tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22031270.post114011012907007351..comments2023-11-03T19:05:08.512+11:00Comments on Harry Clarke: Were students better in the past?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22031270.post-1140427394171481742006-02-20T20:23:00.000+11:002006-02-20T20:23:00.000+11:00Thank you for your message. My contribution has ap...Thank you for your message. My contribution has appeared correctly. Your answer is very encouraging since I have never heard about the Flynn effect, which points to a bright future. Some of my colleagues often complain about their terrible students and it is even complained that knowledge of mathematics may get extinct with time in Norway. Similar views are also often found in the Notes of the American Mathematical Society. I have also pointed to a more obvious reason for less encouraging results. Our students study engineering and take several courses each semester. I figut\re that we who learnt mathematics at a classical university had about 4 times as many hour to learn the same topics as our students have now. When I was to teach the First Course in Numerical Mathematics I realised that the students could only spend 8 hour each week on my course which is 20% of the full course-load. Thus the total time available was 13 x 8 =104 hours plus some time for preparing for the final exam. I selected the topics according to what I believed could be mastered in this time and the flunk-rate of my course rarely surpassed 5%. Another problem is that students seem to quickly forget even basic facts and seem unable to look for them in the literature or in Google. It is also possible that those who are interested in mathematics and science choose other universities than ours. <BR/>The upshot of my earlier remark is that we should study how the performance of the best students, say the best 10%, develops over time, not some averages.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22031270.post-1140210404660020182006-02-18T08:06:00.000+11:002006-02-18T08:06:00.000+11:00Sven and Harry, interesting discussion point. Ther...Sven and Harry, interesting discussion point. There seems to be some disquiet or anxiety about tertiary standards and educational attaintments generally, in Australia and the western world. I agree with Sven, it is not established and not supported by the students I work with. <BR/><BR/>I have been teaching and training people for some time but in the area of applied postgraduate skills. I train professional pilots to fly high speed aircraft. It is non commercial, that is you cannot pay to gain entrance, it is by merit. Two things distinguish it from some other educational endeavours, high intellectual entry requirements accompanied by top level educational qualifications. So we get to see both the output from the schools system without tertiary qualifications and those with university degrees. All entry students have to come to grips with very demanding high level mathematics, engineering, general science in a very short time period. Both groups do equally well. Our overall pass and fail rate moves up and down but does occur consistently, so I can only conclude some years the students are either brighter or more motivated other years they are not. We have not changed our assessment procedures except marginally to rebuild our curriculum to conform with competency based education criteria. Their is one standard pass or fail oral-applied for their final assessment. Some years the pool of candidates is deepened by lowering entry criteria marginally really only in percentile achievement rankings but that does not affect outcomes either.<BR/><BR/>I can't say I have ever seen any race effect, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. <BR/><BR/>I actually think current young grads and students are sharper, have better knowledge levels and learn as well but seem emotionally younger than their skills, but then maybe I am getting older.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com