I took a seminar on Film Studies my freshman year (all freshmen are required to take a seminar outside of their prospective major). We watched exactly one film -- Psycho -- which I greatly admired. That being said, I can't tell you much about the theory behind Psycho; but I can tell you pages upon pages about the evolution and use of 90mm film.
The results in the blog post speak for themselves; the final exam scores were phenomenal.
That being said, I feel the author didn't spend enough time dwelling on the repercussions of his approach to the course. If you're in a two- or three-credit class, you take that class with the implicit understanding course that the time commitment is going to be similar to that of other classes; if your students are spending all night working on an introductory class, then they might master that material -- but at the expense of other classes.
I took a Linear Algebra course last semester that I did well in. It was a conventional class. I definitely couldn't answer that final bonus question (and I bet I couldn't answer most of the questions on that exam) but is that an issue? Introductory courses are meant to be breadth-based, not depth-based; my class wasn't filled with Math majors but CS majors, Chem majors, Stats majors, etc. etc. -- I recognize the huge role tenets of L.A. play in programming, but I'd absolutely resent a professor who essentially uses false advertising in his course.
The metric for a successful college course, I'd argue, is not 'amount learned' but 'amount learned with respect to time and respect to the goals of the course.'
my class wasn't filled with Math majors but CS majors, Chem majors, Stats majors
I don't know much about chemistry, but for CS and stats people linear algebra is an applicable and important course. Some of these "introductary" courses are foundational to your degree.
Absolutely! I remember the basics of linear algebra very well, and can reproduce them easily -- proofs and more arcane aspects of the curriculum, on the other hand, not so much. (Furthermore, I'd argue that the average non-Math major is not going to have to apply such aspects, and thus an introductory course should be relatively cursory regarding them.)
I took a seminar on Film Studies my freshman year (all freshmen are required to take a seminar outside of their prospective major). We watched exactly one film -- Psycho -- which I greatly admired. That being said, I can't tell you much about the theory behind Psycho; but I can tell you pages upon pages about the evolution and use of 90mm film.
The results in the blog post speak for themselves; the final exam scores were phenomenal.
That being said, I feel the author didn't spend enough time dwelling on the repercussions of his approach to the course. If you're in a two- or three-credit class, you take that class with the implicit understanding course that the time commitment is going to be similar to that of other classes; if your students are spending all night working on an introductory class, then they might master that material -- but at the expense of other classes.
I took a Linear Algebra course last semester that I did well in. It was a conventional class. I definitely couldn't answer that final bonus question (and I bet I couldn't answer most of the questions on that exam) but is that an issue? Introductory courses are meant to be breadth-based, not depth-based; my class wasn't filled with Math majors but CS majors, Chem majors, Stats majors, etc. etc. -- I recognize the huge role tenets of L.A. play in programming, but I'd absolutely resent a professor who essentially uses false advertising in his course.
The metric for a successful college course, I'd argue, is not 'amount learned' but 'amount learned with respect to time and respect to the goals of the course.'