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  • Wants the teacher to spoonfeed us even more

    So a bit of background: I'm in an online cohort program. We meet once a month to do our hands-on lab work and exams. The students are from all over the state (and a couple out-of-state who fly in), so we have the cohort split into two lab sites: one in the northern part of the state and one in the south. The north one is the actual college the program is based out of and the south one borrows a site from another college. Each one gets their own lab instructor. I go to the north one, so our lab instructor is actually the online instructor for this particular course overall. The south campus has a separate instructor teach their labs and proctor their exams.

    We have an insane schedule this quarter with our first exam just two weeks in, and apparently a lot of the south campus students were freaking out about the exam. But it's okay; we get a very extensive study guide! This instructor has a habit of writing exams that look very, very similar to the study guide. If she made it any more similar, she'd just be handing us the exam ahead of time.

    Today in lab our instructor told us that someone from the south campus (who remained anonymous, but knowing some of the more neurotic ones there I have a couple guesses) filled out the study guide and it came out to 14 pages.

    Apparently, this student had the gall to email her 14 pages study guide to the teacher and asked her to condense it.

    We're in college. We're adults. We've been in this program for a year now. Why would someone do that? We should be thankful enough that we even get a comprehensive study guide in the first place!

    The teacher said she didn't even know how to respond to it. We suggested narrowing the margins and shrinking the font size. Because, come on now.
    Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

  • #2
    Quoth bhskittykatt View Post
    The teacher said she didn't even know how to respond to it. We suggested narrowing the margins and shrinking the font size. Because, come on now.
    You can also change the spacing between letters/lines and eliminate spaces completely.
    The fact that jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains gives hope to many people.

    You would have to be incredibly dense for the world to revolve around you.

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    • #3
      Quoth bhskittykatt View Post
      Apparently, this student had the gall to email her 14 pages study guide to the teacher and asked her to condense it.
      Sounds like someone at my school. Controlling to the extreme. In my Linux class she freaked out over our midterm. We were used to our tests coming word for word from our online labsims. So if you took the practice tests, you got a good grade. Well, this teacher wrote his own test, and took the material from his lectures. We knew this from the first day of class. It was hard, but a much better way to gauge our knowledge. Anyway this person kept making "suggestions" and even at the end of one class asked "so could you give a practical example?" And the teacher was like ??? because the class was about moving files with the command line. It's like, you have a file over here and you want to put it over there. Does it get more practical than that?
      Replace anger management with stupidity management.

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      • #4
        What are you in school for, bhskittykat? Forensic social work here, and I have two more semesters to go before my senior internship, which is basically an unpaid full-time job.

        Do you have much of a problem with people dropping out? We've lost a lot as the program has ground on. One said it was because she was just so depressed and upset about the direction her life was going -- so, let's make it exponentially worse by dropping out! Now, in addition to being depressed, you get to be depressed while enjoying enormous student loan debt!

        Adults we may be, but something about school makes everybody regress.
        Drive it like it's a county car.

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        • #5
          Quoth Antisocial_Worker View Post
          What are you in school for, bhskittykat? Forensic social work here, and I have two more semesters to go before my senior internship, which is basically an unpaid full-time job.

          Do you have much of a problem with people dropping out?
          Physical Therapy Assisting. It's a certificate program. We just started internships this quarter. So right now I'm at two jobs, internship, and school. I have no life.

          Not much trouble with drop-outs, as the instructors are fairly supportive. We lost one b/c she got knocked up; she can take a year off and come back where she left off.

          Apparently some of the south campus kids were wanting to drop before this exam, though. We're about halfway through, so come on guys.
          Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

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          • #6
            For the record, my study guide came out to 16 pages after going through the questions and my classmate said hers came out to 20 so not sure how 14 is worth complaining about!
            Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

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            • #7
              Heck, in my college days I would have LOVED to get a study guide that big. Some of my profs were famous for giving out a one page study guide and the exam covering NOTHING from the study guide

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              • #8
                Study guide? What's that? Most of my college profs said something to the effect of "if it's in the book or I said it in class, it's fair game." My main graduate probability theory prof was a little nicer and told us we'd have access to the various tables and formula lists in the back of the text book so not to bother with memorizing those (but know how to use them).
                At the conclusion of an Irish wedding, the priest said "Everybody please hug the person who has made your life worth living. The bartender was nearly crushed to death.

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                • #9
                  So there's a new complaint from the south campus.

                  Teacher likes to give out practice quizzes with questions that look a lot like what's on the actual exam. *cough* *hint* *cough*

                  One of the south campus students complained that because she was given some of the answers, she did not do as well on the exam because she spent her time memorizing the answers on the practice quiz and thus didn't do so well on all the other questions on the exam that weren't on the practice test.

                  For the record, the practice quizzes are around 10 questions and the exams 50-60 questions, something that is known ahead of time. Obviously there's going to be more to the exam!

                  I just....it broke my brain. You were given freebie answers and yet you still complain!

                  My poor teacher has no idea what they want down there in order to be happy. She's....less than impressed. I am quite certain some of them will have some difficulty getting a letter of recommendation from her when they go out into the world and seek jobs. (This teacher is well-known in the industry around this region in a very positive manner, so having that letter for a job search in this region carries a special sort of weight...)
                  Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

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                  • #10
                    Does she have the ability to kick people out of her class? We could when I taught at a community college. As a professor, at this point I'd tell the students if they didn't like it to drop the class. And then go talk to my dean and give him a heads up.
                    At the conclusion of an Irish wedding, the priest said "Everybody please hug the person who has made your life worth living. The bartender was nearly crushed to death.

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                    • #11
                      Quoth mathnerd View Post
                      Does she have the ability to kick people out of her class?
                      Cohort program means kicking people out of the class would mean kicking them out of the entire program so she doesn't have that power, though I have no doubts she's expressed her frustrations to the program admin. They'd have to do some real drastic to be kicked out though, especially at this point (only two quarters of class left, plus internships).

                      This is our last quarter with this instructor who we've had almost every quarter until now, and all of us at the north campus adore her, so we're all pooling money to buy her something nice (looking for a deal on a Go-Pro for her this afternoon). We've decided not to include the south campus on this...
                      Last edited by bhskittykatt; 06-14-2015, 09:35 PM.
                      Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

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                      • #12
                        memorising answers is NOT learning!
                        Seshat's self-help guide:
                        1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
                        2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
                        3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
                        4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

                        "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

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                        • #13
                          Some folks do not want to think, do they? Parroting back answers doesn't constitute learning. Memorization is not learning. Argh.

                          Had an English prof that got upset once about this very thing. Why? So much of my class kept whining that she wouldn't spoonfeed them their own answers. In a class where both class discussion and essays were effectively "using $resources and your personal perspective, talk about $idea" at the narrowest. They just wanted to be lectured at and given the "correct" answer. In a class that pointedly wasn't about one perfect right answer, but rather about coherent written communication about something. Grrr.

                          I loved that teacher for her drive to get her students to think instead of parrot back. I personally resent having to parrot things back. I like learning the whys and the hows of things just as much as the result.
                          1129. I will refrain from casting Dimension Jump and Magnificent Mansion on every police box we pass.
                          -----
                          http://orchidcolors.livejournal.com (A blog about everything and nothing)

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                          • #14
                            Quoth bhskittykatt View Post
                            Apparently, this student had the gall to email her 14 pages study guide to the teacher and asked her to condense it.
                            Reminds me of a kid in my freshman-level Geology course when I was in college. The professor covered all the material rather well--lectures, presentations, in-class demonstrations and labs--and covered everything in class that was in the book and/or on the test. When he wrapped up a section and told us when the first test would be, one guy just lost his mind.

                            He started complaining that he didn't have enough notice to prepare for the test.
                            He whined to the professor that he "feels like you skimmed over some important stuff."
                            He criticized the professor's teaching methods.
                            He demanded that the test be open-book and open-notes.

                            To the professor's credit, he took all this in stride. When the tirade was done, he told the student that there was no need to panic. He had scheduled a review session for the afternoon of the next day, which was another day or two before the exam.

                            That's when things got weird. I had to write down what the student said and later copy it to my journal because it struck me as uncommonly dumb.

                            Idiot: But that's not fair! I can't come to this class in the afternoon! You can't hold a special class that I can't come to and then give a test on material that I won't be present to learn about!
                            Professor: It's not new material; it's a review of stuff we've already covered.
                            Idiot: How am I supposed to take a test on stuff I won't know anything about because you have a special class that I can't come to?
                            Professor: It's not new material; it's a review.
                            Idiot: No! It's not fair!

                            Most of the rest of the class was stunned. So was the professor. Then two other students chimed in and agreed with the complainer! Professor held up his hands in surrender, moved the test ahead a week, and held an in-class review on the day the test was originally scheduled for. I slept in that day, and I still aced the test.

                            Quoth RootedPhoenix View Post
                            Had an English prof that got upset once about this very thing. Why? So much of my class kept whining that she wouldn't spoonfeed them their own answers. In a class where both class discussion and essays were effectively "using $resources and your personal perspective, talk about $idea" at the narrowest.
                            Most of my English professors were this way as well. Except one. She taught poetry. Many of our assignments were to interpret the really symbolic, metaphorical poems. On the first one, I got a C- for what I thought was a very well explained interpretation. The professor's note on my paper was, "Well written essay, but them poem actually means..." and then she went on to explain to me what her interpretation was.

                            I despised that professor. A friend of mine happened to talk to her about me one, and my friend relayed, "Professor DB thinks very highly of you. She said you wrote well and might even be a genius." Oh yeah? Then why does she give me a C- over a difference of opinion?
                            I suspect that... inside every adult (sometimes not very far inside) is a bratty kid who wants everything his own way.
                            - Bill Watterson

                            My co-workers: They're there when they need me.
                            - IPF

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                            • #15
                              We apparently have these people at my school, too. The scuttlebutt (baha, love that word) is this woman got a B in a class. After she got the final grade, she went to the school and caused a huge drama. She claimed that she didn't really grasp the material. In the end, she basically forced the teacher to come in and teach the class again, this summer.

                              The teacher is actually my advisor, and a really laid back guy. His teaching style is more self motivated, self pacing. He certainly lectures, and we have a textbook (Python for Kids), and we have labs to do, he is just less structured than some other teachers. I sometimes have to really make myself set my own deadlines, since I do better with firm deadlines. But guess what? I take responsibility for my own learning! This is my future, and we aren't in the 5th freaking grade. Anyway, this woman ruined my teacher's summer, all because she didn't try to learn.
                              Replace anger management with stupidity management.

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