January 30, 2008 at 11:42 pm
· Filed under engineering, engineering, Higher Education, announcements, Creativity, Education
Spoonfeeding
First let us describe spoonfeeding. The following are the definitions of spoonfeeding in dictionary.
What is SpoonFeeding (Spoon Feeding)?
Spoonfeeding as a noun
1. Spoonfeeding is simply feeding someone from a spoon by treating him/her as a baby
2. spoonfeeding (teaching in an overly simplified way that discourages independent thought)
Spoonfeed as a Verb
1. Spoonfeed (feed with a spoon)
2. spoonfeed (teach without challenging the students) “This professor spoonfeeds his students”
What is wrong with Spoonfeeding?
Nothing is wrong in spoonfeeding if one of the situations applies to you (see below). However, in education, things are different.
Spoonfeeding in Engineering Education
Spoonfeeding is the greatest harm to an engineering student. An engineer is expected to be innovative, creative in his/her career. How could someone expect these challenging task from an engineer in the real life if he/she was spoonfed during the engineering education?
An environment where an instructor simply rattles down information to be memorized and recalled during exams will kill creativity and reward a lack of critical thinking. A more ‘Socratic’ enviroment where the student is lead to ‘discover’ principles will assuredly lead to better understanding, retention, creativity, fun, ease of use, ability to apply in unfamiliar situations, etc…
By supplying readily available resources to engineering students in the classroom and solving some easy-to-digest problems in the classroom later to ask them in a similar fashion in exams by just changing some numbers may be seeming very attractive to students since they can easily pass the exams and obtain a good grade.
This kind of teaching can provide at most a second level of learning in Bloom taxonomy what we call as comprehension and in many cases memorization level only which is the first level of learning.
Permalink
January 28, 2008 at 12:05 am
· Filed under elearning, announcements
Updating Profiles in ELearning Courses
Everyone should update his/her profile in the elearning courses with their matriculation number so that the teacher can grade online activities more easily. The work load increases 150% when students do not give any clue regarding their identities. Since no one else can see your details, you should avoid using nick names. Upgrade your profiles asap as shown in the sample profile screen below.
Permalink
January 9, 2008 at 2:28 am
· Filed under elearning, announcements
Regarding the Failure for Enrollment to Online Courses
This is general announcement for elearning students who have problem in enrollments. Some students complain about the failures to enroll in the courses. This is due to Yahoo server which delivers the confirmation emails to your account very late. I tested my Yahoo account for registration. This is not a problem due to our site. If you have hotmail, gmail or university accounts it should not be a problem.
The main reason why you get an “invalid course data” message is this: Since unconfirmed accounts are deleted automatically after one hour, and you get the delivery of your message from your Yahoo account after this period of one hour, your unconfirmed account is deleted by the time the email reaches you since the one hour expires already. I have changed one hour waiting limit to 1 day. So you have to confirm your email within one day. Please retry If problem still exists, please email me. Since there are many emails coming to my university email, I cannot reply individually.
Regards
Dr. Cetiner
Permalink
December 13, 2007 at 9:39 pm
· Filed under elearning, announcements
Elearning Courses
Dear students and tutors,
We have decided to install elearning course activities at the address (http://elearning.drcetiner.com). The registration for engineering management, computer aided drafting and CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) should be done at that address. You should register at elearning site (http://elearning.drcetiner.com) since registration in www.drcetiner.com is separate and no relation between elearning courses and the main blog site drcetiner.com.
Students should register in their related courses since announcements and grading will be done from http://elearning.drcetiner.com.
Peacefully,
Dr. Cetiner
P.S. When you register in the course, you will be asked first time an enrollment key. The enrollment key for each course is assigned temporarily same as course code, e.g. for course MME 6001 the enrollment key is mme6001 (without space with small letters)
Permalink
