Math 371 Technology for STEM Educators

It's that time of year again when finals are starting to roll around. Students are getting anxious and are studying more than ever. On average, college students take anywhere between four to six classes each semester which leads to about three to five finals at the end of the year. My questions for you are: should colleges have finals, should the finals be cumulative, and when should they be given.  To answer my first question, I think that colleges should have finals. Finals are a great way to see if the student should really pass the class or not. Without finals, a student may slide through the year by cheating on homework and studying enough for tests to remember the information for a small period of time. Having finals makes the student learn the information well enough to the point where they will still remember the information months later. At that point, the student has embedded the information into their brain and will most likely remember it for a ...

Coding can be a useful tool in a classroom but isn’t as widely taught as some people may think. Coding is essentially the process of writing commands that a computer follows to carry out a task. The skill of coding is useful in creating many applicable things we use every day like video games, websites, applications, and much more. So, how can we teach and use coding in the classroom? Coding, by its nature, requires a certain threshold of patience and problem-solving to be successful, two very important things to have and learn when entering the real world. There is a lot of trial and error that goes with coding, and being able to stomach that is important.  Coding also improves a student’s knowledge of how a computer works. When going about their everyday tasks, people that know and understand code can see the various background processes that go into a computer and can see that some websites or social media are coded in a way to make you use their apps as much as possible. This...