peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (01/07/84)
<> Mary-Anne Wolf made two recommendations to professors that I wholeheartedly agree with: - have a TA complete an assignment before it is given to the students (or do it yourself) and note how long it takes to do. - take care not to give assignments that take too long to complete. On the first, I am sure this saves time in the long run. It sorts out all the minor problems of wording and details of working with any programming systems involved. These problems can consume large amounts of class time. It also allows you to decide exactly what you'd like to see the students hand in at the end of it all and permits creation of a marking scheme (not that this scheme should be revealed in its entirety to the class-- ie. don't release "used caching to improve access time:5 marks") Most importantly, it allows you to determine what the assignment is teaching and whether the amount-to-be-learned/time-to-be-spent ratio is high enough. Overloading a student makes it all the less likely that they will consider broader issues dealing with the course material. Thinking about such things is important to linking their new knowledge to their general knowledge, so it will be used later on, and not kept in their, say, "operating systems" box. If they have to work overly hard, they will only consider the essentials needed to get marks. On the other hand, further prompting is needed to encourage such linking-- time for reflection is not necessarily so used. Most importantly, though, simple fairness and civility demand that one limit the amount of work assigned to reasonable levels (or, if not possible, to levels announced at the beginning of the course). Students DO have multiple courses and lives outside of school; they should only give up large amounts of time voluntarily (i.e. in non-core courses). As for grades being a means, not an end, hear, hear! Learning of facts, how to uncover more, and how to use them in straightforward and novel situations, should be the goal. Grades can be motivators, but are certainly not perfect in that role (e.g. fostering competition over co-operation is one side-effect). Learning has to be first. (Anecdotal point: I have found students to respond quite well to this attitude). It is interesting to speculate on an environment in which learning is the most important aspect to all concerned, including all administrators and people outside the universities. There would be no degrees or marks. People would pay tuition to improve their ability to perform their job, or to increase their general level of awareness. If their abilities did improve as a result, they would be rewarded on the job, or possibly by richer inter- personal relationships or a fuller life, and not by a piece of paper. There are problems, of course, particularly in the professions (medicine, etc.) where accreditation is in the public interest, though this might be handled by a testing service distinct from the university. p. rowley, U. Toronto
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/07/84)
I just went to a course where I discovered something new in grading. They are going to give us 5 questions every week, and a lot of stuff to read. We get to discuss the stuff in class. The kicker is that the exam is going to be comprised of certain of these questions, changed slightly to get around the university regulation that you cannot give students questions that they have seen before on an exam. I wonder -- why have this regulation? if the purpose of the exercise is to learn something, then tell us what it is that we are supposed to learn and give us an opportunity to do so. Telling us *exactly* what it is that we are supposed to know strikes me as perfectly reasonable. It sure beats "Guess what the professor, who sounds entirely different from the TAs who do the discussing, mean when they use these words", a game which I have had to play on several exams. if you guess worng, you do badly, even if you know the material. Screaming that the question was ambiguous is not really guaranteed to help if you petition your mark -- what do you do if they think that you should understand how to unravel ambiguities? Unravelling ambiguities is not really taught at university, unless you go looking for a course to do this. In person, if I start to answer a question that I have misinterpreted, the otehr party can say "wait, I didn't mean THAT, what I meant was..." and then you can present the argument on the right topic. Somehow, exams don't allow for that. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
chuq@cae780.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach) (01/13/84)
I think the main reason there is a regulation against giving the students
questions already discussed is to minimize the chance of a professor giving
away grades by teaching the students how to pass the exams rather than
teaching them how to pass the class. It also gives them something to use
against a teacher found pulling stunts in his classes with certain students
(remember the $64,000 question game show scandals? Same things applies). In
real life (not to be mis-construed with the reality that most university
administrations seem to live in) these regulations are usually useless,
because a professor can do most of the things they are supposed to regulate
very easily....
--
-- Diogenes looked in and laughed--
From the dungeons of the wombat Chuqui the Plaid
Note the new address: {fortune,menlo70}!nsc!chuqui
~And as I lived my role I swore I'd sell my soul for one love
who would stand by me and give me back the gift of laughter~
- Winslow Leech