I do not WANT to be a fucking reactionary

Post #404,591 by rcareaga 9/13/15 9:08:03 PM Reply	I do not WANT to be a fucking reactionary ...but circumstances make it difficult. As here. Goddamnit, but how is the world to get on when academic standards are adjusted to accommodate toddlers and cretins? grumpily,
Post #404,592 by boxley 9/13/15 9:12:59 PM Reply	read the book, pass the test fsck the lecture you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
Post #404,594 by gcareaga 9/13/15 9:50:18 PM Reply	Active Learning pedagogies do create better outcomes Large lecture-based classes are the equivalent of having a textbook read at you. It is passive and a waste of time that could be used better for student to teacher or peer to peer collaboration. Think of a flipped class as a small seminar class. Everyone is more accountable. Everyone is expected to be prepared and to participate. It is hard to hide. The flip lets you scale the mojo to larger class sizes. The conclusions reached in the linked article are crap. It is nearly impossible to do a control group experiment. The same faculty member isn't going to develop two courses, one traditional and one flipped. The flipped professor is likely to be younger, more tech savvy and better studied on current pedagogies. The traditional professor is more likely to be a geezer who hasn't updates his syllabus in twenty years. Flipped classes are also more likely to be honors classes with high performing students.
Post #404,598 by rcareaga 9/13/15 10:22:15 PM Reply	disagree Large lecture-based classes are the equivalent of having a textbook read at you. Not in my experience, depending on how you define "large." I took two quarters of "Mediaeval Literature and History" from the late John Halvorsen at UCSC forty years ago. He was a brilliant lecturer with a masterful grasp of his subject, and the fifty or sixty students in his classroom followed his remarks raptly. I regard every hour I spent in his presence as a thousand times more worthwhile than any hour I've ever spent at BDS. JH was particularly good: some other lecturers were only tens or hundreds of times better uses of my life than I've spent on the clock since then. very grumpily,
Post #404,603 by gcareaga 9/13/15 10:31:39 PM Reply	That's comparing apples to road apples Also, sixty isn't that big a class. Think 150 person frosh calculus.
Post #404,604 by rcareaga 9/13/15 10:37:04 PM Reply	then let's give up Here's what we do: Every freshman accepted to UC gets handed a diploma and an invoice upon matriculation. No problem. Everyone is treated the same. Everyone passes. The state gets the graduates it deserves. Only...quadruple the present tuition. California needs the money.
Post #404,605 by boxley 9/13/15 10:39:18 PM Reply	gonna do that make it free and open to everyone wouldnt need profs only administrators. Much cheaper amiright? you can kill people for America at age 18 but need to be 21 to buy a beer
Post #404,607 by gcareaga 9/13/15 10:59:00 PM Reply	No i am sure WH was as engaging a lecturer as you say. Hell, Bernard Elbaum made preindustrial European economic history fascinating to me. A flipped class generally makes students more accountable and creates better performances. It is not about free passes or lower standards. It is JFK's rising tide.
Post #404,619 by rcareaga 9/14/15 1:16:54 PM Reply	And then there was Bert Kaplan Nice guy, by all accounts, and a well-respected scholar. Deadly lecturer, though. I lasted just one hour before I dropped his class, and count myself lucky to have survived those interminable five dozen minutes, although a substrate of "youthful experimentation" may have strengthened my fibre. Others were not so fortunate. Dozens of comatose undergraduates were laid out like cordwood on the Stevenson quad. Some recovered; others were impaired to some degree for years; a few remained ever after in a "persistent vegetative state." Three or four expired even before the paramedics arrived. I've heard rumors that some of the survivors subsequently became Republicans, but I'd like not to credit this. So yeah, bad lecturers can make for bad pedagogy. We do not, however, abolish surgery following the occasional malpractice suit. cordially,
Post #404,631 by gcareaga 9/14/15 7:37:54 PM Reply	Yeah but We do adopt new surgical procedures when the outcomes are better. Think laparoscopic versus traditional gall bladder removal.
Post #404,620 by malraux 9/14/15 1:32:47 PM Reply	Depends on the subject The best class I had in undergrad was a very large lecture class on Science Fiction taught by Eric Rabkin. Every student of that class was spellbound the entire hour and a half twice a week. The textbooks were the novels themselves. Regards, -scott Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
Post #404,596 by Another Scott 9/13/15 10:09:40 PM Reply	Yes, lectures are "unfair". At least that's what I learned in my physics undergrad days. How so? Because all the students don't have the same background knowledge to build upon. "As you learned in kindergarten..." was one of the favorite expressions of more than one of the instructors. "To solve this, you complete the square and then ..." Only one guy in my class of ~ 30 knew to apply that trick to get the solution. Lectures in college aren't intended to convey all the information you need to be able to answer all the questions on the exams. They're designed to stimulate thinking, to illustrate the types of things that you should be able to do, but they don't provide everything you need to do the work. They of necessity assume background knowledge, and the ability to apply that knowledge, and everyone (even good students) isn't going to have all the prerequisites. Everyone who pays attention and takes good notes and does the homework and works hard isn't going to do well in the class, because they don't have the same background. Lecturing isn't a "fair" way to teach - it's used because that's the way it's always been done. There was a good show on public radio this afternoon on "expeditionary learning" and its history. There's a lot to recommend there. I can't find the particular show, but it seems to be part of this American Radioworks series. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that college professors are cultural imperialists or something. I'm saying that the way college and university education is structured, it's designed (sometimes, like in many engineering and pre-medical schools, and in most PhD programs) to explicitly weed people out. Not to have everyone do as well as possible. The system is working as designed. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #404,599 by gcareaga 9/13/15 10:24:50 PM Reply	Weeder classes That is still the dominant paradigm in STEM education. Just about every discipline has a barrier class designed to thin the herd.
Post #404,600 by gcareaga 9/13/15 10:24:57 PM 9/13/15 10:27:32 PM Reply	Duplicate The Careaga boys are seeing double tonight. Edited by gcareaga Sept. 13, 2015, 10:27:32 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #404,602 by Another Scott 9/13/15 10:29:27 PM Reply	rofl. :-)
Post #404,606 by a6l6e6x 9/13/15 10:52:36 PM Reply	Fully agree! I recall the first circuit theory course in MIT's electrical engineering program. Totally abstract, theoretical, and impractical stuff. Great lecturer, whose text book was used. But the lecture hall had 250 seats! There was practically no opportunity for questions. All the class interactions happened in a "recitation class" where assigned problems were discussed. These were lead by a grad student, often sporting a foreign accent. About a third of the students flunked this course! A friend (enough for me to be his best man) flunked this course. He was a ham, designed and built his own transmitter from parts, built a puzzle solving stepping relay based box, "foo counters", etc. It crushed him! No collaborative help from me because I switched from Chemical Engineering to Electrical Engineering and took the course a year later. My friend eventually got a Math degree from Clemson. Alex "There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." -- Isaac Asimov

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