Xref: utzoo sci.math:6679 comp.edu:2281 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!alberta!ubc-cs!faculty.cs.ubc.ca!manis From: manis@faculty.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) Newsgroups: sci.math,comp.edu Subject: Re: Net Textbooks Message-ID: <2045@ubc-cs.UUCP> Date: 16 May 89 22:21:45 GMT References: <611348814.15174@bu-ma.bu.edu> Sender: news@cs.ubc.ca Reply-To: manis@faculty.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis) Organization: Smurf Gang (University of British Columbia at Kitezh) Lines: 96 In article <611348814.15174@bu-ma.bu.edu> fred@bu-ma.bu.edu (Fred Blundell) writes: >Traditional lectures in large auditoriums are inadequate because so >many professors are unskilled in educational techniques, and because >multimedia presentations rivet our attention more effectively than a >distant voice. Also, a student often needs the opportunity to stop the >flow of information to think for a few minutes, which is impossible in >a lecture hall. As one who (quite unwillingly) gives lectures in large auditoria (I won't comment on whether I'm skilled or not!), I have mixed feelings about this statement, and the implied consequence that the solution lies specifically in multimedia. First of all, there is no doubt that the lecture is the least efficient method known of imparting information. Psychologists have for decades tested various ways of rote learning, and have found that the lecture does most poorly. But do we really want university classes to concentrate upon the imparting of information? I think not. Universities are supposed to be places where students learn concepts and their applications, not to mention clear and critical thinking. The primary use of a lecture should be to motivate students to analyse what they're studying, to give examples which illustrate specific concepts, and so on. It can of course be argued that having 200 people in a room offers little or no chance for dialogue. This is of course correct. However, the solution involves decreasing class sizes more than anything else. Second, multimedia have their own problems. It costs a fortune to develop good multimedia, which means that the primary development will occur on the part of those which have the financial wherewithal to carry out such large projects. The financial justification has to involve amortizing the cost over many years: hence such materials won't be responsive to changes in paradigms or pedagogy over that time. And, as textbooks amply demonstrate, flashy packaging is no guarantee that the contents are worthwhile. Studies of texts in various areas (life sciences are one example; a recent article in CACM on textbook treatments of random number generators is another) show that authors often lift treatments bodily from other books, not bothering to determine whether the source is correct. There is no real reason to believe that multimedia will be any different. A better way of looking at multimedia is as another way of teaching, added to our existing repertoire which includes lectures, laboratories, assignments, books, audio- and videotapes, and so on. >In subjects of highly standardized and technical content like freshman >calculus and computer programming, nationwide competence exams should >be available. Here we come to a philosophical divide. Why are universities teaching material of `highly standardized and technical content'? You can buy good books on programming in my local supermarket. Why should a university offer such material? We all know that the point of teaching calculus to the average person is not to have him/her know any mathematics. Rather, it's to teach her/him how to solve various problems about ladders and bumblebees flying between trains. This will presumably be useful in some undefined way later on. The average university Calculus I course has very little contact with epsilons and deltas these days (and the failure rate is still around 25%!). Rather than considering the best way to condition people to recognise L'Hopital's rule, maybe we ought to stop and ask why we're teaching this stuff. In what way does it contribute to learning, as opposed to satisfying a math requirement so somebody can get a degree as expeditiously as possible? >The philosophy that has relegated all educational >projects to the states is inadequate if our goal is to fully exploit >the potential of nationwide computation and communication networks >for informing people who are isolated from the flow of information >for reasons of age, health, economics, or geography. I don't wish to discuss US Federal arrangements (our own Canadian ones are strange enough!) but as well as `information' one might want to consider `ideas' and `opinions', other things which most definitely belong in a university (and not just in mushy humanities-land, but even, dare I say it? in computer science). If we really want to educate people, rather than just training them, maybe we should stop and decide upon our objectives before we decide how we're going to implement those objectives. ____________ Vincent Manis | manis@cs.ubc.ca ___ \ _____ The Invisible City of Kitezh | manis@cs.ubc.cdn ____ \ ____ Department of Computer Science | manis%cs.ubc@relay.cs.net ___ /\ ___ University of British Columbia | uunet!ubc-cs!manis __ / \ __ Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5 | (604) 228-2394 _ / __ \ _ ____________ "I'm not making this up, you know!" -- Anna Russell