Teachers giving as little information as possible

Woopydalan

Hello,

I am wondering, from a pedagogical point of view, would professors give as little information to the student's. What I mean is, what is the point of deriving a bunch of equations during lecture, and then giving problems not related to a derivation of an equation on the test. I mean, you should test on what you lecture, no?

I feel like the professors are intentionally trying to weed out people. They know what they are going to give you on the test, so why not do things related to that in lecture?

Number Nine

To what extent? A student should be familiar enough with the material that they can answer questions that they haven't seen before and that aren't directly related to lecture material. My first algebra class didn't cover quotient groups, but we were expected to be comfortable enough with group theory to solve problems about them on the final when presented with the definition, which I thought was perfectly fair.

Woopydalan

I think to a rather large extent. A time pressured exam is not the place for putting on never-before-seen material, there is already enough stress involved with the exam as is. I think a ''no surprises'' approach to testing is much better. Surprises should be left for your birthday.

Jakeus314

I know a student has learned when they can go beyond just what they've seen. If you've seen it, of course you should know it. I see tests as a way for students to show that they learned the concepts and not that they've memorized a bunch of steps.

pa5tabear

Depends on the class, but I think you're right with the weeding out idea.

More specifically, the test should show differences in student capability. If you have students scoring 100% on the test, it is not a fair test to those students. They might have been able to score 110%, and their score does not accurately represent their learning.

If the subject is simple, it might be necessary to go beyond the lecture material in order to demonstrate the difference in student aptitude.

Vanadium 50

This is your third complaint. The first one you were looking internally for the cause of not doing well, but the next two were all directed at the teacher. Is it possible you were right the first time?

Woopydalan

I still did well in the class, but I was not happy with the professor's way of handling his exams. He needs to be competent in teaching the material before going out of his way to make his class into a weeder course, which he self admitted was his intention. Thank goodness I had the tenacity to study all day and beat the curve, but it was still lame.

I'm just saying there needs to be a better way to do this. No wonder people are pushed away from science at such an early age in the US.

I know there are plenty of science classes out there with class averages of 30-40%. There is a reason for this you know, other than the most obvious reason.

Woopydalan

This ''if you've seen it, of course you should know it'' is not really true whatsoever to me. If you saw some people speaking chinese, does that mean you should now know it?

Darth Frodo

Well not unless you could lip read...

But your comparison isn't really comparable.



If you heard someone speaking Chinese you could repeat the sentence based on sound alone. But as you stated you wouldn't be able to speak Chinese.


If you see a problem, you should be able to do it. Perhaps with some learning but you would be able to do it. What you won't learn in the entirety of Algebra or Calculus or whatever field as you implied...

Jakeus314

If you've seen it, you should know it... Or take the time to learn and know it. My point is that knowing just what you've seen is the bare minimum. We all learn at different speeds. I would not say that students should be able to do it instantly as it seems that you've assumed I implied.

Is that really what learning feels like to you? Like an English speaker listening to Chinese? If not, then that is an odd comparison.

Woopydalan

I don't know but it seems like a lot of professors are chinese and trying to speak english to me

Jakeus314

Agreed. That is a big problem sometimes.

Woopydalan

Ok, just to put it in perspective, I'm at a community college and my tests are harder than the tests provided on the MIT opencourseware page. There is something wrong here. Walter Lewin hardly ever wasted time deriving equations, if only all professors could test and lecture like him.

Jakeus314

Why should a community college be easier or harder than any other institution?

If you can get credit for the CC class at another university, it should be roughly the same. If you don't like a specific professor, you usually have the option to drop with a refund within a week or so.

Also, CC classes are way cheaper than most universities... Do you expect the same quality as MIT?

Number Nine

In what way is deriving equations a waste of time?

Woopydalan

Unless I'm asked to derive an equation on the test, I feel it is a waste of lecture time, especially if the textbook will take the ink to do the same thing. It's mostly algebra manipulation anyway. It goes away from the meat and potatoes of physics in my opinion.

I'm not saying you need to shoot guns in class to prove your point like lewin did, so I guess your opinion is that CC professors ought to be lower quality than what you get at MIT?

Your forgetting CC has lost funding (atleast in CA), so you might only have 1 or 2 professors for a certain subject, and the other professor will be at the same time as your math class or whatever.

The point I wanted to make here was that I think educators should lecture what they know they are going to put on the exam, or atleast things of similar nature, atleast get the blood flowing to think like a problem solver. Don't waste my time deriving equations if the test is going to have problems in them that involve analyzing situations and applying the equations to the situations.

It adds insult to injury when the professors do this on purpose as a ploy to weed people out, I didn't know there was so much ego in science until I started to immerse myself in it, which was only about a year ago.

hops1

Hi guys,
kinda new here and wanted to add my experience in this.
I once had a teacher who came into the final test wearing a t-shirt that said (you're going down), mind you many people were failing the class.

On the final he put a question which wasn't in the book and he never spoke of in class. The only place I noticed the question or a similar one was on a copy of a 3-4 year old final that he gave us along with other previous final exams.
It was a formula we had to derive, thank God I managed to figure it out but to be honest it wasn't in line with the concepts we were thought throughout the year.

Many people complained about it, but it was kinda of conflict of interest for me to complain since I had got it right, I don't know what ended up happening though. But it seemed very unfair to me, especially seeing that majority of the class was already failing. I think only a third of the class graduated.