Dr. Çetiner’s Blogs (Dr. Beytullah Gültekin Çetiner)

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.

Bloom Taxonomy
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. Bloom found that over 95 % of the test questions students encounter require them to think only at the lowest possible level…the recall of information.

Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order which is classified as evaluation. Verb examples that represent intellectual activity on each level are listed here.

1. Knowledge: Recall data or information. Example verbs to measure this level of learning are arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name, order, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce state.
2. Comprehension: Understand the meaning, translation, interpolation, and interpretation of instructions and problems. State a problem in one’s own words. Example verbs to measure this level of learning are classify, describe, discuss, explain, express, identify, indicate, locate, recognize, report, restate, review, select, translate.
3. Application: Use a concept in a new situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Applies what was learned in the classroom into novel situations in the work place. Example verbs to measure this level of learning are apply, choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, practice, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.
4. Analysis: Separates material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood. Distinguishes between facts and inferences. Example verbs to measure this level of learning are analyze, appraise, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.
5. Synthesis: Builds a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put parts together to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure. Example verbs to measure this level of learning are arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, manage, organize, plan, prepare, propose, set up, write.
6. Evaluation: Make judgements about the value of ideas or materials. Example verbs to measure this level of learning are appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose compare, defend estimate, judge, predict, rate, core, select, support, value, evaluate.

Open Source Conference Management Systems

We were required to setup a website for our conference in October 2009. Therefore, we decided to make a feasibility study for various Open Source Conference Management Systems.

I found 3 Open Source Conference Management Systems which seem to be OK. I give the links related to those softwares below. We would be more than happy if anyone comments on these or other alternative softwares for managing the conference.

The following Conference Management Systems are open source and free to use for noncommercial purposes. They work on LAMP (Linux, MySQL and PHP) also with Windows hosting.

1. OpenConf Conference Management Software (download here)
2. Public Knowledge Project (Developed by Stanford University) (download here)
3. Web Submission and Review Software (download here)

Professor bans students from using Google and Wikipedia

Professor Tara Brabazon, from the University of Brighton, said too many young people around the world were taking the easy option when asked to do research and simply repeating the first things they found on internet searches. The professor has criticised students for relying on websites like Google and Wikipedia to do their thinking for them.
She has dubbed the phenomenon “The University of Google”.

Prof Brabazon said: “The education world has pursued new technology with an almost evangelical zeal and it is time to take a step back and give proper consideration of how we use it.

“Too many students don’t use their own brains enough. We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis.”

She said thousands of students across the country, including those at the universities of Brighton and Sussex, were churning out banal and mediocre work by using what search engines provided them.

Prof Brabazon, a media studies specialist with a background in history and literature, said: “It is down to institutions to prevent this from happening. It is not good for anybody.

“I don’t think students come to university to learn how to use Google. They can all do that before they get here.

“It is an easy way out for tutors to let them work to their own devices using search engines.

“People have to pay to come to university now and what they are paying for is the knowledge, experience and guidance of people like myself.

“There is a school of thinking that it should be about them directing their own learning but I think giving guidance is crucial.

“I ban my students from using Google, Wikipedia and other websites like that. I give them a reading list to work from and expect them to cite a good number of them in any work they produce.”

She said young people were finishing education with shallow ideas and needed to learn interpretative skills before starting to use technology.

Prof Brabazon, who previously worked in Australia and New Zealand, said declining libraries were contributing to the problem.

She said: “I want students to sit down and read. It’s not the same when you read it online. I want them to experience the pages and the print as much as the digitisation and the pixels. Both are fine but I want them to have both, not one or the other, not a cheap solution.”

Google is a white bread for the mind

The professor is said to be giving a lecture on the issue, called Google Is White Bread For The Mind, at the Sallis Benney Theatre in Grand Parade, Brighton, on Wednesday at 6.30pm.

Source: The Argus News Letter.

Should students be banned from using Google and Wikipedia? Tell us what you think below.

Ranking Criteria for Top 500 World Universities 

As we know there have been listing of top 500 universities for several years. The following is the ranking criteria for selecting the Top

1. Ranking Criteria and Weights

Scores for each indicator are weighted as shown below to arrive at a final overall score for an institution. The highest scoring institution is assigned a score of 100, and other institutions are calculated as a percentage of the top score. An institution’s rank reflects the number of institutions that sit above it.