<p>It said the teachers were bad. I disagree.The teachers aren’t bad, but let’s be honest, science courses, unless you have a really good/creative teacher (or additional components to the classes), don’t get but so fun in terms of format. And then there are limitations imposed when class sizes get large. Private schools (and publics with an engineering school) deal with such issues much less. Last I checked, many Tech profs. were doing as well as they could to make learning active, even in such a large environment. I for example visited a biology class at Tech (seeing a friend and was w/another friend from Emory) and perhaps due to it being in a new auditorium, it was much more interesting than last year. The profs. tried to actually engage students (walked up and down isles to assist) and there was even an interesting case study to present the material. It was very similar to the way most teachers do intro. biology here (except some classes are completely case based). The only difference I noticed is that the engagement from the students was ridiculously low. I remember one student walking out mid-lecture to buy Starbucks (right upstairs from auditorium) and then returning. Other students had their laptops out on facebook or watching movies even when the learning activity (case study hand-out/problems) was occurring. Some students were going all the way across the auditorium to merely visit friends (and not confer about the activity). So honestly, if some students aren’t getting anything from their professors at Tech and then get a low grade on a test, it may be their faults. When the prof. makes huge strides to actually engage and the engagement is not reciprocated, what else can be done. And I could tell that the size of the class (the auditorium was HUGE, and even if the prof. was “reaching out”, if you sat distal to the isle or front of classroom, I can see how it can be kind of isolating) was an issue. However, peer institutions (not us, ours only have 50-80 per section, not the typical 200-250 at other top schools) have similar sized intros. and I doubt that level of disengagement exists on the students’ parts. Many of the students in that biology class for example, should have just stayed home. That behavior usually isn’t acceptable in ours (I know gen. chem doesn’t even allow laptops and it’s discouraged in other intros). And if you were to leave and return with coffee, you would be called out and put on spot, likely by name. And the auditoriums are designed so that random visiting of neighbors would create an awkward, distracting scene. I don’t know, the scene is just different there, and the profs. can perhaps only partially be blamed and often not at all (I’ve seen many bad apple profs. here get much more respect and engagement than that good prof. I saw there. I’ll say that I haven’t seen this in any of the upperlevel classes at Tech that I’ve observed though. Some of such classes would be somewhat disengaged, but not to an extremely rude level. And some were downright excellent.)</p>
<p>KamelAkbar: Most people at Emory wanted to go to Harvard or some Ivy/Ivy plus, yet normally students are hardly disgruntled. Most get over it pretty quickly. Something else happens at Tech, and I don’t think it’s necessarily Tech’s fault. Nor is it disgruntlement from getting turned down from elsewhere. I would assess why many of them are there and why they attend or take certain classes (especially the freshmen classes). Is it because they are genuinely interested (or obligated to learn it or else), or are they going through motions thinking it’ll be easy so they can make an A/B and then move on to upperclass work (I mean, for example, how can a professor suck the life out of material that you really don’t want to learn in the first place). Because how they do and approach freshman year classes can leave a mark on how they view the quality of teaching and the education there (and then their attitude in those classes may persist in upperlevels. Are students at Tech legit engaged in the academic process or trying to “get out”/“get by” in hopes that the degree puts them in an excellent position. This may explain differences between it and its peers and the way students rate the education. The peers have more of the former. Students at MIT, for example, are quite intellectual. Would the Tech student have actually enjoyed an MIT education better or would it merely be a school that makes “getting on” harder?). If they were disengaged and didn’t do well or even did poorly, Tech will get bad reviews in certain areas. We have, for example, the pre-meds, who are often disingenious in terms of actually wanting to learn a subject or course, but feel obligated to learn it anyway. They thus tend to reciprocate engagement efforts (sometimes the intro. classes can become quite vibrant academically despite the large size, do to this) in the classroom and also tend to perform decently. It’s like the students are less apathetic about what they are getting out of a prof (and if they are, they get lower grades, very simple).</p>