Comments on: Appropriately frustrated? (updated) http://blog.drscottfranklin.net/2006/02/28/appropriately-frustrated-updated/ Ramblings of a Christian Mathematician and Bioinformaticist Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:49:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Robert http://blog.drscottfranklin.net/2006/02/28/appropriately-frustrated-updated/comment-page-1/#comment-231 Robert Tue, 28 Feb 2006 19:23:07 +0000 http://blog.drscottfranklin.net/2006/02/28/appropriately-frustrated-updated/#comment-231 Without knowing the specifics, I'd say structure the project on two levels: (1) Students have to read the model and give a valid, front-to-back explanation of how it was derived and any other important aspects of it. (2) Require students to adapt the model to some new situation that is slightly different than the one for which it was originally designed. It's pretty hard to superficially understand something and successfully do both of the above. This approach also has the benefit of how modeling will work in the real world -- you have some situation that you need a model for, so you look up what somebody else did, try to understand it, and then tweak it appropriately. I hope that's applicable and/or helpful. Without knowing the specifics, I’d say structure the project on two levels:

(1) Students have to read the model and give a valid, front-to-back explanation of how it was derived and any other important aspects of it.
(2) Require students to adapt the model to some new situation that is slightly different than the one for which it was originally designed.

It’s pretty hard to superficially understand something and successfully do both of the above. This approach also has the benefit of how modeling will work in the real world — you have some situation that you need a model for, so you look up what somebody else did, try to understand it, and then tweak it appropriately.

I hope that’s applicable and/or helpful.

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