" But since we all have access to computers, shouldn’t we all be adopting conceptually more robust to asking and answering questions, and making avail of the computational power readily available to us to take us out of the early 19th century?"
" But since we all have access to computers, shouldn’t we all be adopting conceptually more robust to asking and answering questions, and making avail of the computational power readily available to us to take us out of the early 19th century?"
[note - early 20th century no?]
I guess it depends who the students are -
I'm teaching theoretical ecology concepts in a graduate level interdisciplinary program. I've found that even if all the students come with some kind of computer/tablet, most don't have skills in using them for calculations of any type. I've been surprised to realise that in some groups more than half the students might not be comfortable with entering a formula or making a scatter plot. Their backgrounds are very diverse ; some students have never even made a graph.
It's not me to judge the students' expertise and skills, I've got to adapt to them and figure out a way to fill in the gaps before I can move forward. So, I'd argue that we have to start somewhere, and teaching some analytical tools (models, stats) that can be calculated even by hand, still has its uses. Besides, all these tests are still used and importantly *were* used in the past to build the body of scientific knowledge we use today.
" But since we all have access to computers, shouldn’t we all be adopting conceptually more robust to asking and answering questions, and making avail of the computational power readily available to us to take us out of the early 19th century?"
[note - early 20th century no?]
I guess it depends who the students are -
I'm teaching theoretical ecology concepts in a graduate level interdisciplinary program. I've found that even if all the students come with some kind of computer/tablet, most don't have skills in using them for calculations of any type. I've been surprised to realise that in some groups more than half the students might not be comfortable with entering a formula or making a scatter plot. Their backgrounds are very diverse ; some students have never even made a graph.
It's not me to judge the students' expertise and skills, I've got to adapt to them and figure out a way to fill in the gaps before I can move forward. So, I'd argue that we have to start somewhere, and teaching some analytical tools (models, stats) that can be calculated even by hand, still has its uses. Besides, all these tests are still used and importantly *were* used in the past to build the body of scientific knowledge we use today.