Creative Discussions or Memorization? Maybe Both? (on the example of teaching Computer Science)

Authors

Vladik Kreinovich, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow
Olga Kosheleva, The University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

2-2015

Comments

Technical Report: UTEP-CS-15-18

Abstract

We all strive to be creative in our teaching, but there is often not enough time to make all the topics creative fun. So sometimes, we teach memorization first, understanding later. We do it, but we often do it without seriously analyzing which topics to "sacrifice" to memorization. In this talk, we use simple mathematical models of learning to come up with relevant recommendations: Namely, all the topics form a dependency graph, and if we do not have enough time to allow students to treat all topics with equal creativity, then the most reasonable topics for memorization first are the ones in the critical path of this dependency graph.