cs.berkeley.edu> wrote: > > >> The success of such courses obviously depend on the enthusiasm, energy= , >> and charisma of the teachers. To what extent does it depend on the >> computing aspect? >> >> In the absence of a controlled experiment, it is hard to convince >> skeptics. Even the experiments that might be tried would probably be >> flawed -- e.g. two sections of the same course -- may be defective if >> the better students self-select to come to the "experimental >> computer-based" course. > > Old (and well-tested) maxim: "All educational experiments are big > successes for the first two or three years =AD=AD then they disappear > forever". > > [Anyone on this group remember (or use) the Keller Plan for > student-paced learning > > <http://www.mcmaster.ca/cll/posped/pastissues/volume.1.no.1/the.keller.= pl > an.htm> > > =AD=AD and the hype it got at MIT in the 1970s?] > -- Murray Eisenberg murray(a)math.umass.edu Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2859 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305
From: DrMajorBob on 23 Jan 2010 07:37
Amen. It's a long way to nirvana, but we'll never get there pretending we're already there. Bobby On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:57:09 -0600, AES <siegman(a)stanford.edu> wrote: > In article <hj40q4$sgk$1(a)smc.vnet.net>, > Richard Fateman <fateman(a)cs.berkeley.edu> wrote: > >> But can you show they learn more >> calculus if they have Mathematica at hand? > > Speaking only for myself (and noting that my calculus-learning days are > far in the past, and that I'm not at all sure what the operational > meaning of "learn more calculus" might be), I can only say that having > Mathematica at hand whenever I'm doing any kind of "maths" whether > it's learning more about some familiar or new mathematical topic, or > trying to solve some real problem using math certainly enables me to > gain immensely more insight and/or intuition into what the symbols on > the paper mean, or how the mathematically described system of interest > will actually behave. Mathematica can really be "insanely great" at > helping do that, and I'm grateful for it. > > But it's Mathematica that's the "tool" for producing results here, and > the conventional mathematical symbols as conventionally written on paper > and the real physical systems that are the important realities the > things that most of us want to concentrate on not the arcane and > sometimes inconsistent or even bizarre innards of Mathematica. > > Which is why it's so egregious and some of us so unsympathetic when > attempts to apply Mathematica to some conventional mathematical input in > what would seem a sensible and consistent fashion instead trigger some > arcane Mathematica "gotcha"; and Mathematica acolytes then try to > convince us that, hey, that's the way Mathematica works, and we must > therefore accept it as near divinely inspired, and focus unlimited > energies on learning the arcane (and often very ill-documented) details > of what Mathematica does, not the tasks we want to accomplish with it. > > Mathematica is a _commercial tool_, not a divinely endowed > accomplishment of human creativity before which we must all bow down > (and that remains true not withstanding the large amount of great human > creativity that has obviously gone into developing it). > -- DrMajorBob(a)yahoo.com |