Re:My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me
by mcphage on Friday December 18, 2015 @10:49AM
(#10759025)
> I could recount the time when a professor chose to replace her all twelve of her lectures with student presentations, then tested us on entirely untaught content; or perhaps the other time when submitted assignments and tests were not marked or discussed, at all, so that the only feedback was a numerical result at the end of the semester.
> I could choose to say that this is symptomatic of a system where research is king and teaching is for peons and undergraduates are lower than dirt.
> Or I could choose to say that perhaps some professors are just bad at their jobs. Or, even, they just had a bad semester. The advantage is that I could do this without cherry-picking the outliers.
Which is to say, you just did do all those things; you were just passive-agressive about it.
Re:My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me
by arbitrage on Friday December 18, 2015 @09:31AM
(#10758603)
Personally, I tend to downvote people who whine about karma. I can get enough of that crap on reddit.
Someone can disagree with you without having to get into an extended debate. That's why the voting buttons exist.
Re:My students have paid £9,000 and now they think they own me
by emp_zealoth on Friday December 18, 2015 @09:38AM
(#10758644)
No, that is exactly and perfectly wrong. Downvoting because you disagree is against the rules.
As a student I wholeheartedly agree - I have classes now where a tutor comes in, tosses a two page pdf with an assigment in Labview (which we were never taught or even got to use before) to do during class and ITS GRADED right after that class. He also throws a hissing fit every time anyone dares to ask him for help.
Having been a student myself, I could recount the time when a professor chose to replace her all twelve of her lectures with student presentations, then tested us on entirely untaught content; or perhaps the other time when submitted assignments and tests were not marked or discussed, at all, so that the only feedback was a numerical result at the end of the semester.
I could choose to say that this is symptomatic of a system where research is king and teaching is for peons and undergraduates are lower than dirt.
Or I could choose to say that perhaps some professors are just bad at their jobs. Or, even, they just had a bad semester. The advantage is that I could do this without cherry-picking the outliers.
What did the writer teach? I hope it is not statistics.
edit: that's some fast negative karma there. Those of you that downvoted, I would love to hear your thoughts.