Quote:
Originally Posted by DrPhil
It's all about balance. 
It's bad to just memorize and expect exams to basically be recitation. College students should be beyond high school level.
It's also bad to not know things like names and dates (basic info that the professor has probably stressed the importance of) and think that you can apply the information. Students will sometimes not do course readings and come to exams expecting to guess based on what seems familiar or answer essays based on their ability to convincingly bullshit. That happens across disciplines. |
Totally. And college is a lot about context, too. They should be providing the background information and then asking you to think about it in some way- thus you need to know a lot of the details, but you have something to apply them to. I'm a contextual classroom learner... I can never do the online stuff because I constantly ask "but why does it happen this way?" or "what if this happened in a different setting?" Just telling me to memorize it because I should doesn't work.
Great example: I know the dates of the civil war because I can put it in context to when Kappa was founded. But until I made that connection, I always drew a blank. Doesn't have to be GLO related of course
but putting a personal, theoretical, or interesting spin on things helps.