I agree with pretty much everything you said in your blog. I really like that you pointed out how learning is a two-way street. Yes, professors need to try to be engaging and they should try to teach in a way that students can connect and understand, but students need to be willing to learn and want to be there in order for a course to be truly effective. Throughout my college career I’ve had some courses where I was just not interested (mostly general education courses) and I did not put in the effort that I should have. Perhaps, if the professors’ lectures were more engaging, I would have put more effort into my learning. I think that when you go into a class with the mindset of, “I just want to get this over with so I can move on” you’re not going to get much out of the class, no matter how good the professor is. I have also had courses where I didn’t particularly like my professors’ teaching style. There was one higher level engineering course where the professor spent the whole time writing on the board and I spent the whole time writing as fast as I could so I didn’t miss anything (this wasn’t a huge class probably fewer than 30 students). While I found this class extremely difficult to keep up with, I put in the extra effort to go to office hours and spend time working through problems with my professor because it was a topic that interested me. I found that my professor was much better at explaining things one-on-one than he was during class and I felt that I really got a lot out of the course because I took the initiative to get the help that I needed.
I took this class as an undergrad as well and I have to say as an engineer this was the only non math/science course that I truly enjoyed. Not only did he come up with a great outline for the course that really allowed students to take control of the way they learned but he also was just so enthusiastic about what he was talking about it made me want to learn more!
I definitely agree about courses taught by professors who have experience in the field. I think it is very important to understand how what we are learning in classes can actually be applied to real world situations, this is why it is great when your professor can give you examples from work that they have actually been involved in. For me it helps motivate me, knowing how useful concepts I am learning will be in the future.
In the French educational system, most of the undergraduate learning is primarily focused on lecturing. It is viewed to be necessary for students to learn how to take notes and listen to the lecturer. Whereas in the American system is mostly centered around interaction. It’s interesting how different educational systems perceive lecturing.
I also had the opportunity to take this course during my undergraduate studies. I definitely agree with you that it was one of the best classes that I have taken. I really like the grading systems where he allows you to choose how you earn your “A”. That “A” is more of a measurement how much you learned than how much you memorize something. I remember that the assignments were hard, but you were giving multiple opportunities to retake it until you get the grade that you want. The assessment always asked different questions, which makes you learn even more material. If you had the dedication, you can earn that A in the class.
I have to agree with you that I also learned a lot more by doing projects than by lectures. I feel the projects force the students to interact with each other and apply the knowledge they have learn to a problem. I feel that it breaks a larger class down into smaller group, as not everyone is comfortable discussing ideas in front of a large audience. I feel that I remember the information better from doing a project. However, I feel that project based courses are very hard for engineering because there are so many different topics that are covered in an undergraduate engineering curriculum.
I have to agree with you that discussion is a much better way to teach and learn. The hard thing about having discussions is that it requires the student to be at a level where the can respond quickly to what is being talked about. They have to be actively engaged in order to contribute to the conversation. This discussion model is a bit hard for the technical classes, where the students are different levels and have not “experience enough”. I know for me, it was hard to ask effective questions in undergraduate engineering course, but when I worked for about two years, I had much more insight to contribute to the discussion.
Your blogs are so fun to read! I think there is definitely a good educational purpose behind playing games and playing a character role in the classroom. This not only allows them to impersonate other roles and points of views but also understand differing views… and have fun along the way!
