Article

2010-04-27 Science & Technology

Northern AZ University To Institute Nannyism

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Anonymoose 2010-04-27 09:10|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 One of Haeger's goals is to increase NAU's retention rate.

Never consider raising entrance standards to eliminate those who do not possess the academic and motivation abilities that an institute of 'higher learning' should demand. Your drop out rates are also an indication that not everyone should be going to the university in the first place. However, that line of thought is not supportive of more instructors, more departments, more grants, mo'money.

Posted by Procopius2k 2010-04-27 10:10|| 2010-04-27 10:10|| Front Page Top

#2 Common sense is racist...

Posted by M. Murcek 2010-04-27 11:26|| 2010-04-27 11:26|| Front Page Top

#3 "How much you said it was, Bob? Ten bucks? OK, here is my ID card and ten. See ya after the lecture."

Bob plugs in earphones, plugs them in the ipod and gets his $40/hr while enjoying his faved band.

Who would the prof believe, his lying eyes or the computer record?

Posted by twobyfour 2010-04-27 15:28|| 2010-04-27 15:28|| Front Page Top

#4 Twobyfour identifies why so few workable ideas for life in the real world originate in colleges...

Posted by M. Murcek 2010-04-27 15:31|| 2010-04-27 15:31|| Front Page Top

#5 I've noticed that most "Learning Institutions" enroll as many "Live Bodies" that they can, KNOWING they won't graduate, but WILL pay tuition, it's a huge profit maker when some dolt drops out without any chance of refunding the tuition.

Money,Money, Money rules all.

Teching comes a good third.
Just remember how many "Student loans" are paid for years later, the colleges don't really give a shit if you learn, only if you PAY.

And the higher the tuition, the better.

Posted by Redneck Jim 2010-04-27 15:55|| 2010-04-27 15:55|| Front Page Top

#6 A thumb-tack through the transponder will stop that.

Posted by mojo 2010-04-27 17:47|| 2010-04-27 17:47|| Front Page Top

#7 One thing that has annoyed me about the trailing daughters' university is how many professors will choose to fail a student for attendance issues, regardless how the student does on assignments and tests. So a student who got above 95% cumulative points for doing and mastering the material can still fail the course. This is perhaps a minor factor in the number of students dropping out of college -- inability to function at that level by students who never should have been admitted is still the major factor, and for those students steady attendance plus tutoring is their only hope -- but how much does the institution lose by driving out the Bill Gates types?

It seems to me there ought to be a more nuanced approached, separating out those struggling from those who don't need to catch every pearl that drops from the instructor's lips. The way to do that is by grading frequent assignments/tests, and giving a pass to those who score in the top 10% of the class.

Posted by trailing wife 2010-04-27 18:30|| 2010-04-27 18:30|| Front Page Top

#8 It's been a while (!!) but during my almost ten years in the academic world very few profs penalized for non-attendence. Most took attendence, and many gave 'extra credit' for good attendence, but if you did the work and aced the tests without showing up, that was ok.

Posted by Glenmore 2010-04-27 19:11|| 2010-04-27 19:11|| Front Page Top

#9 as a young man in engineering school and living in a fraternity house, I had an ...er... "issue" with attendance, although rarely on tests. Attendance is a vanity for many profs, because, if students can do well on tests without the glowing periodic presence of Professor Chalkboard, it paints a bad picture of their teaching skills.

BTW: I got better

Posted by Frank G 2010-04-27 19:13|| 2010-04-27 19:13|| Front Page Top

#10 At what? Attendance or tests?

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2010-04-27 19:37|| 2010-04-27 19:37|| Front Page Top

#11 I did OK on tests before :-)

I moved out of the fraternity and into a rented house with three other bro's...

Posted by Frank G 2010-04-27 19:53|| 2010-04-27 19:53|| Front Page Top

#12 In my experience, both as a student and as faculty, how much attendance matters depends in part on the nature of the course and the size of the enrollment.

Most courses have some degree of student participation in sessions. Having the best students missing a lot of the time definitely impacts the quality of participation. But it also impacts those students in more subtle ways. Some of the best learning moments I've seen happen for bright capable students came when they were forced to go beyond their intuition and find effective ways to articulate insights to others.

Regular assignments as metrics depend both on honesty (did the student do the work him/herself?) but also on the degree to which the assignments are integrative. And while the prof can do some amount of commenting on written assignments it's incredibly time consuming to try to teach indirectly, through the comments made while grading, and that isn't all that effective - interactive feedback really is needed if teaching is the real goal.

But then I didn't teach huge lecture courses in a state university. So YMMV.

Posted by lotp 2010-04-27 21:19|| 2010-04-27 21:19|| Front Page Top

#13 I passed the State registration first time without studying...student participation in engineering lecture? Oh please....

Posted by Frank G 2010-04-27 21:33|| 2010-04-27 21:33|| Front Page Top

#14 Reminds me that in one of my University finals exams, the invigalator who also taught the course wanted to know who I was, because he had never seen me before.

I passed the course and graduated with honours.

Even 40 years ago attending lectures was mostly a waste of time. These days, my daughters lectures are all recorded and online.

Posted by phil_b 2010-04-27 21:52|| 2010-04-27 21:52|| Front Page Top

23:53 JosephMendiola
23:39 JosephMendiola
23:38 gorb
23:29 JosephMendiola
23:24 gorb
23:22 JosephMendiola
22:55 phil_b
22:53 Frank G
22:50 JosephMendiola
22:45 JosephMendiola
22:32 JosephMendiola
22:31 Jack Shomoper7600
22:22 JosephMendiola
22:19 JosephMendiola
22:16 OldSpook
22:16 lex
22:10 gorb
22:10 lex
22:09 OldSpook
22:08 Frank G
22:06 Frank G
22:05 lex
22:05 phil_b
22:01 gorb