[BUG] starting slow

[Andersen, Robert N.]

Tevian,

        I had an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon on Monday, it
looks like I have a torn meniscus in my left knee.  We had a short
conversation about my profession, and he told me he was an engineering
major as an undergraduate.   I posed the question to him, as to why Pre
Med students have to take calculus since they will probably never use it
in their profession.   He felt calculus was important since it teaches
critical thinking skills.  I agree with him, but I believe it takes more
than first term calculus to truly develop adequate critical thinking
skills.   But I also believe those skills are not best developed by
simply doing homework problems and studying to pass exam type questions.
Those skills are best developed by attending classes and interacting
with the professor and other members of the class in  problem solving
dialogue.  Your student who skipped class and simply did well on exams
is missing a very important aspect of a university education, even if
all he wants to be is an engineer.   


Bob Andersen 

-----Original Message-----
From: bug-bounces at science.oregonstate.edu
[mailto:bug-bounces at science.oregonstate.edu] On Behalf Of Tevian Dray
Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 11:40 PM
To: Bridge Users Group
Subject: [BUG] starting slow

I had an interesting conversation today with a student from my honors
class last term.  This student had always been good at math, and had
developed the habit of skipping class, not doing homework, but studying
hard for, and doing well on, exams.  Wound up with an A- in my class,
quite respectable under the circumstances, but not the desired, or
expected, grade.

I explained that vector calculus was not easy to learn through
last-minute memorization of formulas, especially the way I teach it.
The response was to point out that I had warned the class at the
beginning that we would start out slowly, spending lots of time on the
basics (vector differentials, "review" of dot product and gradient),
then using the same tools over and over again.
Yes, the student said, that was exactly true -- having been in class for
the first couple of weeks, the later material made sense, even trying to
learn it on one's own.

While I am not pleased to think of this argument being used as an excuse
to miss class, I do think it is a strong statement in favor of spending
the extra time at the beginning to develop those basic ideas.

I mentioned this story to the current TA, who has been with the course
all year long, with 3 different instructors.  Yes, he said, with one
instructor in particular, who didn't spend as much time on the vector
differential at the beginning, the entire term was full of discussions
which boiled down to how to compute dr.  In other terms, where this was
emphasized from the start, such computations were much less of a
problem.

Tevian

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