Filed under: Education
A recent article on the San Francisco Chronicle web site mentions one of the author’s concerns about the use of e-textbooks, particularly those now being offered for the iPhone and iPod but it applies generally to any source of information — specifically he states:
“Then there’s the potential for cheating at exam time when students can stealthily view their iPod to get information from an e-textbook to answer a tough exam question. Hey, it could happen. Maybe you’ll have to leave your iPhones and iPod Touches at the door as you enter the exam room to prevent cheating. Could we eventually see students being patted down by hand for their iPhones or iPod Touches at exam time as they enter the room?” Read more: http://tinyurl.com/n5gddd.
It’s obvious that the whole idea of cheating needs to be totally rethought in this age of information overload and instant access. To think that your doctor, lawyer or IT professional will solve all your problems without referring to some reference material is ludicrous. Tell me, quick, IT nerds, what port does kerberos use? If you have to look it up, well, you’re cheating, right? Crazy. No sane professional relies entirely on their memory for important information these days, there’s just too much information to memorize. Would you feel comfort after describing a complex series of symptoms to your family physician to have her instantly prescribe a costly medicine? Of course not! We need to be teaching our students how to look up and utilize the information they need, not to memorize a tiny subset of facts that most likely won’t be sufficient to solve any real world problem.
The same can be said about collaboration. Ever had your doctor call on a specialist for help? Is your doctor incompetent? No, of course not. There are just too many known conditions in every professional field for any one professional to have a complete understanding of all of them.
Just in case you didn’t catch it the first time around, we need to forget about expecting our students to memorize factoids and help them learn to locate, evaluate and synthesize answers to problems that may never have come up before. That is the true role of education.
