Notes for Students B.
Gerstman (Sep 2004)
Methods of Good Problem Solvers (Whimbey & Lochhead
1999)
- Positive attitude - strong belief that problems can be solved thorough careful, persistent, and academic analysis
- Concern for accuracy - great care to understand the facts and relations fully and accurately
- Break down the problem into smaller steps and parts
- Avoiding guessing - poor problem solvers tend to jump to conclusion and guess without going through the steps needed to make sure the answers are accurate
- Be active in your problem solving - do more things as you try to understand and answers
to difficult questions
Ethos
- You, the student, can appreciate reason as a beautiful subject.
- I, the teacher, really want you to learn better reasoning.
- You, the student, are capable of learning and using the subjects I teach
with creativity, autonomy, and careful reasoning.
- The overall goal of this art is intellectual autonomy.
Regarding exams
- There is no such thing as a perfect test.
- Good tests address concepts learned in class.
- Good tests are objective and create high expectations. Good tests encourage good study habits.
- It is the instructor's responsibility to construct good tests; it is a
student's responsibility to come to the test well prepared.
Time and effort requirements for college
Learning comes at a cost. The costs are time, a sincere effort to learn,
and the willingness to look at something differently than before. Time requirements for
sincere learning are often underestimated. Learning is a slow practice
that requires careful observation and patience. There are a lot of rules
for how much time is required for learning. I generally work under the
assumption that one of my three unit courses will require at least 8 hours of
careful attention each week (on the average). This is a considered 8 hours, not
a multi-tasking, distracted 8 hours. Most of this learning occurs outside of the
physical class, preferably in a quite place such as a library. For younger
students, they should compare expectation to the typical high school
situation in which the majority of time is
spent in class on the high school campus. The effort we put into our studies should be devoted to changing one's own awareness.
Intellectual awareness means that you are becoming smarter. To become smarter, you
should question current assumptions. This requires a critical yet open mind.
General advice for young students (and those young at heart)
- Keep up with your studies by managing your time carefully. (Being a full-time
student requires about 40 hours of study per week: 40 hours per week / 5 courses = 8 hours per week per course.
If general, this means 3 hours of in-class time and 5 hours of outside of
class time.)
- Avoid cramming. (It doesn't work anyway.)
- Good scholarship requires awareness and attention to
detail. (A good case can be made that the entire benefit of
higher education comes from the increase in attention to detail that it
involves.)
- Click: ReadingTips.htm
- Motivation is unique to the individual. What works for one person will not necessarily work for another.
For example, some students are motivated by
confidence, while others become overconfident; some are motivated by fear, while others become paralyzed by fear. Some
are motivated by wanting to show others how good they are, while others are turned off by having to prove themselves. You
must be judge of what works for you.
- Avoid fads. Results come from hard work and careful planning. There
are no shortcuts.