When I grow up I'm going to be a.....................

[LizzieMaine]

I don't have a printer at home, so I still use a typewriter for personal letters, etc., and it doesn't bother me any. If anything I write more carefully on it because I know I can't just whip back and correct a mistake or change a paragraph or whatever. I think if people had to use a typewriter to post on social media the world would be a much better place.

I cannot abide videos, though. I don't want to have to sit thru ten minutes of "GUYS! GUYS! LOOK AT THIS THING I DID" blather to get to the one piece of it that interests me. In a written piece I can skim thru the crap until I find the main point, and I've never seen anything in an instructional video that wouldn't have been better conveyed by a series of well-captioned still photos. I think videos have caught on because since the advent of the smartphone and Youtube, they're the laziest possible way of conveying information. And I'm always wary of information conveyed by the lazy.

 

[Who?]

I think the ubiquity of videos is due to the overall decrease in literacy, I do not believe they are the cause. I believe they are the result.

Videos drive me crazy, from the ones in an impenetrable regional dialect, which is just barely mutually intelligible with Standard North American English, to the ones where every third word is “um”. Or the ones where vey other sentence contains the phrase “Let’s go ahead and …….” or something equally vacuous.

For me, these are sheer torture.

 

[Edward]

I remember one of my profs admitting to me his methodology for grading papers.. He told me that he stood at the top of his basement stairs and tossed the lot downward. The ones that landed furthest away got the best marks as they contained the most pages and thus the heaviest. I am not sure he was kidding me.

I've heard that one as a running joke for years, but I'm pretty sure there are a couple of people who I've encountered who really did do it.


I recently encountered a new software product being marketed as bringing an end to marking. Supposedly you feed all the assignments into it, then it presents you with a series of pairs of submissions, and in each case you tell it which is better. No marking beyond that - simply which is better. Presumably it must do at least one comparison for each of the papers submitted, not sure how many. Once finished, it ranks them all in order, and then the 'marker' just decides where the grade boundaries fall. It's an interesting concept I can see catching on in places where big classes and very heavy marking loads are a norm. Probably not here in the UK, though. I'm no fan of competitive marking (I refuse to grade to an artificially set curve; if everybody in my class is good enough individually to get a distinction, then they all deserve one - if none of them are, none will. In practice, I've never seen a class of any size not have a natural curve come out anyhow). The other thing that would kill it here is the increasing expectation that we provide extensive feedback on grades (which many international students seem to think opens the door to negotiating a higher grade. It does not.). Which is what actually takes all the time anyhow, rather than the marking itself...

 

[Edward]

I don't have a printer at home, so I still use a typewriter for personal letters, etc., and it doesn't bother me any. If anything I write more carefully on it because I know I can't just whip back and correct a mistake or change a paragraph or whatever. I think if people had to use a typewriter to post on social media the world would be a much better place.

I cannot abide videos, though. I don't want to have to sit thru ten minutes of "GUYS! GUYS! LOOK AT THIS THING I DID" blather to get to the one piece of it that interests me. In a written piece I can skim thru the crap until I find the main point, and I've never seen anything in an instructional video that wouldn't have been better conveyed by a series of well-captioned still photos. I think videos have caught on because since the advent of the smartphone and Youtube, they're the laziest possible way of conveying information. And I'm always wary of information conveyed by the lazy.

I think the ubiquity of videos is due to the overall decrease in literacy, I do not believe they are the cause. I believe they are the result.

Videos drive me crazy, from the ones in an impenetrable regional dialect, which is just barely mutually intelligible with Standard North American English, to the ones where every third word is “um”. Or the ones where vey other sentence contains the phrase “Let’s go ahead and …….” or something equally vacuous.

For me, these are sheer torture.

The big downside with the democratisation of communication via the web has indeed been that it is so effective of realising the freedom of speech for so many who have nothing of any constructive value to say. I think I'd mind less if as a user I had more ability to control the filtering of the platform, but while so much remains advertising-funded rather than subscription driven, I can't see there being much hope of them working other than on an algorithm designed to feed the user more and more of what it thinks they will like - inane or not. Mind, subscriptions services aren't much better. Netflix, Prime et al clearly want to run on a basis of giving me the impression it's all wall to wall of stuff I like, but I'd much rather have a clear index I can look at and choose for myself rather than only being able to easily find stuff 'recommended' for me. It's why I won't ever rate anything on my streamers, otherwise it'll only amplify the impact of their algorithms.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have never run across an algorithm that could understand what I like. I'm deliberately opaque in my searches across various platforms, and I often salt the searches I actually want with random phrases, just to throw some sand in the gears.

 

[Who?]

When I was a GI instructor, we used to have many discussions of exams, tests, and grading.

If only one student got a particular question right, then we looked at whether he was the brightest one in the class. We would then go over whatever point that question covered, and the question and the grades stood.

If no one got it right, we decided that it was either a poorly-written question, or we didn’t teach the material that well. We would throw out the question, and teach that point again.

Students in general, seem to learn from the ones they get wrong.

 

[Edward]

Students in general, seem to learn from the ones they get wrong.

Unfortunately these days I seem to teach all too many international rich kids who're here for a jolly year in London and think they bought the degree when they paid their fees.

 

[Who?]

The big downside with the democratisation of communication via the web has indeed been that it is so effective of realising the freedom of speech for so many who have nothing of any constructive value to say.

This statement should be cut into stone and displayed in public spaces.

 

[belfastboy]

I've heard that one as a running joke for years, but I'm pretty sure there are a couple of people who I've encountered who really did do it.


I recently encountered a new software product being marketed as bringing an end to marking. Supposedly you feed all the assignments into it, then it presents you with a series of pairs of submissions, and in each case you tell it which is better. No marking beyond that - simply which is better. Presumably it must do at least one comparison for each of the papers submitted, not sure how many. Once finished, it ranks them all in order, and then the 'marker' just decides where the grade boundaries fall. It's an interesting concept I can see catching on in places where big classes and very heavy marking loads are a norm. Probably not here in the UK, though. I'm no fan of competitive marking (I refuse to grade to an artificially set curve; if everybody in my class is good enough individually to get a distinction, then they all deserve one - if none of them are, none will. In practice, I've never seen a class of any size not have a natural curve come out anyhow). The other thing that would kill it here is the increasing expectation that we provide extensive feedback on grades (which many international students seem to think opens the door to negotiating a higher grade. It does not.). Which is what actually takes all the time anyhow, rather than the marking itself...

In one of my upper levels sociology classes (class of 1970) the Prof was 'progressive' and stated how he hated exams/marking etc. For my final class essay I handed in a cover page and 25 blank pages. On a separate sheet I gave instructions on how I wished to be graded. The instructions included a die and a grid with a letter grade assigned to each of the 12 possible numbers. 12 = A+ down to 1 = F. I gave it to him at the end of class and asked him to roll the die and I would accept the result. I wanted to call him on his bullshit about papers, exams and grading. To his credit he accepted my challenge but refused to do it there in front of the class. He said he would do it later in his office. I received a 'B' for the class and I doubt the die was ever rolled. But I counted it as a win.

 

[Edward]

In one of my upper levels sociology classes (class of 1970) the Prof was 'progressive' and stated how he hated exams/marking etc. For my final class essay I handed in a cover page and 25 blank pages. On a separate sheet I gave instructions on how I wished to be graded. The instructions included a die and a grid with a letter grade assigned to each of the 12 possible numbers. 12 = A+ down to 1 = F. I gave it to him at the end of class and asked him to roll the die and I would accept the result. I wanted to call him on his bullshit about papers, exams and grading. To his credit he accepted my challenge but refused to do it there in front of the class. He said he would do it later in his office. I received a 'B' for the class and I doubt the die was ever rolled. But I counted it as a win.

I'm generally very open with my students that the end of year exam is nothing more than an imperfect but necessary means of measuring that they have learned something. I do fortunately find most of them see the value in treating it as a long-term, learning opportunity as opposed to merely a vehicle to get through the exam. I do, of course, have the good fortune that the significant majority of what I teach is optional; I feel for colleagues who spend their days teaching core modules with huge classes, half of whom have no interest in being there.

 

[belfastboy]

I'm generally very open with my students that the end of year exam is nothing more than an imperfect but necessary means of measuring that they have learned something. I do fortunately find most of them see the value in treating it as a long-term, learning opportunity as opposed to merely a vehicle to get through the exam. I do, of course, have the good fortune that the significant majority of what I teach is optional; I feel for colleagues who spend their days teaching core modules with huge classes, half of whom have no interest in being there.

I had the great fortune to attend university when it still offered the possibility of 'higher learning' for its own sake not as mere career prep.

I did not go to uni in pursuit of a career as I had lofty youthful ambition of studying the great ideas seated at the feet of masters. By my second semester I was disabused of that notion. But slogging through the first two years of 500+ students per class got me into the much smaller 20 student upper levels classes where the profs were better as were the TA's. But still it was disappointing to discover that many of the PhD's were not masters but those with dogged determination to slog through the many years required to gain the paper. It was more about that doggedness than any particular brilliance in the subject matter.
But I do have fond memories of it all....drank too much coffee, smoked too many cigarettes and wasted far too much time squirreled away in the cafeteria in a futile attempt to solve the world's problems.

 

[Who?]

Many proposed changes, which were stupid ideas when they were first proposed, remain stupid ideas, even as a new generation parades through the streets, advocating those very same ideas.