Teacher attitudes towards skipping courses

DespSeekPhd · March 14, 2007, 2:04am

Sorry - I don’t buy the “learning style” argument. As a former teacher, I know darn well that a learning style doesn’t preclude you being able to learn in other ways. If you’re drifting off during lectures, that’s something you need to work on, because those lectures are necessary for passing comps in grad school, as well as passing many undergrad classes. Focus better and stop making excuses.

merper68 · March 14, 2007, 11:09am

If the material is covered only in lecture, then yeah, you need to be there. Otherwise, I’m afraid you’re absolutely wrong. If sitting there and being spoken to isn’t your most efficient way of picking up on material, then it is a waste of time to be in the lecture.

larationalist · March 14, 2007, 11:47am

But what teacher is so pathetic at their jobs that they don’t teach you anything not in the book? If this is the way your school works, you are getting screwed.

merper68 · March 14, 2007, 12:15pm

It doesn’t have to be the teacher. Like I said, there are some required classes you just don’t want to take. Or, it could be that you don’t want to sit in class for one and a half hours to learn something you could pick up in 15 minutes from reading the text. I really don’t see how anyone can say that you gain something from attending every single lecture in your college career. Or that there are times that a lecture time slot could be better spent on other things.

InquilineKea · March 14, 2007, 11:57pm

Now, as with other personality traits, there is variation in learning styles. Most people in the middle of the distribution are fine off learning from lectures. Some people in the extremes may be able to do so with coping strategies. However, some other people on the extremes will never be able to establish such coping strategies.

Maybe it would be better if I had Adderall. But my psychiatrist refused to prescribe them to me, and I don’t have another choice other than to skip courses and get research to account for my inability to pay attention. Drifting off during lectures is not something you can easily work on. In fact, it is well demonstrated from psychological studies on ego depletion ( <a href=“http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/egodepletion.html[/url]”>http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/egodepletion.html</a> ) that using “willpower” on one task diminishes the amount of willpower one can devote to other tasks. Using “willpower” on trying to pay attention diminishes the amount of willpower that I can devote to other tasks.

Just because you have dealt with some differences doesn’t mean that those differences describe all people with learning style differences (as I said before, there is variation, and there are the extremes). I have Asperger’s Syndrome, and my case is far more severe than that of the other Aspies I know. Even with the condition of mine, I am still different from other people with my condition. I can learn the material - but I learn at an entirely different pace than other people do. I don’t process things at the same speeds at others. I can still learn the material - but it’s difficult to learn the material in a standard format. One that assumes that students can learn at the same pace.

Moreover, lectures are only the means to an end. Once you’re finished with them, you’re finished with them for good. There are seminars and conferences in the future, certainly, but those are different in lectures (you’re not expected to be tested on the material).

By effectively monopolizing all instruction to lectures, the institution fails to deal with people who choose to learn by other methods, such as MIT OCW, alternative textbooks, and other means.

What were you an instructor in? Are you a professor?

Moreover, try to avoid committing the post hoc, ergo procter hoc fallacy. People learn after they take a course. It does not establish that they have learned from the lectures. They may have learned from the book, even though they have went to such lectures.

The only thing that matters in the end is that you’ve learned the material, regardless of the means to such an end. All knowledge that is on an exam is covered by some textbook or course website (on another university’s website, perhaps, but I have downloaded huge amounts of course materials from other university websites.

InquilineKea · March 14, 2007, 11:59pm

Even for normal people, the lecture may fail them. I’ll show you this:

<a href=“http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_10.html#bharucha[/url]”>http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_10.html#bharucha</a>

JAMSHED BHARUCHA
Professor of Psychology, Provost, Senior Vice President, Tufts University

Education as we know it does not accomplish what we believe it does

The more we discover about cognition and the brain, the more we will realize that education as we know it does not accomplish what we believe it does.

It is not my purpose to echo familiar critiques of our schools. My concerns are of a different nature and apply to the full spectrum of education, including our institutions of higher education, which arguably are the finest in the world.

Our understanding of the intersection between genetics and neuroscience (and their behavioral correlates) is still in its infancy. This century will bring forth an explosion of new knowledge on the genetic and environmental determinants of cognition and brain development, on what and how we learn, on the neural basis of human interaction in social and political contexts, and on variability across people.

Are we prepared to transform our educational institutions if new science challenges cherished notions of what and how we learn? As we acquire the ability to trace genetic and environmental influences on the development of the brain, will we as a society be able to agree on what our educational objectives should be?

Since the advent of scientific psychology we have learned a lot about learning. In the years ahead we will learn a lot more that will continue to challenge our current assumptions. We will learn that some things we currently assume are learnable are not (and vice versa), that some things that are learned successfully don’t have the impact on future thinking and behavior that we imagine, and that some of the learning that impacts future thinking and behavior is not what we spend time teaching. We might well discover that the developmental time course for optimal learning from infancy through the life span is not reflected in the standard educational time line around which society is organized. As we discover more about the gulf between how we learn and how we teach, hopefully we will also discover ways to redesign our systems — but I suspect that the latter will lag behind the former.

Our institutions of education certify the mastery of spheres of knowledge valued by society. Several questions will become increasingly pressing, and are even pertinent today. How much of this learning persists beyond the time at which acquisition is certified? How does this learning impact the lives of our students? How central is it in shaping the thinking and behavior we would like to see among educated people as they navigate, negotiate and lead in an increasingly complex world?

We know that tests and admissions processes are selection devices that sort people into cohorts on the basis of excellence on various dimensions. We know less about how much even our finest examples of teaching contribute to human development over and above selection and motivation.

Even current knowledge about cognition (specifically, our understanding of active learning, memory, attention, and implicit learning) has not fully penetrated our educational practices, because of inertia as well as a natural lag in the application of basic research. For example, educators recognize that active learning is superior to the passive transmission of knowledge. Yet we have a long way to go to adapt our educational practices to what we already know about active learning.

We know from research on memory that learning trials bunched up in time produce less long term retention than the same learning trials spread over time. Yet we compress learning into discrete packets called courses, we test learning at the end of a course of study, and then we move on. Furthermore, memory for both facts and methods of analytic reasoning are context-dependent. We don’t know how much of this learning endures, how well it transfers to contexts different from the ones in which the learning occurred, or how it influences future thinking.

At any given time we attend to only a tiny subset of the information in our brains or impinging on our senses. We know from research on attention that information is processed differently by the brain depending upon whether or not it is attended, and that many factors — endogenous and exogenous — control our attention. Educators have been aware of the role of attention in learning, but we are still far from understanding how to incorporate this knowledge into educational design. Moreover, new information presented in a learning situation is interpreted and encoded in terms of prior knowledge and experience; the increasingly diverse backgrounds of students placed in the same learning contexts implies that the same information may vary in its meaningfulness to different students and may be recalled differently.

Most of our learning is implicit, acquired automatically and unconsciously from interactions with the physical and social environment. Yet language — and hence explicit, declarative or consciously articulated knowledge — is the currency of formal education.

Social psychologists know that what we say about why we think and act as we do is but the tip of a largely unconscious iceberg that drives our attitudes and our behavior. Even as cognitive and social neuroscience reveals the structure of these icebergs under the surface of consciousness (for example, persistent cognitive illusions, decision biases and perceptual biases to which even the best educated can be unwitting victims), it will be less clear how to shape or redirect these knowledge icebergs under the surface of consciousness.

Research in social cognition shows clearly that racial, cultural and other social biases get encoded automatically by internalizing stereotypes and cultural norms. While we might learn about this research in college, we aren’t sure how to counteract these factors in the very minds that have acquired this knowledge.

We are well aware of the power of non-verbal auditory and visual information, which when amplified by electronic media capture the attention of our students and sway millions. Future research should give us a better understanding of nuanced non-verbal forms of communication, including their universal and culturally based aspects, as they are manifest in social, political and artistic contexts.

Even the acquisition of declarative knowledge through language — the traditional domain of education — is being usurped by the internet at our finger tips. Our university libraries and publication models are responding to the opportunities and challenges of the information age. But we will need to rethink some of our methods of instruction too. Will our efforts at teaching be drowned out by information from sources more powerful than even the best classroom teacher?

It is only a matter of time before we have brain-related technologies that can alter or supplement cognition, influence what and how we learn, and increase competition for our limited attention. Imagine the challenges for institutions of education in an environment in which these technologies are readily available, for better or worse.

The brain is a complex organ, and we will discover more of this complexity. Our physical, social and information environments are also complex and are becoming more so through globalization and advances in technology. There will be no simple design principles for how we structure education in response to these complexities.

As elite colleges and universities, we see increasing demand for the branding we confer, but we will also see greater scrutiny from society for the education we deliver. Those of us in positions of academic leadership will need wisdom and courage to examine, transform and justify our objectives and methods as educators.

InquilineKea · March 15, 2007, 12:00am

Also, remember that many famous scientists/mathematicians had mental illnesses of some sort of another, and divergent personalities along with those. An inability to process lectures at the same speeds and times as others does not preclude a person from doing science/math.

InquilineKea · March 15, 2007, 12:25am

Making excuses for oneself is fine as long as one has an alternative method to use that is viable (as long as when there is a means and an end, the means does not matter that much. For getting into graduate school, the means is taking courses. However, there are alternatives to it [namely, settling for a lower GPA and relying on professor recommendations to demonstrate one’s knowledge and talent]).

WilliamC · March 15, 2007, 9:23am

Inq - you should be aware that graduate level study is completely different from undergrad (even upper level undergrad). In my field (Classics) there is no comparison.

The classes are small (sometimes very small, i.e. 3 or 4 students and the professor) seminars, meeting once a week for (say) 3 hours. In them you are expected to be prepared to discuss the assigned material in extreme detail - in some cases the students will be the ones presenting the material with the professor and the other students asking the questions. This can be challenging ;-)

The in-class work, including your ability to maintain a scholarly discussion and written work (often a 25-50 page paper) are how you will be graded.

And of course, at some point YOU will be the one doing the lecture - virtually all programs have a teaching component, even if your aid package does not require 2-4 semesters of TA work.

If you have trouble maintaining focus for extended periods (after all a seminar is rather like a triple length lecture) you might want to very seriously evaluate (with the help of friendly professors) your suitability for graduate school.

forestbrook · March 15, 2007, 10:01am

WilliamC has very good points. Also, depending on your university, but at my undergrad, we start having 3 hour-per-meeting, seminar-style classes beginning in junior (and for some ambitious students, sophomore) year. This is for a science and my friends in math and physics also have the same experience, not just for classics, just in case you think sciences are different.

InquilineKea · March 15, 2007, 7:02pm

Ah, you certainly do have points. There are differences between lectures and discussions/me doing the lectures. The former is passive, the latter is active. I have trouble maintaining focus when I’m learning passively. Active learning, however, is a different matter (in which it’s easier to maintain focus). The nation’s huge problem with ADD may be rooted in the problem with the educational system - in that students are forced to learn passively - even when the same students can maintain their focus on say, computer games and online forums (which are active and more user-centric). The Internet is the joy to us all.

But yeah, there is certainly such a concern.

Teacher attitudes towards skipping courses

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