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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

#331

Post by derangedHorse »

MengerSponge wrote: post #306

To first order, you can solve the regrade and homework issue with policy: gate regrades on completion of homework assignments, and limit the number of regrades that may be submitted per week. You need a rate limiter to prevent students from just spamming regrades until the evaluation returns "A", and you want to incentivize the desired behavior--homework is intended to help students develop skills. If you want to lea…

That's exactly my problem with this post, the author makes it seem like a lot of thought was put into their teaching when it seems like most of their "progressive" ideas were half-baked. When talking about the abundance of regrades, instead of re-iterating on the idea, they gave up on it and deemed it impractical.

> "We could change from the current “mandatory Odysseus” regime to an “optional Odysseus” regime: On the first day of class, offer students an irrevocable choice: They can have homework and deadlines imposed on them, or not. Perhaps the students who need deadlines would learn to opt for them and others could live freely."

I don't see why there can't be more happy-mediums like having deadline schedule where if you miss one assignment, you can turn it in within the next 2 assignments. There's a lot more options in the space of possibilities that aren't being explored.

And maybe this is not exactly a criticism in the author's eyes depending on what their priorities are. I'd have to find out how the author ranks the priorities of being a teacher. Is the main priority to have the students leave with an understanding of the course material, to just do the job well enough to not get reprimanded by the school (by doing the minimum to reduce student complaints and have a "healthy" pass/fail ratio), or to aid the student in their education however far they are able to go with points given for effort (which could vary depending on what the student will actually pursue). This also isn't even touching on the topic on the quality of teaching being done and whether as much thought has been put into that as grading policies.

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

#332

Post by kelnos »

commandlinefan wrote: post #233

> every word of the assignment creatively misinterpreted OTOH when I took operating systems I got an assignment that said “implement a job scheduler, using FIFO, LIFO or round-robin job scheduling”. So I picked FIFO, got it working and I had time left over so I thought, “what the hell? I’ll do LIFO too”. So I did, and I still had time so I took a crack at round-robin, but I didn’t have time so I turned it what I had,…

While I think a student could read the instructions in the way the teacher intended (though I would not be one of those students either), I think the problem here is that the teacher is a poor communicator, and is too arrogant to believe that they could be fallible here.

The fix for this particular issue isn't over-specification, it's changing one word in the instructions. Or at most, adding a few more words to make things clearer.

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

#333

Post by pc86 »

kelnos wrote: post #312
s1artibartfast wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heuristic can be reworded as adult parents are more knowledgeable and capable than children. Put the average child in the position of the average parent and you will see the difference. Think of how abusive the average parent is, then imagine them trying to parent with 10-20 years less development.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that we should excuse parental abuse, because a child would be a worse parent than an adult?

And somehow also strangely arguing that most parents are abusive?

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

#334

Post by derangedHorse »

quijoteuniv wrote: post #293

If you have lived all your life in a basement you tend to think the flourecent light is the sun. Could not make sense of the article… my take on teaching is… you teach because you are the most capable on the subject in the community, is a responsability and you do your best. As with most professions when you do it for the money, you become cinic.

Teaching should definitely not be done by the "most capable on the subject", it should be done by those who are the best educators (with "best" being based on some metrics relating to student outcomes). Both roles are not the same. Just because someone is knowledgable about a subject doesn't mean they know how to convey that subject for consumption. Conversely I think that those who don't know as much about an entire subject but understand the material of a particular course very well could be better suited for the task of teaching than the "most capable".

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

#335

Post by analog31 »

wisty wrote: post #298
civilized wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure it's theoretically possible to do poorly in a class because the teacher didn't like you, but statistically, it's got to be one of the most powerful red flags on a human. Steer clear.

There could be teachers who are fanatics about some political issue, and if you even hint you might disagree with them they'll try to lash out. I also recall some university level class (I didn't take it but a friend did) where religion was a topic and the professor intentionally set very loaded questions in online tutorials. While it's fair to ask people to question their own assumptions, it often seems the people m…

Ah, the student didn't know one of the secret college hacks: Teachers with an ideological axe to grind are almost always the easiest graders, because they can be manipulated by dog whistles, and need to be liked. I got my best grades in the obligatory religion classes.

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

#336

Post by kelnos »

dan-robertson wrote: post #294
portpecos wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s pretty sad. As a CS Professor, he should understand the distinction between a conjunction and disjunction.

I think It’s a question of scope not of the logical operator. One way to interpret the question is: 1. You choose X or Y or Z 2. You provide a scheduler that does the thing you chose Another is: 1. You provide a scheduler where I choose X or Y or Z and the scheduler does the thing I chose. The question is whether the disjunction applies to the input configuration of the scheduler or the output of the assignment. That…

I agree with you, but not as the assignment is worded:

> “implement a job scheduler, using FIFO, LIFO or round-robin job scheduling”

To me, "using" modifies "implement"; that is, the teacher is telling me to implement something, and then telling me what to use. (That is, "using" does not modify "job scheduler".) If the teacher wanted the second interpretation, they should have said:

"Implement a job scheduler that can use FIFO, LIFO, or round-robin scheduling."

In this case, "that can use" is clearly referring to the job scheduler, not to me. To be fair, though, I think some students might still (reasonably!) believe this means they only have to implement one algorithm. I would probably use this second wording, but also change the "or" to "and". Even better, though more wordy:

"Implement a job scheduler where the user can select between FIFO, LIFO, and round-robin scheduling."

Let's also remember that boolean logic and English usage are not the same thing. I don't think my two suggested wordings would be considered "over-specifying" in the same way that OP is talking about. They're just a better use of language.

The teacher here should just have re-read the problem instructions, shown understanding and empathy toward the student, and either a) just changed the grade right then and there, or b) offered to let the student complete the rest of the assignment and turn it in again. And then made the wording of the problem more clear for the next batch of students.

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

#337

Post by madrox »

warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

I don't know if you've ever read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, but I get something different out of it at every stage of my life and your comment made me think of this book.

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

#338

Post by AvocadoPanic »

madrox wrote: post #337
warner25 wrote: post #10

I've often thought the same thing about becoming an adult, especially a parent, in general. There are so many choices that I harshly judged older people for making (how to allocate their time and money, where to live, what to allow or not allow the kids to do, how to behave at work, etc.) that I now find myself making as a married guy in my mid-30s with four kids. It makes me sad, but on each point I'm like, "Oh, now…

I don't know if you've ever read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, but I get something different out of it at every stage of my life and your comment made me think of this book.

I'm already the river.

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

#339

Post by sneak »

portpecos wrote: post #284
commandlinefan wrote: post #233

> every word of the assignment creatively misinterpreted OTOH when I took operating systems I got an assignment that said “implement a job scheduler, using FIFO, LIFO or round-robin job scheduling”. So I picked FIFO, got it working and I had time left over so I thought, “what the hell? I’ll do LIFO too”. So I did, and I still had time so I took a crack at round-robin, but I didn’t have time so I turned it what I had,…

That’s pretty sad. As a CS Professor, he should understand the distinction between a conjunction and disjunction.

As an educated human, he should understand that when you provide written instructions it is implicitly a "do what I say" and not "do what [you infer] I mean".

It is obviously unfair and unprofessional to penalize the student for the professor's error.

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

#340

Post by renewiltord »

plandis wrote: post #280
renewiltord wrote: post #108

Interesting. I grew up in an “exams count only” system that used a 2 decimal point score precision. So if you scored 89.75 at the end, you completed the course with 89.75. It wasn’t bucketed into grades. There were 4 exams: two quarterlies, a half, and the final. I don’t think it ever struck any of us that if we failed to study for an exam that it was anyone’s fault but our own. I actually really like articles like t…

> I don’t think it ever struck any of us that if we failed to study for an exam that it was anyone’s fault but our own. This is interesting to me. If you’re noting working through problems how do you get the feedback to even know if you really understand the material? Generally assigned homework was nice because a professor will know the key ideas and can efficiently assign work covering those parts. Right now I’m se…

Oh we worked through problems all the time. But if you didn’t then the next class would be impossible to understand and you’d just sit there like a fool. So the incentives were already aligned there.

And you get feedback from your peers as you work through stuff and also from the lecturer at the end of the next class.

It just wasn’t graded.

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