A story has come up on CNN about a calculator recall in Virginia. Eleven thousand previously state-approved devices are being replaced with a slightly crippled model so that students don’t use one particular function to gain an advantage on standardized tests.

As I read the piece, I noticed that the feature was the ability of the calculator to convert most decimals to a reduced fraction. Read on…

I’ve always felt that the burden of ‘making a subject interesting’ should be on the instructor. As a student, it’s impossible to raise this without sounding pompous and ungrateful. But it’s a fact that a learner will perform poorly when they’re bored by a topic. Some, obviously, are beyond help. But for the rest, it’s part of the teacher’s job to make a subject exciting.

As a co-op student at a local highschool last year, I had a chance to try this philosophy out.

Teaching Computer Science

Admittedly, computer science is a more exciting subject than say, English, but nevertheless, it was a good exercise. And for me, it paid off. Why struggle against the students, cramming pointers and linked lists down their throats, when you can spend two weeks teaching animation and graphics, and then introduce linked lists as a good structure for managing sprites and particles? Why not help out the Math teachers by demonstrating that arctangent, sine, and cosine are the mechanisms for switching between angle-velocity and x-vel, y-vel movement systems?

Of course, many history teachers will demonstrate that the subjects that fascinate a professor are not always of interest to the students. But it’s still a valid starting point, and is much better than trying to bring one’s elevated intellectual status down to the lowest possible denominator and use that caricature to determine how to ‘reach’ the students.

Psychology

I recently encountered a fervent believer in Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom describes six levels from which is made up the learning process: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. Of all the sciences, psychology is the one that I become skeptical of the most quickly. I suppose this statement alone may slot me into a negative personality type, but it’s important to see the danger of over-applying a theory like this, as correct as it is in its analysis: In the wrong hands it completely loses sight of its students.

In a zealous attempt to see that the bases of Knowledge and Comprehension are covered, it’s possible to delay reaching Analysis so long that students have lost interest by the time it arrives. And after all, nothing cements an understanding of something better than to discuss it (Analysis) and actually use it for something (Application).

The view that the method is more important than the students moves the burden of ‘interest’ from the teacher to the students. Since the teacher is seeing that the correct method is followed, it’s up to the students to do supplemental work in order to motivate themselves.

What Method to Use?

Both, really. Although my students in Grade 12 were excited for their topic, it’s definitely the case that for some of them, the jump from knowledge (my lectures) to application (their assignments) was too sudden. Were they able to catch up? Yes. Were there some that required special tutoring afterwards? Yes also.

A teacher is like a performer balancing spinning plates. The most important plate is the motivation one. Forget carrots and sticks. Just make them want to learn it.

If you feel so inclined today, I’d appreciate if you could pray or rub crystals together or do whatever it is you do to plead with the Powers That Be on behalf of another human. I need a healthy dose of level-headedness with a side-order of professionalism.

So… what is PDEng? If you’re curious, the best place to read it is right from the source. I won’t try to explain, in this space, what it is.

It’s unfortunate that I’m one of the very few first-year Engineering students still in town this term, and it’s fallen to me to have a meeting with the directors of PDEng to discuss the collective concerns of a small body of students from my class.

I’m just compiling notes now, printing emails, surfing the old discussion threads, discarding the worthless gripes and harvesting the meaningful suggestions for improvement. Some of it is just people coming off a PDEng Module and venting, and that’s always the most amusing to read. It would never fly as an argument, and most is too lurid to be pasted into this space, but some little gems are terrific:

I mean honestly, learning style quizzes and reading journals of kids who can neither formulate grammatically error-free sentences, nor distinguish fantasy from reality? Come on! I mean, imagination is great, everyone should have one, but what person writes their ACTUAL logs like a spaceship commander?

This is with reference to the journals such as this one from which ethical dilemmas are the source of a number of essay questions throughout the course. (UW: If the picture is a violation of intellectual property, contact me and I’ll remove it)

Anyhow, if you’re a student in the program with suggestions, the best place to send them is your Assigned Mentor within the program itself. Failing that, contact the director or assistent director. If you’re not a student, but you have questions, you could email the Director, or you could join the public area of our class forum and ask the students.

Mike