Subj : Re: Good examples of programming course lecture notes
To   : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer
From : clemenr
Date : Tue Sep 20 2005 03:33 pm

Well, in the places I have taught in there is typically a mixture of
formal lectures, and set laboratory work. It is "fashionable" to say
that it would be better to have 100% tutorials. But in reality that's
just too inefficient.

In response to Thomas, it's very easy to say that if the lectures were
slightly different then everybody would suddenly attend. From what I've
seen both in my own lectures and in other people's lectures, it's a far
more deeper rooted problem than that. Just because it's necessary for
students to write down some notes doesn't make the purpose of a lecture
"writing down notes". I shouldn't jump to conclusions based on a short
paragraph you write in a newsgroup, but an allergic reaction to taking
notes strikes me as being symptomatic of an attitude I sometimes see
among students who are only prepared to be passive learners, not active
learners. These students do things like asking for model answers for
all practice problems, so that they can read them and pretend that they
are studying. It is possible for note-taking to overwhelm everything
else in the lecture damaging the learning experience as a whole. But
the other extreme of supplying such detailed notes that students do not
need to write anything down is equally damaging as it allows students
to believe that they've gotten everything that they need from a lecture
without them ever actually switching on their brains during the whole
process.

Cheers,

Ross-c

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