Read this article. Comment. Discuss.

too long, didn't read. just skimmed.
I don't see what the article is saying, or why.
students are lazy? it takes time to transition into university. that's really all I can comment on.

did you get this from azim's facebook twitter lol

sortakinda.

azim was the third person to post about it but i read it from someone else.

I couldnt agree more,

I didnt read the article but I personally was not ready for uni, and Im still not ready to this day...

High-school was a great way to slack for 4 years..we had courses called computer engineering, where we play emulated games..good times playing SSB with 3 people on a P3 computer...

Then again, my high school was full of under qualified teachers where it went down to the students explaining concepts to the teacher: happened in grade 12 chemistry: This is something that should never happen! (funny enough, she was from Waterloo so Im really happy I didn't go there!)

But at the end of the day, I dont think anyone can prep for uni..the transition is too big to handle or prep for in highschool..

Some students haven't been prepared for the transition and others are just lazy. I mean how many times have I come on Webct and see 5 people asking the same question while the answer is 5 posts up or in your course outline. I never understood that.

I agree that there is a lot of variety in how prepared students are for university. Having said that, nobody says that the current role of the prof as a researcher has to have a bearing on how well students are taught. Frankly, for the amount of money we pay to the university, we should be getting a prof that can teach. We are not so affected by their research directly as we are by their skills in teaching. I think most of you will agree that at least half the profs we have just suck as teachers(I am speaking to the Engineers out there).

I am not saying we should be spoon-fed, but I would like that for my money I should get a professor I can understand, and that is organized. Bad accent and disorganization on the part of the prof does seem to bring down marks a lot, at least from my experience. So, it;s all good and dandy that these profs rate us as unprepared, but they do not fare much better in my opinion. I think there should be certain standards that have to be met, otherwise we should be reimbursed for a bad class.

Think about it, the only one who looses when a prof can't teach or disorganized is the student. Since we are paying to take the class, and we are not taught properly, we should be reimbursed. Of course, the way to determine if a prof is bad is by the majority, but you get my point. Someone definitely needs to hold the university responsible for those profs that end up screwing up a whole class of students.
Anyway, I hope everyone's exam study is going well.
Cheers!

Originally Posted by adrian

Frankly, for the amount of money we pay to the university, we should be getting a prof that can teach.

Bad accent and disorganization on the part of the prof does seem to bring down marks a lot, at least from my experience. So, it;s all good and dandy that these profs rate us as unprepared, but they do not fare much better in my opinion. I think there should be certain standards that have to be met..

Think about it, the only one who looses when a prof can't teach or disorganized is the student...Someone definitely needs to hold the university responsible for those profs that end up screwing up a whole class of students.

This.

I'm in first year (Humanities) and I've already had two profs that I would go out of my way to avoid having as profs again. One prof spent about a month covering material that wasn't supposed to be covered in that course, and was very disorganized, as well as being way to quiet to hear from the middle (not to mention the back) of the lecture hall (and wouldn't use a microphone). The other was also disorganized, kept changing the assignments and due dates (at least once a week) and was a terrible teacher.

Hah...I haven't posted on here in awhile, but I check in now and then, and just had to make a comment on this since it's come up a lot at work today.

For some background, I'm a high school science teacher now (graduated from Mac 3 years ago). And I'm afraid I have to say - it's kind of our fault. Believe me, this pisses me off to no end, but our hands are somewhat tied. I'm not talking about subject knowledge - yes, you should have good teachers who teach you everything you need to know, and do it well - but I'm mainly talking about the more intangible aspects of "preparing for university". Things like study skills, responsibility, and respect for deadlines. I can completely see how students "expect success without the requisite effort", since that's pretty much government policy when it comes to high school nowadays.

The current focus is on "student success", which is a nice idea in theory. Certainly, we want to see students do well, even to the point of giving students "multiple opportunities for success", as the policy goes. But I question the value in being forced to accept an assignment that is handed in 4 months late and marking it as if it was turned in on the due date, without penalty, because we're trying to get students to succeed academically. What about responsibility? What about time management? Students nowadays know that they can pretty much submit work whenever they want without regards to deadlines, and expect the school to accomodate them in all circumstances. The implementation of this policy does vary somewhat from school to school (some have so-called "drop-dead dates" after which assignments won't be accepted, until a parent complains, that is...) but not at my last school. We can say to students until we're blue in the face that "you can't get away with this in university", but learned habits are hard to break, and I think that's the sort of thing you're seeing here.

It's not just the deadlines, of course. The entire culture of secondary education today is to push through as many students as possible and make extraordinary accomodations for bad behaviour. For example, there's the provision that we can't assign marks for homework completion, thus removing a major incentive for students who may not otherwise do it. In courses like math, actually doing it is really the only way to learn it (despite students apparently not believing this), and we can't mark if they're doing it unless it's an assignment or quiz. And please don't get me wrong - I love helping students who may be struggling to understand a concept, or helping a student catch up/giving leeway after being off sick. It's when good students actively take advantage of the loopholes that are indended to help poor students because they know they can get away with it that annoys me and most of my teacher friends. That's not doing university-bound OR workplace-bound students any favours where they simply won't put up with that kind of crap.

So, yeah. Without a wholesale policy and culture change in secondary education in Ontario, I don't really see this problem ending anytime soon.

I know this is the classic comment on any issue like this but, I think a lot of it depends on the student and their work ethic, like Cippi had mentioned.

There's people who I've met who really f-ed up their first year, because they spent way too much time slacking off, waited until last minute to do their assignments, skipping all their classes and depending on other people for notes, and leaving their readings until the day before the exam. They just... I'm not sure if it's because they're not taking university seriously, or if they just don't realize the consequences of not doing well or failing which is basically a maturity issue. I'm not perfect either, even though I realize that university isn't just for drinking, having sex and socializing -- sorry if I'm generalizing -- it's hard getting so much work done and getting through 10 page papers and exams that are worth so much.

I think in high school, a lot of students thought it was easy to not do well and not have it affect you that much. As long as you passed, you went onto the next year. Little do people know, this does affect you, because doing well comes from having a good work ethic. I slacked off maaaajorly for the first 3 years or so of high school, and I was just like, wait a minute, this is not good. So I pulled up my pants by senior year and got my act together. It's so would not be easy to do that in university, although I could be wrong.

Also in high school, the course assignments and tests were not worth very much. There was a lot of leeway to make up for failed assignments, and the little things let you know early on if you're on track or not. Unlike my first year full year sociology course, where I didn't have any marks until like January. I think that's the toughest aspect that people might have trouble being prepared for. Maybe they should set up grade 12 as having fewer tests and assignments that are worth more.

There's probably a mountain of other things that's wrong as to why students aren't prepared, but number one thing, definitely, is that students slack off too much, and have slacked off for a long time.

I went through a private high school in toronto, and it was no different than public schools in terms of academics. Crappy teachers, bad hours for seeing them, not fun. But what got me was how they based the whole philosophy on preparing us. Strict deadlines, and they made grade 12 hell, because they put university on a pedestal. My average dropped 10% from Grade 11 to 12. It was up to the teachers to enforce the deadlines, but for the most part, people paid attention. I find that people who complain about university are the ones who got to slack off in high school. The fact that high school was just... HARDER on me in grade 12 helped me a lot. Friends of mine at other schools basically did nothing and still kept a similar average. They were never challenged with the same kind of questions as what I was getting. The schools need to be giving real-world application questions that don't just focus on one idea. That's what we get here, so why not give some of those in high school?

I hated my high school, but it really prepared me, and my marks haven't dropped at all. It's all thanks to general difficulty and seriously enticing deadlines, Even though there were 1000 word essays due in 10 weeks... They made university look impossible, when it really isn't. I love Mac, but kids need to take school seriously, and it's up to the powers that be and those doing the educating to help kids do better.

Originally Posted by feonateresa

I know this is the classic comment on any issue like this but, I think a lot of it depends on the student and their work ethic, like Cippi had mentioned.

There's people who I've met who really f-ed up their first year, because they spent way too much time slacking off, waited until last minute to do their assignments, skipping all their classes and depending on other people for notes, and leaving their readings until the day before the exam. They just... I'm not sure if it's because they're not taking university seriously, or if they just don't realize the consequences of not doing well or failing which is basically a maturity issue. I'm not perfect either, even though I realize that university isn't just for drinking, having sex and socializing -- sorry if I'm generalizing -- it's hard getting so much work done and getting through 10 page papers and exams that are worth so much.

I think in high school, a lot of students thought it was easy to not do well and not have it affect you that much. As long as you passed, you went onto the next year. Little do people know, this does affect you, because doing well comes from having a good work ethic. I slacked off maaaajorly for the first 3 years or so of high school, and I was just like, wait a minute, this is not good. So I pulled up my pants by senior year and got my act together. It's so would not be easy to do that in university, although I could be wrong.

Also in high school, the course assignments and tests were not worth very much. There was a lot of leeway to make up for failed assignments, and the little things let you know early on if you're on track or not. Unlike my first year full year sociology course, where I didn't have any marks until like January. I think that's the toughest aspect that people might have trouble being prepared for. Maybe they should set up grade 12 as having fewer tests and assignments that are worth more.

There's probably a mountain of other things that's wrong as to why students aren't prepared, but number one thing, definitely, is that students slack off too much, and have slacked off for a long time.

there is one way to prep kids for uni, treat grade 12 as the first year of university. If we can complete a year's worth of university in 8 months, Im pretty sure we can complete grade 12 in 6 months..of course I don't have the complete solution to how this will ever work, its an idea that is logical and possible..they could try this system in the private school (with beginner/traing profs) and we can see if they are more prepped for uni..

First, thanks for the article Lorend -- it was quite a read.

Many of you make excellent points. I would just like to highlight a few things though. First, there is a lack of consistency in the way we are taught. From my experience, much of the time we are swamped with work from all our classes at once, either in late November or late March. Moreover, often times we do not get feedback on our grade leading up to exams before classes are done.

This is a huge problem because it goes against the entire idea of responsibility on the part of the student. All assignments are not given out at the beginning of the year for us to decide when to begin them, and to a lesser extent, what to do them on. This means that we cannot possibely schedule ourselves even if we wanted to, as some teachers give the assignments on the first day and others 2 weeks before it is due.

If stringent deadlines are imposed on students than we should at least be given the flexibility of deciding when to begin our assignments. Rather than enjoy the learning process it becomes a game of getting as much done as possible within a two week period at the end of the semester. That is in direct contrast to scholarship. This way those that want to begin early can do so, whilst those that leave things to the last minute will continue on the same way. Then and only then can we begin to talk about time management.

Furthermore, a related manner is feedback on progress throughout the year. If the vast majority of our assignments are due at the end of the year and we get them back only after classes are done it does not benefit anyone, TA's included. It is important to be able to track your grade so that you can make rational choices. This begins from the first real week of class (usually week 2) until the final class.

That said, laziness is a problem but that is a byproduct of the culture we are in. To create change we need more than CSD, there needs to be open and continuous dialogue between students, educators, and administration. It seems as if each tries to gain an advantage over the other two, rather than co-operate for mutual benefit.

Originally Posted by FireDragoonX

too long, didn't read. just skimmed.
I don't see what the article is saying, or why.
students are lazy? it takes time to transition into university. that's really all I can comment on.

Irony!

I don't get the article's use of wikipedia as a scapegoat.

Originally Posted by samtheman89

I don't get the article's use of wikipedia as a scapegoat.

I don't think they're using it as a scapegoat so much as they're saying that many students consider it to be one-stop shopping for all their research needs. In other words, they never expand their research beyond Wikipedia and rely on it almost exclusively. You wouldn't have done this years ago with a paper encyclopedia at the university level, and you shouldn't do it with the digital equivalent, either.

It IS excellent as a springboard to further research, however - many articles have excellent citations at the bottom that link to the original source material (many of which came from academic journals), and THOSE are the sources students should be using instead.