“I decided we would do an oral exam* because it’s a great way to see if people have actually learned anything from my course and aren’t just parroting notes. Because I can ask them to elaborate on their answers.”
Yeah and it’s also a great way to get otherwise good students to go blank because it isn’t possible to absorb every bit of complex information you spent 12 weeks rushing through, Barbara.
This “gotcha” style teaching fucking pisses me off. There is no time in the real world people are not going to be able to look up their notes. Fuck, half the time I’ll ask a professor something and they’ll be like “I’ll have to look that up later and get back to you.” Why? BECAUSE THEY’RE HUMAN AND THATS HOW BRAINS ARE.
This type of teaching only favours students that already had experience with the subject beforehand and freaks with amazing memories. This kind of understanding of the material only comes from experience and repetition, something that the traditional 12 weeks of rushed lectures/labs that discard each topic quickly to fit all of them in don’t do.
I fucking hate how much I am going into debt to be taught only the vaguest concepts but doing most of the teaching myself in my own time. Education under capitalism is a joke.
*An oral exam is an exam where instead of answering questions in a quiet room on paper, you have to answer questions on a live video call with your instructor.
Consider yourself lucky that you didn’t live in the USSR/Russia, where the exams in universities were/are predominantly oral, several times a semester.
You are expected to demonstrate your understanding the topic you study broadly and in depth, and that means you should be able to answer just about any questions asked about the topic.
You draw a “ticket”, which contains a few questions on the paper, everyone in the class then gets a couple hours to solve, then the professors (usually several in the same room) will randomly choose one of you to get to the front, present your prepared answers, and get grilled by the professors until they are satisfied.
There are more tickets than there are students, so no two student will ever get the same problems/questions. These cover pretty much everything taught during the semester.
There is no way to cheat, no way to skim through the course. You must know your subject well, or else just don’t bother at all until you are ready. Throughout your course, you are expected to go through several dozens of “tickets”. You get used to it eventually.
Not to say they don’t come with their own problems and downsides, and the quality of the teachers and the education system in general matter, but there is a reason why the USSR (and still today’s Russia) produces some of the best specialists in the world.
Damn, harsh. I very much look up to those Soviet scientists.
I guess they got to try the class as many times as they wanted, and it was probably far cheaper too which is at least an upside. I think half of my anxiety about University comes from the fact that I’m financially struggling while going in to debt haha
Yeah I can imagine how a poorly taught class/university would not sufficiently prepare their students for this kind of exam.