The professor is high and mighty on a certain teaching method which she 'developed' (and apparently has won awards for) which she calls "Team Based Learning" (TBL). According to her, there is a much higher average mark in classes where she has employed this technique and students walk away with a better understanding of the course material. The first part of this statement, I agree with completely. The grading scheme in TBL is rigged to give a higher average. It's not even rigged in a particularly clever way. The grades for assignments/quizzes taken as a team are worth 3 times as much credit as individual assignments/quizzes. There are two different sorts of lectures that are given in this class. Here is one of them:
11:00 - 11:25
Arrive to class and prepare to write a quiz. The quiz is based on a reading we were given to do outside of class. The professor has, not even in the slightest way, talked about the material on the quiz. As part of the preparation we are given some time to ask her questions about the material.
This turns into a 25 minute session of private tutoring for a girl who I will refer to as "the girl with the tramp stamp on her boobs" or just "trampy boobs" for short.
 |
| It's windy because even God laughs at her terrible decisions |
Curiously enough, Trampy Boobs is the sort of girl who tries way too hard. Her questions are usually only tangentially related to the information we need to know and are so convoluted and pointless that the other 50 people in the room are all imagining her dying in creative and horrible ways. My favourite is where her boob stamp comes to life and strangles her because even it can't believe how awful her taste is.
11:25 - 11: 40
Fifteen minutes is then spent writing the quiz on pieces of paper. For the record, the quizzes are generally nine or ten multiple choice questions. Fifteen minutes seems a little excessive for that but some people are slow and I enjoy ten minute naps so I'll let this one slide.
11:40 - 11:47
Because this is a computer science class, we couldn't just write the quiz and be done with it. No, for the next seven minutes we write the quiz again, using iclickers to create a digital copy of our scores. Why? Becausethe professor is too goddamned lazy to just get grad students to mark them like everyone else does technology! I guess?
11:47 - 12:00
Remember that bit about team based learning. Here is where it comes into play. We get together in our groups and spend 13 minutes taking the same quiz. Again. The mark we get on it as a group is worth three times the mark we get on it as individuals. This completely invalidates the point of writing it by ourselves. You could get get zero on it the first time but if your group gets 100% (which almost always happens) your final mark on this 'quiz' is 75%. That is a B. You get a B. FOR KNOWING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The higher averages in TBL have exactly zero to do with quality of teaching.
By this point we have spent 35 minutes of an 80 minute lecture (almost half) on 10 multiple choice questions.
12:00 - 12:20
The final twenty minutes of the lecture are spent on actual lecturing. This is where, for the very first time, the professor actually tries to teach us about the things we were just quizzed on. Unfortunately, by this point, no one in the room is even pretending to listen anymore because they just cannot believe what a phenomenal waste of time this has been. Also: we had effectively taught the material to ourselves thus eliminating the need to listen to her talk about it.
Tune in next week for part two wherein our groups discuss a homework problem
11:25 - 11: 40
Fifteen minutes is then spent writing the quiz on pieces of paper. For the record, the quizzes are generally nine or ten multiple choice questions. Fifteen minutes seems a little excessive for that but some people are slow and I enjoy ten minute naps so I'll let this one slide.
11:40 - 11:47
Because this is a computer science class, we couldn't just write the quiz and be done with it. No, for the next seven minutes we write the quiz again, using iclickers to create a digital copy of our scores. Why? Because
 |
| Just because something is advanced doesn't mean it isn't retarded |
11:47 - 12:00
Remember that bit about team based learning. Here is where it comes into play. We get together in our groups and spend 13 minutes taking the same quiz. Again. The mark we get on it as a group is worth three times the mark we get on it as individuals. This completely invalidates the point of writing it by ourselves. You could get get zero on it the first time but if your group gets 100% (which almost always happens) your final mark on this 'quiz' is 75%. That is a B. You get a B. FOR KNOWING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The higher averages in TBL have exactly zero to do with quality of teaching.
By this point we have spent 35 minutes of an 80 minute lecture (almost half) on 10 multiple choice questions.
12:00 - 12:20
The final twenty minutes of the lecture are spent on actual lecturing. This is where, for the very first time, the professor actually tries to teach us about the things we were just quizzed on. Unfortunately, by this point, no one in the room is even pretending to listen anymore because they just cannot believe what a phenomenal waste of time this has been. Also: we had effectively taught the material to ourselves thus eliminating the need to listen to her talk about it.
Tune in next week for part two wherein our groups discuss a homework problem
No comments:
Post a Comment