Subj : Re: Good examples of programming course lecture notes
To   : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer
From : clemenr
Date : Tue Sep 20 2005 05:52 pm


Thomas Hawtin wrote:
> clemenr@wmin.ac.uk wrote:
> >
> > In response to Thomas, it's very easy to say that if the lectures were
> > slightly different then everybody would suddenly attend.
>
> I'm trying to say that, in my experience, traditional lectures are
> entirely pointless.

In which way. Given the teaching model I use, I do see people walk into
my lectures knowing nothing of a particular topic, and by the time the
tutorial starts two hours later, they know something, and by the end of
the tutorial, they understand something. Unless your experience is
really unusual, if you find traditional lectures entirely pointless
then my gut feeling is that you haven't learned how to learn from them.
For a lecture to work, it does require the lecturer to have a certain
degree of teaching skill. It also requires a certain level of learning
skill on the part of the student.

                                                          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.
>
> I would assume requesting model answers indicates a need to understand
> what is required. A non-trivial question is unlikely to describe exactly
> what is required. For instance, the numerical methods course in my first
> year asked for a proof, I took that to mean that shoving some values
> into a calculator wouldn't do. Writing in a particular programming
> language, I would want to see other people's code.

My comment was about students requesting model answers for "all*
practice problems. Model answers should be given for *some* practice
problem, but definitely not *all* of them. There are various stages of
learning to solve problems (including programming) and solving problems
without a safety net but still knowing when the answer is correct is
one of the most important ones.

> There's no requirement to have the brain switched on when copying down
> notes. But it will disrupt train of thought.

It also disrupts looking at a fly walk across the ceiling. Taking notes
implies a minimum amount of attention being paid to what is being said.
>From my own experience of being a student up to this year attending a
colleague's lectures and taking notes as an exercise, I know that it's
entirely possible to stay plugged into what is being said and take
quality notes.

Cheers,

Ross-c

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