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Test scores vs. hands-on competence
When I spoke with Dave White, he offered an observation that I've heard from
several engineering and design teachers. Over the years, Dave has learned that
students who are extremely proicient in their schoolwork, or are what's collo-
quially known as “book smart,” aren't always his star students. “I'm never sur-
prised when I see students who are less passionate about textbook and written
assignments come to life once they reach the design portion of a project,” he said.
Glen Bull has also witnessed the gulf between mastering a theory and mas-
tering the actual practice. “I've seen kids who just read about electrical circuits
create them perfectly in a simulation environment,” he said. “However, these
same kids, when faced with a real electrical circuit, frequently fail. There's
something about the physical dimension, about experiencing learning in the
physical dimension along with the theoretical dimension, that changes our
brains and makes learning really stick.”
Previous research supports Glen's irst-hand experience. In 1995, a researcher
compared student prowess in making a real electric circuit against their written
test scores about the subject. Students in the study demonstrated their practi-
cal knowledge of circuits by doing hands-on tasks such as making and testing
a circuit. The same students also took a question-and-answer test about how
electrical circuits work. The results of the study indicated that students who
tested well did not demonstrate mastery when faced with real circuits. In other
words, written test scores were not a reliable predictor of a student's ability to
work with a circuit in the real world.
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Research raises the question of what is more effective: to teach students new
information by irst exposing them to the theory and then later to application?
Or does learning bloom more brightly if students irst experience the knowl-
edge irst-hand—by doing it—and then diving into the theory? This question
is one of critical importance to people trying to igure out how extract peda-
gogical value by knitting design software and 3D printers into the curriculum.
The answer, obviously, is that each student is different. Different students
prefer different things. Even individual learning preferences shift depending
on the subject at hand and the complexity of the new knowledge.
Forget learning styles
We hope that people trying to create curriculum for 3D printing and design
software won't fall into the trap of slotting these technologies into speciic
