Memorization is not a measure of understanding.
While scrolling through the patches to decide which one I would find interesting and relate to, I could tell right away from the title that Patch 3: “Sheets Ain’t Cheats” would be one that would resonate with me.
While this past year definitely has created academic integrity challenges for some, one thing I loved is that students are able to take their exams with all of the resources in front of them that they would typically have 24/7 access to in the form of their smartphone.
There are also many questions as to what constitutes learning and what does not. It did not take long for me to read a line in this article that floored me by how much I feel it:
“Memorization is not a measure of understanding.”
Damn. I couldn’t have said it better myself!!!! Anyone has access to notes, textbooks, and the internet. So if memorizing facts were all it took to know a field, why couldn’t everyone be a rocket scientist?
Understanding material takes so much more than just remembering it. In fact, memorizing is insignificant in comparison to true understanding.
Letting my students make cheat sheets or full-on use their notes and books during an exam forces me to come up with more creative assessment questions that actually test their understanding of the concepts, and their ability to apply them. Anyone can regurgitate information without truly understanding it, and using that as a baseline for test questions is a surefire way to produce students that value memorization rather than comprehension.
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