if you want students to study then you should eliminate grades. grades simply encourage them to game the system. of course, gaming the system is a very valuable real world skill.
What happened to studying?
11–20 of 81 posts
Re: What happened to studying?
#12[deleted]
Re: What happened to studying?
#13This part made me cringe: "Marks herself points out that employers don’t generally care about the content of job applicants’ classes; they’re more interested in whether an applicant graduated, was able to meet deadlines, and work within a bureaucracy"
Sad, but probably true. One of the classes I remember the most was one that was set up to give engineering students an introduction to the workplace. So, you had business-like tasks (most of which were centered around Excel) and you were graded by whether you met, exceeded, or didn't meet expectations.
In one assignment, I made a really fancy Excel spreadsheet (it was a producer/consumer type problem, and my 1s for produced units actually moved across the page). But it had a bug, and the numbers it created were pure gibberish. I found the bug but had no time to fix it. I documented this fact somewhere in the fine print and talked about how I would fix it if I had more time.
It looked cool though, even if it didn't work at all, so I got "exceeds expectations." I had known how demos work long before that, of course, but I think it was my first real demo.
As for studying, well, maybe they should ask what happens to it after college? I didn't think we were supposed to stop. Which reminds me, I should fire up Anki and review.
Re: What happened to studying?
#14[deleted]
Re: What happened to studying?
#15I've always figured that if I had to study for a test, there was something wrong. A test should judge if you know the underlying concepts, not how many facts you've memorized.
Re: What happened to studying?
#16I've always figured that if I had to study for a test, there was something wrong. A test should judge if you know the underlying concepts, not how many facts you've memorized.
[deleted]
Re: What happened to studying?
#17I've always figured that if I had to study for a test, there was something wrong. A test should judge if you know the underlying concepts, not how many facts you've memorized.
Did you really never study a subject where at least part of what you needed to learn was facts? History? A foreign language (noun and verb forms, vocabulary, irregular noun and verb forms, genders, idioms)? Science? Computer science? Math? Literature? All of these subjects involve learning facts - at least some of the time.
Yes, ideas are important, but so are facts.
Re: What happened to studying?
#18I wonder if this has been adjusted for the increase in dropout rates? I'm assuming that many of those dropping out did less studying for whatever reason, be it too busy working or just not having what it takes to do this sort of unsupervised work.
Re: What happened to studying?
#19I've always figured that if I had to study for a test, there was something wrong. A test should judge if you know the underlying concepts, not how many facts you've memorized.
Did you really never study a subject where at least part of what you needed to learn was facts? History? A foreign language (noun and verb forms, vocabulary, irregular noun and verb forms, genders, idioms)? Science? Computer science? Math? Literature? All of these subjects involve learning facts - at least some of the time. Yes, ideas are important, but so are facts.
Having enough command of background facts to quickly figure things out is useful, but beyond that, knowing where to look up the facts seems like a perfectly fine substitute for memorizing them. The real problem is if you know so little that you don't even know how to figure out what you need.
Re: What happened to studying?
#20This part made me cringe: "Marks herself points out that employers don’t generally care about the content of job applicants’ classes; they’re more interested in whether an applicant graduated, was able to meet deadlines, and work within a bureaucracy"
Not surprising. The degree requirement is largely a (time-consuming, expensive, and inaccurate) IQ and class filter that employers can use without getting sued out of existence.