What If Students Could Fire Their Professors? • Hacker News Board

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#181

Post by semi-extrinsic » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 7:16 AM UTC

rpcope1 wrote: post #178

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon" Well, that's your problem. There's a ton of physics that premeds should learn, but gravity is not one of them. Calculating electric potentials, forces etc. as applied to biological membranes would be infinitely better. Teach them the doppler effect, so they'll understand that ultrasound flow meter from the get go. Don't even get me started on N…

You know, that's a very bold statement for someone who probably is not and never has been a physics educator. In order to make any sense out of even entry level physics and in some sense understand how it's unified, we teach (an often light) version of Newtonian mechanics; it's really rather strange, and usually far too abstract to teach Newtonian mechanics without simple forces like gravity near the surface of the e…

I wouldn't call myself a physics educator, but I have TAed many physics courses, and I had a temporary employment at my university's physics department working on constructing new numerical term projects for undergraduate introductory physics. And really, electric forces and gravity are both 1/r^2 laws, and the field near the surface of a biological membrane is also fairly uniform, so why not calculate the forces on a virus instead? It's a matter of piqueing the interest of the students.

I remember constructing one numerical assignment for intro phys. for mech. eng. that was supposed to teach numerical integration of ODEs, so I had them set up Newton's second law for a soccer penalty kick, working their way up to including realistic air resistance plus Magnus effect. Boy, they were excited to be able to curve that ball past the keeper into the upper corner of the goal (this was Matlab and I gave them code to draw the path in 3D on a soccer field).

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#182

Post by sklogic » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 8:17 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #145

evanpw wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of students are there to get a degree, not to learn something. Employers don't know or care how much freshman chemistry you remember (unless you're a chemist), but they do care if you didn't finish your degree because you couldn't pass some requirement. I wonder if the the same relationship is true in fields where there is a licensing exam at the end of your degree (like engineering). Or maybe something like a…

Tell me about it. I TA for a physics class for premeds, and while they may find some passing interest in the course, they certainly don't care to learn it...and actually, I agree. May be a general knowledge of physics for someone going into medicine might be somewhat beneficial, but do I really expect my doctor to care about calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon? Really? I'm still at…

Physics should be taught to everyone, for one simple reason: this is the only science which studies a simple enough subject for all the classic scientific methodology to work really well.

So it is the most natural way to learn about scientific methodology in general. The other sciences are still largely in a phenomenology stages, while physics features multiple nice, small, tidy, very well-developed theories, and it is pretty much unique in this sense.

Medical students will find it much easier to comprehend the reason behind the double-blind method after comprehending the classic, simple Popperian methodology on the obvious physics examples.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#183

Post by klibertp » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 8:50 AM UTC

Pinatubo wrote: post #135

klibertp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you wish to wager? WTF does that even mean? Look, I'm a student. I'm supposed to make mistakes. It's natural for me to be wrong. I should be wrong many times now so that I can learn and not make those mistakes in the future. But you're a teacher. You are supposed to correct mistakes. You are supposed not to make mistakes, or at the very least to be honest about those mistakes. You're not supposed to try to intim…

The problem with being too open to regarded is that the teacher is inundated with frivolous requests. Grading is very time consuming, and regrading a test because a student simply isn't happy with the grade they earned is a horrible waste of time. When I was teaching my policy was to reconsider anything a student felt was a mistake in grading, as long as it was accompanied by a written memo explaining precisely what…

+1 - I'd be very happy having a teacher like you, your approach I feel is a fair and honest one.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#184

Post by komodekork » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:59 AM UTC

A universitys main focus should be on research, education is second. Let the colleges educate the masses. Therefore students shouldn't have a say in if a professor should be on the faculty or not, as long as he is churning out good papers.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#185

Post by JoeAltmaier » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

rpcope1 wrote: post #179

xamuel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a very realistic view of things. First of all, a professor's job consists of many things, of which teaching is just one. Depending on the institution, your tuition may be a very miniscule portion of the professor's paycheck. Finally, even if they're solely a lecturer and payed entirely from tuition, what you want isn't necessarily what other students want, so unless you've hired the prof as a private tutor…

You strike on a significant point that most HN types have no idea about: the majority of most big schools that do any research (state schools, big private schools like Ivies) get the majority of their budget from taking a cut of research grants, and secondarily from state funding and tuitions. At the various schools I have been involved in different forms with, tuition covers on;y like 20-40% of operating costs; the…

Iowa gets 5% of its funding from the state, reduced in budget cuts every year for decades. I honestly don't know why they don't cut their ties - 5% isn't worth all the Board of Regents interference.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#186

Post by nilkn » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:10 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #84

nilkn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that this is true in general and is sufficient to destroy any attempt to have students control professor selection, but I'm hesitant to take too much away from this. The best professor in my school's math department was also the most beloved; he was routinely showered with praise by students, and his students were also very successful in later classes. And his classes were not at all easy. I guess we ca…

> The best professor in my school's math department was also the most beloved Out of curiosity, what class traditionally 'belonged' to that teacher? Freshman classes for non-majors (think pre-algebra for art majors) taught in a harsh-but-fair manner is going to score differently than an upper-class or graduate level on manifolds.

He primarily taught the Honors Calculus sequence, but would occasionally teach other courses as well. Many math majors went straight into analysis, so a good portion of his students were engineering and pre-med students rather than pure math majors.

His classes were notoriously hard, but he was so well-liked for four reasons:

(1) he was a gifted lecturer who put an immense amount of effort into finding clear explanations of every single concept -- nothing was spared from his relentless pursuit for clarity; he was also genuinely excited about the subject and was able to pass that excitement off to students.

I think students appreciated that, instead of putting his effort into creating some complicated class structure and a huge syllabus and fancy slides, he instead invested himself in finding the best possible explanations. There was definitely a sense that attending his lecture was a lot more valuable than reading the book, though that was always recommended too.

(2) he was very generous with his time and would always accommodate questions or requests for help.

(3) he took a keen interest in each and every student and kept up-to-date on everyone's individual progress; he never wanted anyone to accidentally get left behind. That doesn't mean that he'd give you a good grade out of sympathy, but it would be clear by the end of the class that you wouldn't have anyone to blame but yourself if you didn't do well. Even for the most jaded student, it's hard to be mad at the professor when it's made exceedingly clear that it's your own fault for not doing well.

(4) he was absolutely and utterly not pretentious in any way, and he was, in general, extremely kind; he had a way of making anyone feel welcome, even excited, to be in his classes, even if you weren't a math major or weren't very interested in math.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#187

Post by nilkn » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:13 PM UTC

Tloewald wrote: post #74

nilkn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that this is true in general and is sufficient to destroy any attempt to have students control professor selection, but I'm hesitant to take too much away from this. The best professor in my school's math department was also the most beloved; he was routinely showered with praise by students, and his students were also very successful in later classes. And his classes were not at all easy. I guess we ca…

I suspect (3) is pretty much impossible, and being — say — 2.5 involves being a gifted entertainer and either having tenure or dumbing down your grading to avoid ticking off students just for giving out fair grades.

I think (3) is possible, though exceedingly rare, and perhaps Feynman would be an example.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#188

Post by kefka » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:21 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #185

rpcope1 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You strike on a significant point that most HN types have no idea about: the majority of most big schools that do any research (state schools, big private schools like Ivies) get the majority of their budget from taking a cut of research grants, and secondarily from state funding and tuitions. At the various schools I have been involved in different forms with, tuition covers on;y like 20-40% of operating costs; the…

Iowa gets 5% of its funding from the state, reduced in budget cuts every year for decades. I honestly don't know why they don't cut their ties - 5% isn't worth all the Board of Regents interference.

Precisely. Ever since Reagan, Public schools are dwindling to Private with a token appreciation and control from the state.

My parents also told me of a time when one could work a summer job and pay for the rest of school year. Long are those times gone.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#189

Post by kefka » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:29 PM UTC

sklogic wrote: post #161

kefka wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's paying? Simple question. Really convoluted answer. But the end payers are the students. And they want their money's worth. Of course, the worth is derived from their uneducated selves, and "higher educated" peoples know what's best for them. A percent of income for X years seems much fairer way of paying for education. But even that has its flaws. We have yet to see the full blowback from our current way of fin…

Of course the current system is awful and it will backfire dramatically. But it's not an excuse for being lazy and stupid.

I agree. The system right now is fucked, and we are at least 20 years out before we see the full ramifications.

Instead, I imagine something different for a school. If someone fails a course, one has to retake it. This is silly if one is trying to learn. Instead, the answer is to stick with the area of problem until it is understood. But, because profit motives take hold, it is simply easier to fail someone.

The better answer for teaching is less material per class, shorter classes (vs 18 weeks), and quick to fail. And aside that should be no punishment to fail. In essence, aside laziness, it is both the teacher and the student who fail when a concept is not learned, but the onus lies purely on the student in our system.

I also believe that payment should be hinged upon future earnings, and not a ballooned sum payable in the hopes of a job. A percentage would be fair for X years... Of course I acknowledge that this could cause the liberal arts to falter. Marx and Engels divined this long ago with their analysis of capitalism and supremacy of what we call STEM degrees.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#190

Post by sklogic » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

kefka wrote: post #189

sklogic wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the current system is awful and it will backfire dramatically. But it's not an excuse for being lazy and stupid.

I agree. The system right now is fucked, and we are at least 20 years out before we see the full ramifications. Instead, I imagine something different for a school. If someone fails a course, one has to retake it. This is silly if one is trying to learn. Instead, the answer is to stick with the area of problem until it is understood. But, because profit motives take hold, it is simply easier to fail someone. The bett…

In the higher education it is not a lecturers job to convey the material to even the slowest of the class. The responsibility is entirely on the students side.

Education is selective and there is nothing wrong with it. Self-education is a very important part of it, and the only thing teacher really must consistently do is to help the students to identify their flaws as quickly as possible so they can go and address them.

But, yes, everyone must be able to retake any course any number of times, until either passed or pissed off.