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I used to watch Bill Nye back in 7th grade. I would get tired of it if I saw the same stuff over and over
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Looks like I'll be teaching myself this summer.
Started by ArkansasRanger
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I used to watch Bill Nye back in 7th grade. I would get tired of it if I saw the same stuff over and over
I used to watch Bill Nye back in 7th grade. I would get tired of it if I saw the same stuff over and over
I've got a lot of video tapes of him, lol. It was enough to not show the same one twice in a year (usually) It depended on my mood at the time. 😛
Monday was class
Tuesday was class
Wednesday was review for test
Thursday was test day
Friday was instructional video day
My lesson plans looked the same every week.
Sure phathead, in an ideal world, that's where your tuition is supposed to be going. In the grand scheme of things, however, the purpose of undergrad is just to finish your pre-reqs and move on. Mind you, this is for a pharmacy student. If you sincerely enjoyed your major and learned things that are useful for what you want to do, then more power to you. I can say that 80% of the classes I've taken over the last 3 years that I've spent in school have been useless as far as pharmacy goes. I haven't really "learned" much that I haven't already forgotten, either, because none of it was applicable to me; it was just a pre-req to take and forget.
Hey, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed some of my classes where learning actually took place. My philosophy class of 20 people was one of the most enjoyable I've ever had, since the teacher (who was a grad student) actually included us in the discussion. The general science classes like bio and chem were just slidefests though. The class size was 300-400 so asking questions just never really took place. I went to a big public school though, so I was forced to teach myself. As far as learning goes, while in undergrad, my goal was to finish my pre-reqs and get into pharmacy school. Now that I'm in, I am really looking forward to it. I am still going to be teaching myself a lot of the stuff as I always have, but at least the professors are (hopefully) there to teach students information that they actually need to be pharmacists.
Hey, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed some of my classes where learning actually took place. My philosophy class of 20 people was one of the most enjoyable I've ever had, since the teacher (who was a grad student) actually included us in the discussion. The general science classes like bio and chem were just slidefests though. The class size was 300-400 so asking questions just never really took place. I went to a big public school though, so I was forced to teach myself. As far as learning goes, while in undergrad, my goal was to finish my pre-reqs and get into pharmacy school. Now that I'm in, I am really looking forward to it. I am still going to be teaching myself a lot of the stuff as I always have, but at least the professors are (hopefully) there to teach students information that they actually need to be pharmacists.
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Well, you'd think in my class at least with all of fifteen people that teaching would become a possibility.
No tenured professor is going to lose their job because of bad teaching evaluations.
No TA is going to be told "great research, but we can't pass you because of your awful teaching" by his Ph.D. defence committee.
that's the way it is. But people go into 6-figure debt for an undergraduate degree. The "value-added" for a university education versus what you can obtain online is not worth 6 figure debt.
It can't last. If higher education was a stock, it would be Enron. That's only a slight exaggeration.
There are advantages to going to smaller schools...
shorter ceilings?
But, some of us really enjoy learning/the learning process including in class discussions. Pumping and dumping isn't everyone's style 🙂
I always enjoyed having students that enjoyed learning.....it made my job so much easier.
As a college professor for 7 years I thought I would add a few comments as I have enjoyed the comments and discussion so far. This is a double edged sword; there are students who love to learn and professors who love to teach and dedicate a lot of time to honing their craft, but there are many students and teachers who do just enough to get by. I was one of those professors that dedicated a lot of time reading books on teaching, the learning process and experimenting with different methods in the classroom. As with any field, it is not as easy as one might think. After my third year of teaching I felt like I hit my stride and was much more comfortable in the classroom.
But, it can get frustrating when a student doesn't even open the book until it is necessary. Some students have the misconception that professors are supposed to "teach" them everything.....no matter how good my lectures are or how enlightening I can be, the learning process takes place at home while reading the chapter, going over class notes and attempting problems (so important to most science classes).
As a teacher, I was frustrated with students falling behind in my organic chemistry class and as I am sure you all know, if you fall behind in organic, it's very difficult to catch up. In my last two years of teaching, I decided to attempt a lecture free classroom. Parts of the chapters and the corresponding problems were assigned as homework; students were to attempt the problems and bring any questions they had about problems they could not solve or concepts they were struggling with to lecture and I would begin the process of teaching the class how to solve problems. Problem solving is the key to success in all science classes and it's amazing how little attention is paid to such an important skill (i didn't really learn this until graduate school!).
Initially there were a lot of complaints about students having to teach themselves, but once the students realized that my lecture style wasn't going to change...the complaints stopped and the learning began. The change in the lecture was surprising. Instead of coming to class expecting to receive information (via lecture) they were coming to class with specific questions and were seeking information. This was a dramatic change and so I continued with this style.
At the university I was teaching, the ACS standardized exam was used and when I first arrived, the class average was in the mid to high 20th percentile (roughly 25 out of 70 questions correct). The scores steadily improved, but the high score at the university was always in the mid-50s (out of 70 questions). Once I switched to the lecture free method, there were six students (out of 70) that had scored in the 60s and one had scored a perfect 70 out of 70! More importantly, the class average for my class for the ACS exam was now 41 / 70 (above the national average).
I decided to switch fields to pharmacy and give up a tenure track position because I felt like I was working two jobs with no social life between the classes, grading, committee work (can be very time consuming) and research / publishing / writing grants. There are some amazing teachers out there who do care about their students (even if it's not completely obvious) and there are some who get tenure and don't change anything....still use the same notes from 20 years ago; kind of like every other field. Those tenured professors who do very little are usually the ones who are so demanding of the younger faculty and I decided it wasn't worth it even though I loved teaching.
Thanks for the discussion and sorry for the long post. It was finally a topic I felt I could contribute something positive......
LOL
On a more serious note, among other things - profs whose primary jobs are to teach. No student TA's actually teaching classes. Student evals of instructors that actually count...
You're right...it is what it is. And it is the reason I enjoyed the CC far more than the University for my science classes. Thank goodness I have absolutely NO undergraduate debt. I would probably feel a lot worse about it. But, I stick with my initial position- teachers, regardless of their tenure, should still teach and at least give a ****. Those who do not, will not earn my respect.
You make good points. I started the thread, and I've even taught a little myself granted it was to high schoolers. I complained here because forums are a good tool for venting and because I'm very auditory in learning. I'm a career changer too, yet I did well in college with just listening and in some difficult classes as well. My biggest issue in this instance is that I personally have problems setting up equations. I've read the chapters, and I've worked through problems. Before taking the course I read Chemistry for Dummies and worked through quite a bit of General Chemistry I as a Second Language. However, by the time I get around to working the problem with some variation in what have previously learned I get thrown through a loop. That's where I think a good measure of teaching would come in. Perhaps I'm wrong.
I would have to disagree with one of your statements. It depends on what type of university / college you are teaching at.....if you are at a primarily research based university and are a successful researcher, you are right; there is no way in hell that you will be fired or denied tenure because of teaching evaluations.
However, if you are at a primarily teaching university (where teaching makes up a higher percentage of your evaluation scores by upper administration), then you are incorrect. I have seen faculty who were on tenure track who were denied tenure because of teaching evaluations. In one case, they thought the professor was too easy. Grade inflation is a direct result of making student evaluations a component of the schools tenure decision.
I will agree with one of your other statements.....eventually higher education is going to have to change to compete with online schools, otherwise they will suffer immensely. But there are always going to be schools that exist solely to provide a piece of paper to students after they put in a sufficient amount of time, jump through a specific number of hoops and provide the school with just the right amount of money. There is some hope on the horizon though. Accreditation boards are now requiring schools to show that they, in fact, do what they say they do (this includes gathering data about average debt, job placement success after graduation, etc. and this information will be provided freely to the public so that they can make a more informed decision).
I'd have to look them again to find them, but actually there have been multiple studies done that show teachers that students rate as "harder" tend to actually get more positive student evals than teachers that students rate as "easier".
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I actually think you are doing what you need to do, except for one small thing. When you approach a problem, do you make a list of the information provided (mass, moles, volume, etc.) and then a second column identifying specifically what the question is asking for (including units)? It's very important to understand what the question is asking (I hope this doesn't come across wrong....).
Depending on the complexity of the problem, sometimes you need to decide how to start and do what you can. If it's the incorrect answer, start over and reconsider how you approached the problem. In general chemistry, units are extremely important. A lot of times the question can be solved, or at least an approach can be obtained, by looking at the units. If you are consistently getting stuck on a particular type of question, you need to sit down with your instructor before or after class or during office hours.
When I was in graduate school, we were given qualifying exams where questions were on any topic in organic chemistry. There was very little one could do to study for these tests. But, this is where I truly learned how to reason and think through problems unfamiliar to me. I started by writing down everything that was given to me and literally felt like I was writing out my thoughts......"if I had this piece of information it would be really helpful and if I knew this piece of information, I could find this, etc".....by the end of my third page of text, 9 times out of 10 I had figured out how to solve the problem.
If you need help, just let me know.
I'm taking a little bit of a guess at what problems you're having but if I'm right then:
I would suggest first trying to do the problems in steps instead of one big long equation.
Ex. x grams of A * y mol of A/grams = z moles of A
z mols of A = 2z moles of B
2z mols of B * w grams/mol of B = q grams of B
instead of x grams of A * y mol of A/grams * 2 moles of B/1 mol of A *
w grams of B/mol of B = q grams of B
Both methods give the same answer, the latter takes slightly less time, but is more difficult to understand.
If that doesn't work, try working backwards
Using the same example: If you're trying to find how many grams of B you need to know how many moles of B. To find out how many moles of B, you need to know how many moles of A. To find out how many moles of A, you need to know how many grams of A - wait thats given in the problem...
I would believe it. The only C on my transcript comes from the teacher I evaluated the highest as well as learned the most from. I started my next class running due to being so well prepared.
thermo in gen chem vs thermo in pchem is about like addition vs integration...
I enjoy both addition and integration.
Here in Arkansas we get addition, but instead of integration we get subtraction.
Thermo in General Chemistry = Addition in English. Thermo in Physical Chemistry = Integration in Ratoromanish. Not even close AT ALL!
