As a college instructor, I see too much reliance on computing devices. GIGO, people! That seems to be the root of the problem. I agree with the other posters above who have said that many students don't develop understanding of the problems assigned. Additionally, many students don't really understand what they're doing with regards to the calculator/computer. They often use the tool improperly, as was also noted above.
For example, a popular electric circuits textbook uses radians for the frequency argument and degrees for the phase shift argument in sinusoids. I still laugh when I think of the student who entered the data provided into his calculator without reconciling to a consistent system of units! His graph looked nothing like the picture in the book. I wonder why?
I appreciate the use of computers in engineering for system modeling, tedious calculations, their graphical output capabilities, and for iterative analyses - and so do my students. It will be difficult to function in the workplace without computer literacy.
I will not let my students become dependent on them, however. I remind them that there really is only one brain behind the solution to the problem - their own - and that they have to understand what they're doing, the limitations that are inherent in the tools and techniques they are using, and the concepts they are applying.
xnuke
"Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life." Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
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