Who's at fault - student or lecturer?

studentphil

Voyager2002 wrote: »

All posters above have made a common but fundamental error: they assume that it is the job of a lecturer to teach students. Wrong: the job of a lecturer is to do research. Students are responsible for their own learning, although lectures, library facilities etc may be provided in order to assist them. The task of giving lectures is a minor part of a lecturer's job: giving lectures well does not lead to promotion, and giving poor lectures is unlikely to injure a lectuer's career. It is about time that students grasped this fact, and accepted responsibility for their own learning.

But still if the lecturer is poor at lecturing then they are still poor at their job and if people don't understand their classes they are still failing.

bestpud

Are students meant to understand a topic when they leave the lecture room though? Isn't it about giving them the basics and then leaving them to go away and make sense of it via independent research?

I think teachers have an obligation to ensure school children have understood the topic they are teaching (doesn't always happen I know) but not uni lecturers. It isn't their problem - their job is to deliver the basics, set a question and mark what comes in. What the student does meanwhile, and therefore what they hand in, is up to them!

studentphil

bestpud wrote: »

Are students meant to understand a topic when they leave the lecture room though? Isn't it about giving them the basics and then leaving them to go away and make sense of it via independent research?

I think teachers have an obligation to ensure school children have understood the topic they are teaching (doesn't always happen I know) but not uni lecturers. It isn't their problem - their job is to deliver the basics, set a question and mark what comes in. What the student does meanwhile, and therefore what they hand in, is up to them!

Maybe not understand the topic but you should understand the content of the lecture or it is not well delivered.

PixiePie

bestpud wrote: »

Are students meant to understand a topic when they leave the lecture room though? Isn't it about giving them the basics and then leaving them to go away and make sense of it via independent research?

I think teachers have an obligation to ensure school children have understood the topic they are teaching (doesn't always happen I know) but not uni lecturers. It isn't their problem - their job is to deliver the basics, set a question and mark what comes in. What the student does meanwhile, and therefore what they hand in, is up to them!

Quite, students are not meant to understand something after a lecture, it is simply there as another tool for presenting and giving access to information and tools to self study and learn.

One of the problems imho is that schools are teaching more and more to exam papers and spoon feeding and not encouraging students to think. They therefore go to uni not able to think for themselves, and the second a lecturer/tutor doesn't act like their A Level teacher has they are surprised. (I am not referring to the OP or anyone else in particular by the way). I see this more and more from my career as a teacher in secondary schools over the years, my time as a liason in universities and my brother currently being a mature student at university. Until schools are allowed (by not being tied to ridiculous league tables) to teach and give a passion for education instead of spoon feeding and society also returns to responsibility for one's actions being a fact rather than an olden day thought the university student who is failing, but it's not their fault, will continue if not worsen. (oh, I could fix the world me :rotfl:)

studentphil

So how are you meant to know what to learn if it is just upto you to find it all out yourself? How do you know if what you learn on your own is in your exam or not?

Bamber19

I've never studied a module or heard of one where everyone on the course failed, therefore i tend to think failure lies at the feet of the student and not the lecturer.

mrtg0525

studentphil wrote: »

So how are you meant to know what to learn if it is just upto you to find it all out yourself? How do you know if what you learn on your own is in your exam or not?

OK, the first question you need to ask yourself here is - who and what are you learning for?

Are you learning for your own longer-term benefit? Or are you learning to pass an exam?

This is not a trick question, but the answer (which you have to find for yourself) should determine the 'how' you learn. Unfortunately everybody will have to find out for themselves how they best absorb information...

studentphil

mrtg0525 wrote: »

OK, the first question you need to ask yourself here is - who and what are you learning for?

Are you learning for your own longer-term benefit? Or are you learning to pass an exam?

This is not a trick question, but the answer (which you have to find for yourself) should determine the 'how' you learn. Unfortunately everybody will have to find out for themselves how they best absorb information...

I want to learn at the right level for the module and to pass the module.

Out of the millions of books and different takes on a subject, it is hard to see what is the right thing to study.

Blacksheep1979

Lecturers aren't meant to teach you, but give you an idea of where you should be in your own learning and help with concepts you don't quite understand.

bestpud

studentphil wrote: »

I want to learn at the right level for the module and to pass the module.

Out of the millions of books and different takes on a subject, it is hard to see what is the right thing to study.

That's the point of higher level study though isn't it?

There are no right or wrong answers for most subjects (if any?) and the skill is not about how much info you can cram in your brain but how well you can take all the info out there and synthesise it into a well structured argument.

Learning a certain amount of info for the purpose of an exam is ok for GCSE and A levels but not for undergraduate study imo.

Edited to add: Sifting through reams of info and selecting only what is relevent to your argument is perhaps the hardest but most important skill within higher level study I think.