Monday, April 11, 2016

Matt's Harlow Response

I like how Harlow used some of the reservations of the undergrad students as a way to address the reservations of the educational community as a whole to scientific modeling. To be perfectly fair, most of the incredibly smart people I know today learned what they know in a very traditional, lecture style class, and it is very tempting to get into a "that's how dad did it" sort of mindset. That said, while lecture style classes may work for some students, it certainly may not work for all students, and even the students for whom it does work will certainly benefit even more so from being forced to think critically and creatively throughout the modeling process. I do not think, however, that all lectures are bad and that we as teachers should divorce ourselves completely from the traditional mode of teaching. There may be topics that don't necessarily lend themselves well to modeling, or there may be inadequate time to prepare a modeling activity (lectures are very easy after all), or some students may very well enjoy that form of learning more than any other.

Harlow's comments on scientific terminology were also pretty helpful (and relevant). As much as we may believe in the power of models, there is still a lot of cold hard information, identities and definitions that can't accurately be described conceptually, that students will have to learn. For example, there is no model that helps students arrive through discovery and creativity at the names of the organelles. I think it's easy to get gung ho about modeling without continuing to realize the importance of memorization and just knowing relevant information in any scientific endeavor.

No comments:

Post a Comment