Month: May 2012

Stop Cramming; Start Learning

David Jaffee bashes the idea of studying for exams:

According to those who study the science of human learning, it occurs only when there is both retention and transfer. Retention involves the ability to actually remember what was presumably "learned" more than two weeks beyond the end of the term. Transfer is the ability to use and apply that knowledge for subsequent understanding and analysis. Based on this definition, there is not much learning taking place in college courses. 

One reason is that learning is equated with studying for exams and, for many students, studying for exams means "cramming." A growing amount of research literature consistently reports that cramming—short-term memorizing—does not contribute to retention or transfer. It may, however, yield positive short-term results as measured by exam scores. So, as long as we have relatively high-stakes exams determining a large part of the final grade in a course, students will cram for exams, and there will be very little learning.

Michael Cholbi tempers Joffee's position:

[N]ot all exams are cut from the same cloth. If students can succeed at all with an exam by cramming, that's a lousy exam. I take care to try to create evaluative instruments that don't reward such superficial knowledge. Likewise, we should probably broadcast to students that "studying" for exams is no substitute for studying period, or for developing the intellectual habits that lead to mastery.

North Carolina’s Amendment One, Ctd

Silver calculates that the anti-gay amendment will pass:

One version of the model, which recognizes the increasing support for same-sex marriage over time but treats the increase as slow and linear, projects that the North Carolina amendment will pass by 19 points.

Earlier Dish on the amendment here, here, here, and here.

The Rear-View Mirror On Jobs

One little-noticed aspect of today's report is in National Review of all places:

The Labor Department once again made large upward revisions to prior months.

Including these revisions, nonfarm payrolls were up 168,000 and private payrolls were up 196,000, both beating consensus expectations. Some analysts ignore these revisions, but we think that’s a big mistake. Normal monthly revisions to the original payroll report have now been positive for ten straight months and have averaged about 40,000 per month during this period. As a result, without revisions, analysts have a systematically and downwardly biased impression about the job market.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"There is no need to butt into a fast moving story when the secretary of state is in Beijing with delicate negotiations and say it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration. Hillary Clinton is waking up right now. Let’s see if she can pull this off in the next 12 hours or so," – Bill Kristol, on Romney's approach to Chen Guangcheng.