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Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

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Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#181

Post by marcosdumay »

beebmam wrote: post #9
finexplained wrote: post #6

This perfectly describes my experience as a TA in graduate school. At first I didn't understand why my advisor insisted on being so precise in assignment instructions. Then when TAing with him I saw how students could creatively misinterpret instructions, even when I could not imagine how to make them more precise. An exception for the new case would be added to the next iteration of the assignments. I only understoo…

When I was a TA, I convinced my professor to stop giving graded assignments. it was obvious on tests who had done the assignments and who hadn't.

Professors grade the assignments to make sure that students do them.

There are many other options for evaluating the students, but not many to force them to learn something.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#182

Post by ghostpepper »

nicoburns wrote: post #161
notriddle wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older people knowing better than younger people is one of those heuristics that's almost always right [1]. It's hard to tell the difference between a stupid kid and a stupid parent, because stupid parents are rare. Yet people keep searching for stupid parents, because it's really important to find them when they exist. There's a constant rate of kids pulling false alarms on their parents, but you don't want to ignore…

Maybe I was just unlucky, but that isn't my retroactive judgement on my childhood at all. My experience was one of mostly adults making me do something that is really down to subjective preference because that was their preference. And now that I'm an adult and can make my own choices I'm much happier about it.

If a rational and emotionally mature adult still believes that the decisions their parents made were bad then there’s a much higher chance that they’re correct (compared to when a kid believes such things)

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#183

Post by foldr »

staticassertion wrote: post #170
foldr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Round up by default? If someone has an 89, just give them the 90. Honestly, who cares if a few students come up to you and want regrades, I imagine it takes all of 30 seconds to cross out the old grade and add the new one. How onerous... Ahh, here speaks someone who's never taught a class :) If word gets out that you round 89 up to 90, then next you'll be dealing with all the people who got 88.5. At some point you h…

> If word gets out that you round 89 up to 90, then next you'll be dealing with all the people who got 88.5. Why would word get out if you just grade that way? No one would know you were rounding up... > As the article explains, cheating has negative effects on everyone else. Of course cheating can be good from the cheater's point of view – that's why people cheat! I think you've completely missed my point. Cheating…

>Why would word get out if you just grade that way?

Students compare grades and talk to each other. It's also not uncommon for students to ask about your policy on rounding in the first class, when you're going through the syllabus.

>Cheating had no negative impact - on anyone, at all.

I'm afraid your cheating did have a negative impact on others, albeit a small one. For example, suppose that the class you took was graded on a curve. Then by adding a false datapoint, you may have pushed up the cut off point for the higher grades. More generally, the larger the number of cheaters, the less meaningful grades become for everyone. Every fake A grade contributes to the devaluation of real A grades.

>Getting caught cheating would have huge negative impact.

You'd be surprised. As the article explains, punishing cheaters isn't really in anyone's narrow interests. It's sadly rather easy to get away with cheating at university, even if you do get caught.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#184

Post by treis »

chaosite wrote: post #91
vlovich123 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m someone who crammed their way through 4 years of computer engineering exams at a challenging university. It’s possible. It’s hard and the worst few weeks of life before exams, but it’s possible.

Cramming is not memorization. It's not optimal studying, sure, but you've still learned something.

In my experience there's little long term retention from cramming.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#185

Post by RobertMiller »

fallingknife wrote: post #178
notriddle wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older people knowing better than younger people is one of those heuristics that's almost always right [1]. It's hard to tell the difference between a stupid kid and a stupid parent, because stupid parents are rare. Yet people keep searching for stupid parents, because it's really important to find them when they exist. There's a constant rate of kids pulling false alarms on their parents, but you don't want to ignore…

> Older people knowing better than younger people is one of those heuristics that's almost always right Up to mid 20's, yes. > stupid parents are rare Not even uncommon.

The mid-20s transition is the most obvious, I think simply because teenagers so often incredibly hot headed. But I believe emotional development continues throughout life as people acquire more experience with age (at least until senility kicks in.)

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#187

Post by financetechbro »

notriddle wrote: post #156
jhanschoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this observation must be qualified as not necessarily generalizable to all teenagers and parents. Sometimes a person may grow up and realize that their parents were indeed quite lacking, and be right in that assessment. I think this other circumstance is important to at least mention because children of objectively lacking parents can have doubts in their mind about their own judgment. In part beca…

Older people knowing better than younger people is one of those heuristics that's almost always right [1]. It's hard to tell the difference between a stupid kid and a stupid parent, because stupid parents are rare. Yet people keep searching for stupid parents, because it's really important to find them when they exist. There's a constant rate of kids pulling false alarms on their parents, but you don't want to ignore…

Stupid parents are very much everywhere

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#188

Post by Ntrails »

beebeepka wrote: post #164
jhanschoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this observation must be qualified as not necessarily generalizable to all teenagers and parents. Sometimes a person may grow up and realize that their parents were indeed quite lacking, and be right in that assessment. I think this other circumstance is important to at least mention because children of objectively lacking parents can have doubts in their mind about their own judgment. In part beca…

That is an excellent point. Yes, usually parents do "what is best for their children". However, good intentions do not guarantee good results. It took me 20 years to undo some of the more direct damage done to me by forcing me into a path I didn't want. Parents being completely wrong for the right reasons is very much a thing. That doesn't even count psychological damage almost guaranteed to lurk in there pretty much…

I think people find it very easy to judge parenting from the outside and/or with hindsight, whether their own or other peoples.

I know that my children will wish I did things differently. Whether that is location, discipline, activities, internet access etc etc. I know they will wish I made more reasoned choices in the moment. That I was never tired, distracted, frustrated. That I let them spend their time as they wished not as I feel is best for them.

Parenting is a parade of tough choices using vague heuristics and life experience. Being well intentioned is a bloody good start.

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#189

Post by laserlight »

notriddle wrote: post #156
jhanschoo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, this observation must be qualified as not necessarily generalizable to all teenagers and parents. Sometimes a person may grow up and realize that their parents were indeed quite lacking, and be right in that assessment. I think this other circumstance is important to at least mention because children of objectively lacking parents can have doubts in their mind about their own judgment. In part beca…

Older people knowing better than younger people is one of those heuristics that's almost always right [1]. It's hard to tell the difference between a stupid kid and a stupid parent, because stupid parents are rare. Yet people keep searching for stupid parents, because it's really important to find them when they exist. There's a constant rate of kids pulling false alarms on their parents, but you don't want to ignore…

> stupid parents are rare

How did you arrive at this conclusion?

Re: Teaching is a slow process of becoming everything you hate

#190

Post by jvvw »

derbOac wrote: post #130

So I've taught a lot at the university level, and reading this and the original blog post they were responding to I realized that I gradually shifted in how I saw exams. The traditional model, the one implicitly adopted in the posts, is one where the instructor presents material, maybe with some discussion or engagement with the material in the form of activities or assignments, and then evaluates understanding on an…

At Oxford, my degree depended entirely on 8 three-hour exams at the end of the final year, which were mostly set by different people from the people teaching you. There are issues with this (not least that if you are slightly ill say during the two weeks of exams, it affects your whole degree) but one thing that was really nice compared with the other universities where I have taught is that the relationship with the people teaching you feels fair less adversarial and more cooperative. Also by not having exams in the second year (there were exams in the first year you had to pass but which didn't count towards your degree), there was more emphasis on really understanding the subject rather just jumping through hoops.

But I think this only worked because of the teaching system there - as a general rule you had two tutorials a week which were usually one-to-two (or sometimes one-to-one or one-to-three) and it was very hard to slack too much or not do the work for them. Such a system requires a significant amount of funding so probably isn't scalable. Colleges did sometimes set their own internal exams too during the course which didn't count towards your degree (but for which you could get monetary prizes if you did well in them!) but which you could fail which would set a process in motion in which you could be kicked out of the university.

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