Comment on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

• lemmyng@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  That may work in senior courses, but a freshman class with hundreds of students needs standardized tests.

  source

  • Feyd@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Or maybe a freshman class with hundreds of students should be split into more classes with more emphasis on actually learning

    source

    • lemmyng@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I don’t know how you extrapolate “no emphasis on learning” from “large classes”. The classes are large because they can afford to be large. They teach introductory courses, and their goal is to even out the baseline before the students go into sophomore courses. Freshmen come from many different education systems - private vs public, local vs out of state/province/country, fresh out of school vs returning to education after working, etc. This is also why these courses can be graded with standardized testing, because they set the standard themselves.

      source

      • Womble@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        When I did my undergrad the core modules had upwards of 400 people in them, never had a single multiple choice test in my entire degree. Thats a choice not a neccessity.

        source
      • Feyd@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I think it’s obvious that students have a higher potential of learning with a teacher that actually has time to have a conversation with them now and then.

        Personally, the fact that stand and deliver lectures is the norm for college classes has never ceased to amaze me. Why even have a professor rather than just read a book at that point? University has become a trusted simulacrum of it’s original form and it saddens me to watch it decay even more with time.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
  • ZeroGravitas@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Here’s a novel idea, maybe it needs less students per teacher. Or more teachers per student, however you want to call it.

    source

    • lemmyng@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Do you know the main function of freshmen courses? It’s to make sure that every student has the same base knowledge before going into sophomore level courses. It’s giving the students from shitty high school backgrounds an opportunity to catch up with those from private schooling and those from school boards that didn’t provide sufficient challenges. These courses don’t need a higher teacher to student ratio, they just need students to pay attention to the lectures and talk to the TA if they’re stuck.

      source

      • gibmiser@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Except you have forgotten the reason we are having this conversation is that they aren’t learning in those situations because of rampant cheating.

        source

        • -> View More Comments
    • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      For classes that’s are mostly lectures, it doesn’t need it.

      source

      • agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Sounds like there needs to be a change for how people are educated then.

        source
    • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      “But how will we keep our enormous administrative overhead to ourselves?”

      source
    • TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      You’re advocating for quantity over quality. You will easily find situations where students don’t learn in small groups because the professor lecturing that group isn’t a good professor.

      source

      • ZeroGravitas@lemm.ee ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I’m not excluding hiring good teachers and TAs from the picture. I’m not excluding paying them a good enough wage to attract talent either. But that’s another conversation.

        In my university days lectures were paired with seminars. And those had a max size of about 30, and a TA who would explain and help apply the lecture knowledge. The lecturer would visit seminars on rotation and ensure the quality of TAs. And the kicker? The whole gang would be there for the (free form) exam, including the grading.

        In short: it can be done because that’s where we come from, actually.

        And personally I hate multi choice tests, there is no opportunity to see the thought process of the student, or find and be lenient towards those that got the theory, but forgot to carry a 1 somewhere. They simplified the grading, sure, now you can have a machine do it, but thats about it.

        source