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Full-Text Articles in Education
Education In The Era Of Google, Wikipedia, And Deep Learning: Are We Humans Still Needed And If Yes For What?, Miroslav Svitek, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
Education In The Era Of Google, Wikipedia, And Deep Learning: Are We Humans Still Needed And If Yes For What?, Miroslav Svitek, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
One of the main purposes of education is to teach skills needed in future life and future jobs. What is important and what is useful changes with time. Before the industrial revolution, routine mechanical work was an important part of human activity – now machines can do it (and do it better). Before printing, copying was an important activity – now copy machines do it. Before computers, humans were needed for computing – now computer do it better. With Wikipedia and Google, there is not much need for scholars being erudite. Even extracting dependencies from data – one of the …
When Is Deep Learning Better And When Is Shallow Learning Better: Qualitative Analysis, Salvador Robles Herrera, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich
When Is Deep Learning Better And When Is Shallow Learning Better: Qualitative Analysis, Salvador Robles Herrera, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
In many practical situations, deep neural networks work better than the traditional "shallow" ones, however, in some cases, the shallow neural networks lead to better results. At present, deciding which type of neural networks will work better is mostly done by trial and error. It is therefore desirable to come up with some criterion of when deep learning is better and when shallow is better. In this paper, we argue that this depends on whether the corresponding situation has natural symmetries: if it does, we expect deep learning to work better, otherwise we expect shallow learning to be more effective. …
Motivations Do Not Decrease Procrastination, So What Can We Do?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Christian Servin
Motivations Do Not Decrease Procrastination, So What Can We Do?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Christian Servin
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
Students often start working on their assignments late and, as a result, turn them in late. This procrastination makes grading more difficult. It also delays posting correct solutions that could help students understand their mistakes – and this hinders the students’ progress in studying following topics. At first glance, motivation seems to be a solution to all pedagogical problems: a motivated student eagerly collaborates with the instructor to learn more. Motivation indeed increases students’ knowledge, but, unfortunately, it does not decrease procrastination. So what can we do? We can institute heavy penalties for late submissions, but this would unfairly punish …
A Natural Causality-Motivated Description Of Learning, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
A Natural Causality-Motivated Description Of Learning, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
Teaching is not easy. One of the main reasons why it is not easy is that the existing descriptions of the teaching process are not very precise -- and thus, we cannot use the usual optimization techniques, techniques which require a precise model of the corresponding phenomenon. It is therefore desirable to come up with a precise description of the learning process. To come up with such a description, we notice that on the set of all possible states of learning, there is a natural order s ≤ s' meaning that we can bring the student from the state s …
Video Or Text? Bullets Or No Bullets? Why Not Both?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Christian Servin
Video Or Text? Bullets Or No Bullets? Why Not Both?, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Christian Servin
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
Some students – which are, in terms of pop-psychology – more left-brain – prefer linear exposition, others – more right-brain ones – prefer 2-D images and texts with visual emphasis (e.g., with bullets). At present, instructors try to find a middle grounds between these two audiences, but why not prepare each material in two ways, aimed at both audiences?
Why Online Teaching Amplifies The Differences Between Instructors' Success, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Christian Servin
Why Online Teaching Amplifies The Differences Between Instructors' Success, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich, Christian Servin
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
Empirical studies show that online teaching amplifies the differences between instructors: more successful instructors become even more successful, while the results of the instructors who were not very successful becomes even worse. There is a simple explanation for why the performance of not-perfect instructors decreases: in online teaching, there is less feedback, so these instructors get an indication that their teaching strategies do not work well even later than usual and thus, have fewer time to correct their teaching. However, the fact that the efficiency of good instructors rises is a mystery. In this paper, we provide a possible explanation …
Shall We Ignore All Intermediate Grades?, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
Shall We Ignore All Intermediate Grades?, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
In most European universities, the overall student's grade for a course is determined exclusively by this student's performance on the final exam. All intermediate grades -- on homework, quizzes, and previous texts -- are, in effect, ignored. This arrangement helps gauge the student's performance by the knowledge that the student shows at the end of the course. The main drawback of this approach is that some students do not start studying until later, thinking that they can catch up and even get an excellent grade -- and this hurts their performance. To motivate students to study hard throughout the semester, …
How To Teach Advanced Highly Motivated Students: Teaching Strategy Of Iosif Yakovlevich Verebeichik, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
How To Teach Advanced Highly Motivated Students: Teaching Strategy Of Iosif Yakovlevich Verebeichik, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
The paper describes and explains the teaching strategy of Iosif Yakovlevich Verebeichik, a successful mathematics teacher at special mathematical high schools -- schools for students interested in and skilled in mathematics. The resulting strategy seems counterintuitive and contrary to all the pedagogical advice. Our explanation is not complete: it worked well for this teacher, but others who tried to follow seemingly the same strategy did not succeed. How he made it work, how can others make it work -- this is still not clear. In the words of Verebeichik himself, while mathematics itself is a science, teaching mathematics is an …
How To Best Write Research Papers: Basic English? Sophisticated English?, Martine Ceberio, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
How To Best Write Research Papers: Basic English? Sophisticated English?, Martine Ceberio, Christian Servin, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
Instructors from English department praise our students when they use the most sophisticated grammatical constructions and the most appropriate (often rarely used) words -- as long as this helps better convey all the subtleties of the meaning. On the other hand, we usually teach the students to use the most primitive Basic English when writing our papers -- this way, the resulting paper will be most accessible to the international audience. Who is right? In this paper, we analyze this question by using a natural model -- inspired by Zipf's law -- and we conclude that to achieve the largest …
Building Postsecondary Pathways For Latinx Students In Computing: Lessons From Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Anne-Marie Núñez, David S. Knight, Sanga Kim
Building Postsecondary Pathways For Latinx Students In Computing: Lessons From Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Anne-Marie Núñez, David S. Knight, Sanga Kim
Departmental Technical Reports (CS)
While the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the use of technology in education and the workforce, a shortage of computer scientists continues, and computing remains one of the least diverse STEM disciplines. Efforts to diversify the computing industry often focus on the most selective postsecondary institutions, which are predominantly White. We highlight the role of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) in gradating large numbers of STEM graduates of color, particularly Latinx students. HSIs are uniquely positioned to leverage asset-based approaches that value students’ cultural background. We describe the practices educators use in the Computing Alliance for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, a network of 40 HSIs …