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From my experience, it isn't subject-specific either. It's a more general thing along the lines of, "It can be terrifying to admit that I don't understand the b

From my experience, it isn't subject-specific either. It's a more general thing along the lines of, "It can be terrifying to admit that I don't understand the basics of something where the class and teacher seem to be making rapid progress." I have been in Chemistry classes where the teacher was solving problems with something like Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, and I was too petrified to admit that I hadn't understood what a partial pressure was, let alone some law involving it -- i.e., I was a "dumb" guy in a chemistry class. In my opinion, the one thing that can be done to stop this is stop demonizing people who don't know things and fully internalize the simple truth that everyone starts free of knowledge in this world.

cookiecaper 11y ago
It's really about providing the appropriate forums and helping people identify them. It's not really appropriate to waste class time repeatedly explaining concepts that 95% of the class already understands. If a student is struggling with this, they need remedial help, which can be obtained by contacting the professor directly during office hours/after class/however it works at your school, contacting a tutor, finding a study group or downgrading to a lower-level course, among other options. A stray "Wait, what does that mean again?" is no problem and actually probably helps a lot of people in the class who are too shy to speak up, but you can't let class time be monopolized by slow students. The slow students shouldn't be ashamed and should go get the help they need, they just need to be directed to the appropriate venue. The same is true in programming generally. We need to make it easy to identify the appropriate forum for the issue one is having and then we need to encourage them to seek resolution there. A way to improve SO would be to make it more obvious that the only questions that should be asked should be questions that are not Googleable, give a link to a "how to Google for programming help" guide, and when questions that violate this rule get added, include a direction to a helpful beginner's chat room or something along with the closure message.

cookiecaper 11y ago

It's really about providing the appropriate forums and helping people identify them. It's not really appropriate to waste class time repeatedly explaining concepts that 95% of the class already understands. If a student is struggling with this, they need remedial help, which can be obtained by contacting the professor directly during office hours/after class/however it works at your school, contacting a tutor, finding a study group or downgrading to a lower-level course, among other options. A stray "Wait, what does that mean again?" is no problem and actually probably helps a lot of people in the class who are too shy to speak up, but you can't let class time be monopolized by slow students. The slow students shouldn't be ashamed and should go get the help they need, they just need to be directed to the appropriate venue. The same is true in programming generally. We need to make it easy to identify the appropriate forum for the issue one is having and then we need to encourage them to seek resolution there. A way to improve SO would be to make it more obvious that the only questions that should be asked should be questions that are not Googleable, give a link to a "how to Google for programming help" guide, and when questions that violate this rule get added, include a direction to a helpful beginner's chat room or something along with the closure message.