If you have ever tried to figure out what a homework assignment is trying to accomplish and why is it taking so many hours, then you’ve taken the first step in wrestling with the homework dilemma.
The Science of Teaching Science: It’s the Method not the Teacher that Matters
If you were to discover a method to almost double the learning from the same amount of time spent in class and on homework, chances are you’d want to use this method across all your studies. Research just published in the Science journal by Louis Deslauriers and Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize winning physicist at the University of British Columbia (UBC), showed that a method called “deliberate practice” produced dramatic results.
Canadian Universities-Exploring an Alternative Undergraduate Experience
A lot of students and their families are justifiably concerned about the cost and quality of education in the United States. A hundred US colleges now have a cost of attendance (COA) exceeding $50,000; 2 years ago, only 5 did. Worse still, the price tag continues to escalate at around 4% per year, with no end in sight. Add to this state of affairs the revelations contained in the book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, which asserts, “36 percent of students ‘did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning’ over four years of college,” and you have every reason in the world to look elsewhere for alternative educational opportunities. The world, however, might very well be on your doorstep in the form of our Canadian neighbors to the north. Canadian universities have a high standard of educational rigor, their COA (depending on province) is lower, and most award degrees in three years, not the six, it seems to be taking at many US schools nowadays.