matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) (12/05/88)
In article <1124@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu> vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) writes: >Ultimately the blame must fall on the students (as somebody else pointed >out). You see, in basic courses, I would rather ask the students to buy a >problem book, and may be one (or more :-) books out of a short list. >Unfortunaltey, students feel uncomfortable about this. In fact, a biologist >collegue of mine was bemoaning the fact that students wnat to know which >pages of the text were going to covered on a given day, rather than knowing >the name of the topic alone. I often feel the same way. In fact, when I >lecture, I give only the name of the topic. But student think that that is >too little. If that the way they feel, they deserve to be gouged. This brings up another topic. With the (possible!) exception of a place like MIT, I feel that most engineering (including CS) students are far too focussed on the short term, i.e. getting a good grade in the course, rather than on the long term, i.e. preparing for their careers as engineers. The more structured the course is, the better they like it, because the clearer it is exactly what will be required to get a good grade. They don't like a vague assignment which asks them to learn a topic on their own, by immersing themselves in the topic, exploring it, posing and answering their own questions on it, etc. -- even though this is much better preparation in a career sense. They would rather that they be required to memorize facts and techniques, with the exam questions being warmed-over variations of homework problems. This is a real shame. I do make them explore, and my exams are aimed to reward those that do. Consistent with the philosophy that students will (to a great though of course not unlimited extent) "rise to or lower themselves to" the professor's expectation of them, I find that this approach works out pretty well. However, some of the students do resent it; once one of them, in filling out his/her evaluation of my teaching, wrote, "Professor Matloff wants us to think, but we engineers don't have time to think"! :-) Norm