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From: dph@faline.bellcore.com (Daniel P. Heyman)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.math,sci.physics
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Summary: class notes
Message-ID: <2141@faline.bellcore.com>
Date: 28 Dec 88 16:07:52 GMT
References: <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <6435@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <605@ucrmath.EDU>
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Lines: 37

In article <605@ucrmath.EDU>, marek@ucrmath.EDU (Marek Chrobak) writes:
> In article <1077@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
> >
> >Teaching means presenting the WHY, not the HOW.  It is very difficult to teach
> >the why to students who are not research caliber who already know the how.
> 
> 
> How true and how sad. I have once tried to do something with
> this habit of "xeroxing" a lecture, by following very closely
> a textbook, so that the students do not have to take too
> much notes, and may have more time to think in class. Once they
> noted that I follow the book, half of them stopped to come to
> class at all. In the other half this xeroxing habit was yet
> stronger than I thought, they were still copying every word
> I said. 
> 

My advisor in graduate school tried handing out lecture notes
prior to giving the lecture. He told the students they had notes
of everything we was going to write on the board, so they should
concentrate on the why and not the how, and to stop him if they
didn't understand the why of a step. After a few classes he became
completley frustrated when he looked up and saw everyone ( I was
not in this class) copying from the board. He gave up before
the term was over.
     I tried the same thing with preprints of a book I was writing.
The results were about the same. My theory is that students got
used to taking notes, got good grades by doing so, and won't change
something they don't regard as broke. Another aspect is: copying is
easy, thinking about what's going on is hard, and one takes the path
of least resistance.
    My way of taking notes was to write down the theorem and key steps
in the proof, with comments on the why of certain steps. For homework
I would fill in the manipulations; I usually felt that I understood
the proof because I did it myself with hints from class.

Dan Heyman	...!bellcore!dph