Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed Back the Pace?

Re:Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed B... by eli_gottlieb on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @12:40PM (#16317857)

I'm not sure that slowing things down would necessarily work well in science or math fields, but I can name what I think would: focus on doing rather than reciting. The best calculus courses twin it with basic physics, showing not only how the material is used in-context, but its aesthetic qualities and what it sets the stage for.

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Re:Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed B... by cowsandmilk on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @01:17PM (#16318147)

I agree strongly.

As an example of a major doing things correctly, in my opinion, is MIT's aerospace engineering with their "unified engiineering" course that covers the basics in a highly integrated fashion.

My experience in a different engineering program was that I learned some sophomore math freshman year (because I had placed out of "freshman calculus"), then didn't use it at all until junior year when I had forgotten it. And then things tried to be integrated senior year when we had a senior design project that tied all our random classes together. I turned out alright, but I think an integrated approach would be much more fruitful.

All that said, I do think there is some value in having the purely mathematical ability to look at an equation, classify it as a certain type, and then know how to solve it. Not every problem you face in life will be an application that existed when you were in college.

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Re:Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed B... by harrisjt on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @01:49PM (#16318424)

My uni (Wisconsin), in the engineering program, apply some old philosophy of a ratio of time in class to time in lab. It's something like 50/50 or 40/60, I think a lot of students prefer it that way.

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Re:Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed B... by baby on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @02:10PM (#16318633)

I've had one math class that intertwined short exercise sessions with short lecture sessions and it was the most amazing class I ever had. I still remember everything I learned there.

It was so interesting that the professor would do theorems walkthrough classes which were optional and everyone would attend them.

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Re:Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed B... by aethertap on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @04:53PM (#16320221)

That sounds fascinating to me - is there any way you could elaborate a bit on the specifics of a typical class structure (how many/how long, were exercises limited to the subject at hand or more integrated with other topics, etc)? I'm trying to raise my own teaching game and that sounds like something I should try.

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Re:Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed B... by baby on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @08:03PM (#16329357)

It was a math analysis class 101 (on limits). The professor would print a one-page summary of the class, hand it to us and go through it. After an hour of class we would do exercises for one hour perhaps, and then get back into the sheet he had handed over us.

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