111–120 of 124 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's an idea: you try to do that teaching three or four sections and report back how that goes. I am not sure if you have ever taught post secondary classes before, but what you're describing is untenable for someone who wants to not work 12 hour days. It's a nice idea, and I know that I would have loved to do that when I was teaching, but the fact of the matter is it isn't feasible unless you have a squadron of TA…
Totally! I definitely didn't mean to imply this is the Prof/TA's fault. It is the fault of many institutions and systems above them. I meant that TA's shouldn't be responsible for grading 4 sections of 60 students each. The only natural outcome of that is poor education, one facet of which is easily cheatable assignments. It just seems ridiculous that the thing we are focusing on is that kids are cheating and not tha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's an idea: you try to do that teaching three or four sections and report back how that goes. I am not sure if you have ever taught post secondary classes before, but what you're describing is untenable for someone who wants to not work 12 hour days. It's a nice idea, and I know that I would have loved to do that when I was teaching, but the fact of the matter is it isn't feasible unless you have a squadron of TA…
> (...) unless you have a squadron of TA's to help you carry it out, and that's not gonna happen. Interestingly enough, here's how this worked when I was an undergrad TA: * The college's central office paid TAs for obligatory undergrad courses (so basically CS101 etc. up until sophomore year) * Advanced courses were funded by the individual chairs and institutes. And would you look at that, suddenly there was a whole…
College isn't about education, but about signaling your value as a contributor to capitalism. Otherwise, we'd be promoting collaborative learning and letting those who don't contribute or cheat simply cheat themselves.
College has two distinct but related functions: education and certification. While related, these things are sometimes in tension. Most things related to grading support the certification function, not the education function.
The companies experimenting on such things are more likely to be able to adapt to a climate where certification is becoming meaningless.
Hopefully, more companies will realize certification designed for the industrial age has run its course and academia will no longer be incentivized to continue gatekeeping via certification and will get back to focusing on education.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused. The fix for grading homework is to grade homework? "Completion" is pretty ill-defined if there's no attempt to judge content.
Like I said, rounding up from 50% seems reasonable
Earlier quoted context omitted.
College has two distinct but related functions: education and certification. While related, these things are sometimes in tension. Most things related to grading support the certification function, not the education function.
Certification isn't a necessity in the face of accepting uncertainty. Once we accept the lack of certainty around hiring people, we can start coming up with solutions to overcome certification. The companies experimenting on such things are more likely to be able to adapt to a climate where certification is becoming meaningless. Hopefully, more companies will realize certification designed for the industrial age has…
Sure, but since real people that are actually hiring are quite Keen to limit uncertsinty, that's not particularly germane to the real context in which colleges or students operate. If it were, non-certifying MOOCs and certifying college courses would have more similar costs.
> Once we accept the lack of certainty around hiring people,
Most hiring parties accept a lot of uncertainty around hiring people, and that is reflected in pay which is discounted for that risk.
Both hiring parties and quality employees (who can thus command higher pay) want to reduce that uncertainty, not increase it.
> and academia will no longer be incentivized to continue gatekeeping via certification and will get back to focusing on education.
Higher education started out much like trade guilds for scholars; there is precious little “education without gatekeeping” for it to return to (and it well predates the industrial age.)
Outside of universities, education without certification never went away. There are plenty of places to get that.
I was teaching the lab portion of CS 101 (don't remember the actual course number off-hand) when I discovered that two students had the same remarkable code that shouldn't have worked but did. We were using C, and instead of using globals or parameters, each function declared the same local variables in the same order. The stack, then, remained sufficiently consistent that each function had access to the values it ne…
In other words, we have made studying in groups a crime. Normally, to study a subject you would pose yourself problems and solve them, sometimes with friends. But we insist that homework be done individually, and we insist to assess every last little thing. I think this is a problem in the American university. The other problem is that we have reduced scientific ethics to the subject of plagiarism. But there's other…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like I said, rounding up from 50% seems reasonable
Ok, but that’s essentially just saying to grade homework gently. Which is totally fine but doesn’t seem to address the concerns with plagiarism nor with the earlier comment that instructors simply shouldn’t assign homework.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certification isn't a necessity in the face of accepting uncertainty. Once we accept the lack of certainty around hiring people, we can start coming up with solutions to overcome certification. The companies experimenting on such things are more likely to be able to adapt to a climate where certification is becoming meaningless. Hopefully, more companies will realize certification designed for the industrial age has…
> Certification isn't a necessity in the face of accepting uncertainty Sure, but since real people that are actually hiring are quite Keen to limit uncertsinty, that's not particularly germane to the real context in which colleges or students operate. If it were, non-certifying MOOCs and certifying college courses would have more similar costs. > Once we accept the lack of certainty around hiring people, Most hiring…
This may be Star Trekonomics 101...dunno. I do know it starts with an organization willing to give it a try and put themselves out there to be the most sustainable with as little money required as possible. Over the second company joins them, it's only a matter of time before they (or someone inspired by then) publicly starts trouncing the rest of the market by reducing the flow of cash into the industry while focusing fully on meeting the needs of their customers. Customers will flock to them, collectively giving the org whatever is needed to include more people in a sustainable manner. Once that starts happening, others in the industry will likely follow and the industry will likely start heavily divesting of cash.
I patiently wait for it to happen in academia.
I was teaching the lab portion of CS 101 (don't remember the actual course number off-hand) when I discovered that two students had the same remarkable code that shouldn't have worked but did. We were using C, and instead of using globals or parameters, each function declared the same local variables in the same order. The stack, then, remained sufficiently consistent that each function had access to the values it ne…
Not a single company has ever asked me to invert a binary tree/implementing any more complicated algorithm nor my grades, they have only cared about my personality and non-school projects.
Hell, we are encouraged to work together with other people at my university.