Last semester we had a module on Interaction Design (Human computer interaction). Oh my, through all our research in this class we discovered that users don't really know what they want themselves; it's quite painful really. Our lecturer even admitted the whole concept is a bit of a trend.
Additional Mathematics adn Chemistry.The problems only started this year when I transferred to a new school.There's like 40 people in a class,all of them are rowdy,they shout,curse,fight and the teacher takes half half the lesson trying to calm them down. The teacehr also can't teach for shit. Instaed of explaining evrything she justs gives us worksheets and gives us the anwsers to the first question. It's the same with chemistry.
I took an introductory philosophy class in college thinking it would be somewhat interesting. I thought that we would discuss the works of the various philosophers we would be reading about, but what actually happened was that the teacher just talked the entire class.
About everything and anything, EXCEPT for the philosopher we needed to talk about, or really anything philosophical at all. The class was a colossal waste of time and turned me off from any kind of philosophy.
I took an introductory philosophy class in college thinking it would be somewhat interesting. I thought that we would discuss the works of the various philosophers we would be reading about, but what actually happened was that the teacher just talked the entire class.
About everything and anything, EXCEPT for the philosopher we needed to talk about, or really anything philosophical at all. The class was a colossal waste of time and turned me off from any kind of philosophy.
The worst class that I ever had to take was the math course I'm taking this semester and which is luckily nearing its end. The course is supposed to be an hour of lecture each monday, tuesday and wednesday and is build in tandem with a practical course where problems that are solved at home are discussed. The practical course is offered twice, once monday and once wednesday because of the large demand. However, after expectedly only half the people showed up for the first units of the practical courses, the teacher decided that he is scratching one of them and holds the other one week on monday, the next on wednesday, the next on monday and so on.
Then he recommends a book for the course. I already have a book which teaches the exact same things just in a different manner. All should be fine, except that he ties down the entire course to the book and frequently more or less reads out of it and refers to diagrams in the book.
Also, the University offers a good infrastructure. Normally in such practical courses, the teacher makes a checklist and puts it online. The students mark what problems they solved and need to solve at least a certain percentage of those. The teacher of course doesn't care for that even a bit. Instead he burns at least five to ten minutes at the beginning of each course by asking each person who is there what problems they didn't solve (rather than the problems they solved). In other courses a list is passed through silently each student has to sign to verify they were present
Also the teacher can upload resources for the course in the online infrastructure, like the problems that are to be solved. He doesn't use that and instead sends the problems to each student by e-mail in a word document that always contains the schedule for the entire course and all previous problems as well. Additionally, some of the problems are directly referenced to the book I mentioned above. Not copy-pasted but rather "solve problem x on page y". The book isn't required. I don't have it. How am I supposed to solve them? When I confronted him about it, he gave a long speech and the core concept in it was that it isn't really his problem.
The calendar in the online infrastructure seems also to be a completely alien concept to him, which is really bad since he took a few days randomly off, which he didn't notify anybody about it. This is a problem for people who couldn't make it to the course where he announced it. One of those times was the week after the easter holidays where about 20 students showed up for a course that wasn't happening. He skipped the entire last week as well because of the Euro 2008 for the petty reason that he doesn't care for football and doesn't want to deal with the ruckus.
But this takes the cake: Before he left he announced the dates for the exams. Of course he didn't put them into the calendar system. I forgot about the dates so I sent him an e-mail last Thursday. I got no replay. This morning I open my mailbox again and find two e-mails, each going out to each student of the course. One sent yesterday at 6 p.m. and the other today at 2 a.m. that the first exam is today at 8 a.m. There is an alternate exam in two weeks, but WTF?!
Micro economics, without doubt. It's not a matter of being hard; I worked and got an A. It's not a matter of bad classmates; everyone was quiet and listened attentively. The fact is, my professor was a closet bigot but his bigotry shined through once and a while. Not to mention, he had a hardline, free market stance that left no room for argument. I'm sure, every Sunday, he worshiped his life size portrait of Adam Smith. He insisted that the American economy should be run purely as a free market and the government regulations were only getting in the way of economic forces that would make things fine, regardless. The majority of his tests were true false, which was painful because each time I marked down something as true or false I wanted to rip out my hair and scream "BUT IT ISN'T!!!"
each time I marked down something as true or false I wanted to rip out my hair and scream "BUT IT ISN'T!!!"
That's what happens when you know more than the person teaching you.
My worst class was in the 8th grade to sum it up my science teacher was a football coach who knew very little about science and was a proselytizing creationist! He even once said that evolution was invented to prove that there is no god. He knew I completely disagreed with him because in an essay I said that people who only believe in creationism and won't even accept the possibility of evolution are ignorant. Then he lectured the class about "respecting other people's beliefs," and how I (he didn't mention it was me though) insulted hie beliefs. I have the right to disagree with whatever belief I want. I don't have to respect a view that is clearly wrong. I respect his right to believe what he wants, but I do not have to respect his beliefs. I know that I have posted this story in the forum before but it just really pisses me off.
My worst class was in the 8th grade to sum it up my science teacher was a football coach who knew very little about science and was a proselytizing creationist!
I think our problems are quite analogous. The biggest pain was that this man had tenure, so, while I looked forward to ripping him apart in the professor reviews for being a short-sighted, uncompromising social Darwinist, I didn't even get that pleasure.
Actually, that brings up another painful class. Recently I had a java class that the professor was teaching for the first time. His lack of experience was painfully apparent. By this point in my education I had decided to stop playing the grade game and put down what I thought was right. So, when tests came up, I would ignore his specifications and do what I thought was right and suffer the penalties just to get that righteous satisfaction (I would hate to be my teacher). At least I got to rip him apart in the final reviews (which made things awkward a few weeks later when I wound up drinking with him and a few math students I knew at the local bar). I made a point of saying that he was a nice man but totally unqualified to teach this class.
In fact, at that time I was working at the department's computer lab were I helped students debug their code. So students would filter their problems through me and the TA would come to me before discussions to ask what he should teach that day. Don't even let me start on the TA, he tried to push way beyond the bounds of what is acceptable in a student--teacher(ish?) situation.
Comments
The only one due to the teacher was French 1. She was a really unpleasant lady.
About everything and anything, EXCEPT for the philosopher we needed to talk about, or really anything philosophical at all. The class was a colossal waste of time and turned me off from any kind of philosophy.
The worst class that I ever had to take was the math course I'm taking this semester and which is luckily nearing its end. The course is supposed to be an hour of lecture each monday, tuesday and wednesday and is build in tandem with a practical course where problems that are solved at home are discussed. The practical course is offered twice, once monday and once wednesday because of the large demand. However, after expectedly only half the people showed up for the first units of the practical courses, the teacher decided that he is scratching one of them and holds the other one week on monday, the next on wednesday, the next on monday and so on.
Then he recommends a book for the course. I already have a book which teaches the exact same things just in a different manner. All should be fine, except that he ties down the entire course to the book and frequently more or less reads out of it and refers to diagrams in the book.
Also, the University offers a good infrastructure. Normally in such practical courses, the teacher makes a checklist and puts it online. The students mark what problems they solved and need to solve at least a certain percentage of those. The teacher of course doesn't care for that even a bit. Instead he burns at least five to ten minutes at the beginning of each course by asking each person who is there what problems they didn't solve (rather than the problems they solved). In other courses a list is passed through silently each student has to sign to verify they were present
Also the teacher can upload resources for the course in the online infrastructure, like the problems that are to be solved. He doesn't use that and instead sends the problems to each student by e-mail in a word document that always contains the schedule for the entire course and all previous problems as well. Additionally, some of the problems are directly referenced to the book I mentioned above. Not copy-pasted but rather "solve problem x on page y". The book isn't required. I don't have it. How am I supposed to solve them?
When I confronted him about it, he gave a long speech and the core concept in it was that it isn't really his problem.
The calendar in the online infrastructure seems also to be a completely alien concept to him, which is really bad since he took a few days randomly off, which he didn't notify anybody about it. This is a problem for people who couldn't make it to the course where he announced it. One of those times was the week after the easter holidays where about 20 students showed up for a course that wasn't happening. He skipped the entire last week as well because of the Euro 2008 for the petty reason that he doesn't care for football and doesn't want to deal with the ruckus.
But this takes the cake: Before he left he announced the dates for the exams. Of course he didn't put them into the calendar system. I forgot about the dates so I sent him an e-mail last Thursday. I got no replay. This morning I open my mailbox again and find two e-mails, each going out to each student of the course. One sent yesterday at 6 p.m. and the other today at 2 a.m. that the first exam is today at 8 a.m. There is an alternate exam in two weeks, but WTF?!
The shittiest course ever.
My worst class was in the 8th grade to sum it up my science teacher was a football coach who knew very little about science and was a proselytizing creationist! He even once said that evolution was invented to prove that there is no god. He knew I completely disagreed with him because in an essay I said that people who only believe in creationism and won't even accept the possibility of evolution are ignorant. Then he lectured the class about "respecting other people's beliefs," and how I (he didn't mention it was me though) insulted hie beliefs. I have the right to disagree with whatever belief I want. I don't have to respect a view that is clearly wrong. I respect his right to believe what he wants, but I do not have to respect his beliefs. I know that I have posted this story in the forum before but it just really pisses me off.
Actually, that brings up another painful class. Recently I had a java class that the professor was teaching for the first time. His lack of experience was painfully apparent. By this point in my education I had decided to stop playing the grade game and put down what I thought was right. So, when tests came up, I would ignore his specifications and do what I thought was right and suffer the penalties just to get that righteous satisfaction (I would hate to be my teacher). At least I got to rip him apart in the final reviews (which made things awkward a few weeks later when I wound up drinking with him and a few math students I knew at the local bar). I made a point of saying that he was a nice man but totally unqualified to teach this class.
In fact, at that time I was working at the department's computer lab were I helped students debug their code. So students would filter their problems through me and the TA would come to me before discussions to ask what he should teach that day. Don't even let me start on the TA, he tried to push way beyond the bounds of what is acceptable in a student--teacher(ish?) situation.