I have wondered about this as well. School mentality teaches us to work alone, independantly, and not to collaborate. This is absolutely the most inefficient way to get anything done, and mostly anything I have been paid to do was a collaboration on some level. Only my hobby projects are done alone, and I don't even do that any more. Once I had a class where they divided us into groups for a group project. I was doing extremely well in the class, actually could have taught a bit of it, so the professor put me with the two biggest rumdums, guys who were nearly flunking. I made sure they contributed plenty to the effort, they learned a lot, even came up with some really creative ideas. Our project got top marks, and I specifically made sure the professor knew that they pulled their own weight. Their grades spiked dramatically after that. What they needed was encouragement, a role model, and they actually had personalities that did better work in a group setting. My daughter in High School collaborates a lot. It is encouraged in many classes, for the same reasons - some people learn a lot better in a group setting. My wife, who has a PHD, said her strategy was simple: on the first day of the class, she would pick out the brightest student in class (except herself) and make friends with them and offer to study together. My high school electronics class was all about collaboration - lab partners studied together and built stuff together. There is this myth, most prevalent in America, that we should be these lone independant cowboys, clinched and closed with the Frozen North, alone on the Prairie in our sod house braving the elements. We have these images of Einstein working alone solving the mysteries of the universe, or Edison working alone in the lab inventing the light bulb. Einstein had an active correspondence with many scientists, and Edison had a whole staff working for him and big money behind him. Sure, students need to do the work, "do the math" to get their heads wrapped around problems. But our schools focus on this so much we produce generations of engineers with spiny social skills that could work a lot more efficiently in groups. -- Lawrence Lile William Chops Westfield Sent by: pic microcontroller discussion list 04/23/2004 12:37 AM Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU cc: Subject: Re: [OT]:Responding to Students Asking for Homework Solutions On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 12:13 US/Pacific, Wouter van Ooijen wrote: > Then and now I enjoy finding out whether a student understands the > code (or more general: the work) he is showing me. I say to them that > I don't care much whether they make their homework in groups or even > copy it, as long as they can convince me that they understand it. ah hah! Thank you. I've been trying to resolve, in my mind, the contradictions of "don't copy" in school vs "don't re-invent the wheel" in industry, and your comment fits exactly. And so simple, too! BillW -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.