Timeline for How to make students learn prerequisites
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
6 events
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| Dec 12, 2014 at 9:39 | comment | added | Stephan Kolassa | +1. However, I disagree with your "only reason not to spend more time on the basics". One very good other reason is that there is a finite amount of time and a certain amount of content to be covered in this course. Every minute spent on the basics that students should already know is one minute less spent on the actual content. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 21:51 | comment | added | highsciguy | Well, I think that, at least some of them are learning now something in their semester breaks, because they know now that they need in order to pass the exam. However, this has to me more a school character than that of a University. In addition they will always eventually learn math at home only, when they try it themselves. I think that the task of the lecture itself is rather to trigger the interest to do this. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 21:39 | comment | added | Trevor Wilson | @highsciguy Although it is important to some extent that the students learn the prerequisites for later courses, I think it was is more important is that they learn something, which they might not do if the teacher "covers the material" in a way that goes over their heads. But of course if there are some students who are ready to learn everything in the course description and others who are not ready to learn anything in the course description, then problems are unavoidable. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 21:31 | comment | added | highsciguy | I wanted to add that, if I become more basic, I risk of course to fail myself in providing the prerequisites for other courses. To some extent I suffer from the fact that they have apparently not been challenged sufficiently in their introductory math courses. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 21:27 | comment | added | highsciguy | The title question was of course not one for the Nuremberg Funnel. I.e. I don't expect to implement knowledge about a specific topic in no time. It might have been a bad choice in fact. An important aspect is that, for science/engineering students, math is also a meta-lesson. It is one of the most important things they learn as without it the will later be unable to read any advanced literature. Partly it is necessary to overcome the inner (and somewhat natural) resistance they have against dealing with formulas. This is what really prevents them from following the course. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 21:08 | history | answered | Trevor Wilson | CC BY-SA 3.0 |