Mandatory attendance

[nyanko]

I learn really poorly in a lecture environment with soooo many other people around. In addition, generally the questions I have are not questions that it would be helpful to ask in class - it's stuff I really need to look up on my own to connect dots in my own head because the professor is lecturing in an order that just doesn't work for me.

And once I get "lost" in a lecture and have to look something up, I'm lost for good and the whole lecture is a waste of time. So I skip a lot of lectures, use that time to study and make absolutely sure I listen to them later when I can pause and look things up or re-listen to things that I got distracted on, or listen to a large chunk of lectures from one topic together so I can fit the details into a bigger context. It really just seems like a better use of my limited time.

I go to labs, of course, and if there's a professor that I happen to feel makes good sense to me in lecture, I'll go to those lectures. There have been a few professors like that so far...

Anyway it seems to be working fine for me, I'm learning what I need to and doing fine gradewise, and still have a bit of flexibility in free time.

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[LivestockDoc]

Does Wisconsin have podcasts?

 

[elefante7]

Does Wisconsin have podcasts?

Our lectures are "lecture captured" and you can download them to itunes etc. Not sure if you can make a true podcast out of them or not. Never tried...

 

[JosephKnechtDVM]

From reading these comments, it seems that it has only gotten worse in the almost 20 years since I graduated. I absolutely consider cramming facts into your head as intellectual taxidermy and not teaching critical thinking and deciding, the essence of medicine. And I am sure professors are still "encouraging" students to read outside of lectures and tests as if they have time to deviate from the proscribed plan to cover everything you need to pass boards and function in a multi-species environment which "they" cannot do themselves. The same problems exist two decades later.

Joseph

 

[spicykimchi]

Mandatory attendance is ridiculous to me. We're adults. Period. If we do better studying the material outside of class, we should be able to do that as opposed to sitting through hours of professors reading PowerPoints to us (I can read, thanks...). VMRCVM was not mandatory, and I skipped quite a bit. But I performed perfectly well in tests and quizzes and passed boards with ease. Mandatory attendance is for high school, not professional school.

Amen!

Oh my gosh, do I ever love on-line math classes. This means I am not forced to attend lectures that do NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for me! I learn math by doing it, not watching someone else do it! For years I thought I was stupid becuse I was trying (and failing) to learn math by going to a lecture and going home and trying to do my homework. When I started using self-teaching resources and teaching myself, I jumped from a F student to an A student.

So, in short, if a student is learning BETTER by NOT attending the lectures, leave them alone!

I like lectures in other subjects though. I like to pre-teach the material to myself before class and then go to the lecture and soak in all the little details I missed.