What is worth knowing? Teaching? Learning? Understanding?

✍ Scribed by Harold B. White

• Publisher: The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 26 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1470-8175
• DOI: 10.1002/bmb.2005.494033010429

✦ Synopsis

Perhaps no other student question is more annoying to instructors than "Do we need to know this for the exam?" A "no" answer implies that the material taught might be superfluous and the student can ignore it. A "yes" answer often implies the student will cram the material into memory, may not understand it, and likely will forget it promptly after the examination. The question highlights different perceptions of what it means "to know" that range from rote memorization to deep conceptual understanding. It also displays how the importance of grades transcends the long-term value of understanding.

My head is stuffed with facts memorized or assimilated inadvertently-trivia poised for that final examination question that never came and now buried for decades only to produce smug satisfaction on a crossword puzzle: names for forgotten reactions in organic chemistry, names of bones in the skull and muscles of the body, US presidents in chronological order, Latin names for innumerable organisms. . . . My students have a similar trove of accumulating information they have never used, do not really understand, and have never put in context from courses they have taken.

Teaching with a problem-based learning format enables me to learn very quickly how little of substance students retain from previous courses. Factoids emerge from random access memories revealing little understanding. I fear