In three of the classes I'm taking this semester, my professor has made it clear that no one in the class is doing as well as he/she would have hoped and that there will end up being a large curve on our final exam / overall grade. This seems to be a continuing trend in the past 3 semesters. As the classes get harder the curves become bigger and bigger. Don't get me wrong I appreciate the help, as does my GPA, but shouldn't some kind of change be made. If no one's doing well the professor either hasn't done a very good job of covering the material,or the exams are much too hard, most likely its usually a combination of both. Even though I hate to admit it, when I KNOW there is going to be a curve on an exam I usually try less hard in preperation for the exam, mostly because I usually do pretty well on exams and If I know theres a curve its enabling me to put less effort into it and still receive the grade I'm looking for. (Man what would rickert have to say about all this?)
Basically I think the biggest problem is professors are attempting to really push there students to learn, and then caving when they fail to meet their expectations. There are two solutions, cover the material slower, and more in depth to allow for some real learning and give a chance for students to do better on an "easier" exam. The other option would be to make it clear from the get go, that there will be no curve, that everything covered in class is going to be tested on, and force the student to push themselves and do well in a hard class. (or fail)
Some sort of debate on this topic could probably be pretty interesting if a few people chimed in..?
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I think part of the thing is that we are forced to take classes that are irrelevant and we might not care about the class as much as a class that we are interested in or that is part of our major. For example, a 100 level math class that covers a whole lot of things that will never be used after the class is over might not be as important as a 400 level psychology class if you are a psych major. The fact that professors try to cram so much in to one lecture at each lecture seems like they don't care whether or not we learn it because we are not robots, and it takes repetition to actually get an understanding of something. But we are constantly given new material before we even get an understanding of the first step of the previous material, so I think the curves kind of balances it out.
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming that their is a curriculum that each professor needs to accomplish within the semester. I do agree however, that their does seem to be a ton of information crammed into a short time, but this might not be the professors fault. If your a taken a prereq, for an upper level class, their is probably a goal in mind in order to reach the next level. I think this is why they offer so many options as far as tutors, TA's, office hours and study groups in case you do see yourself falling behind. I know this takes up even more time, but sometimes it's necessary.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but I think that there is more emphasis on the grading and how much is done in classes rather than what is actually being learned and that kind of defeats the whole purpose of coming to college.
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