biochem pedagogy
What is the purpose of actually testing people's memorization of metabolic pathways when:
1. You have reference materials for this stuff. Test to make sure the kid has the poster in their iPad, or whatever. We don't ask people to draw out every apoptosis or signal transduction pathway they can think of in immunology, for example, it's WHY EVERYONE HAS THE POSTER AND BOOKS.
2. There is way more interesting things to actually learn and remember than those details; like oh the actual electron transfer involved in a particular popular process, or say, actual shit they need to know when they want to isolate dna or protein (what's in that buffer by the way, and why is it at that pH and temperature?)
It's why I always give take home exams. The point is to see if someone can make heads or tails of a particular collection of concepts, not regurgitate the textbook. Given enough time and practice any yahoo can plug and chug away at kinetics or buffer equilibria, but I still see beginning grad students who have to ask why things are done in the lab in a particular way - they have no real world connection to the mumbo jumbo in their lecture notes or texts and they're not going to stop and think until the day they stop cramming for walk-in exams.
1. You have reference materials for this stuff. Test to make sure the kid has the poster in their iPad, or whatever. We don't ask people to draw out every apoptosis or signal transduction pathway they can think of in immunology, for example, it's WHY EVERYONE HAS THE POSTER AND BOOKS.
2. There is way more interesting things to actually learn and remember than those details; like oh the actual electron transfer involved in a particular popular process, or say, actual shit they need to know when they want to isolate dna or protein (what's in that buffer by the way, and why is it at that pH and temperature?)
It's why I always give take home exams. The point is to see if someone can make heads or tails of a particular collection of concepts, not regurgitate the textbook. Given enough time and practice any yahoo can plug and chug away at kinetics or buffer equilibria, but I still see beginning grad students who have to ask why things are done in the lab in a particular way - they have no real world connection to the mumbo jumbo in their lecture notes or texts and they're not going to stop and think until the day they stop cramming for walk-in exams.