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No Skill. No Taste

blog.kinglycrow.com

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Re: No Skill. No Taste

#221

Post by James_K »

altmanaltman wrote: post #91
James_K wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skill is your ability to achieve your objectives, taste is the ability to differentiate good from bad objectives.

Okay but how does taste let you do that? I get what skill means but what is it that lets you differentiate between good and bad objectively? Is it experience? exposure? or just having good design skills? The article would be better if it went into the crux of this issue instead of hand waving it over.

Taste is about understanding what people want, and what they don't even know that they want.

Re: No Skill. No Taste

#222

Post by raddan »

Xirdus wrote: post #73
raddan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that you say that because my course websites for my students both: 1) make it difficult to select or copy text, 2) and even if you manage it, you discover that the actual text in the webpage source is encrypted, mainly so they don't vibe-code their homework assignments. So I guess it rates high on my taste scale. (kidding of course; but you can always bring your own stylesheet to the party)

I wonder how well this works for you, considering screenshots are a thing.

The goal is not to make it impossible, just inconvenient. The course textbook is online, but assignments are usually printed in a packet. Students need to synthesize both sources.

It’s hard to say precisely what the effect is, but I will say that students performed better this semester on written exams than ever before. Lots of confounds, of course, but I do think the emphasis on having to retype things yourself forced students to really engage with the material. That said, the number of students coming to office hours was WAY down. Given that I’ve taught this course many times over the years, there’s really only one explanation for that.

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