Education ∪ Math ∪ Technology

Eric Mazur: Memorization or understanding: are we teaching the right thing?

I recommend this talk by Eric Mazur on why he switched his teaching from lecture based teaching to peer instruction based approach. It’s more than an hour long, but it really is worth it.

 

How does this change how we teach? How much of what students learn in our classes is actually learned? If a student can only apply the concepts they have learned to very familiar contexts, and are completely unable to apply them in different contexts, can we really say they have learned the concepts?