4 ms·

The two of you must have had a different experience than I. At least for my classes, fundamental stuff that hasn't changed in decades was taught in big lecture

by ip26 8y ago

The two of you must have had a different experience than I. At least for my classes, fundamental stuff that hasn't changed in decades was taught in big lecture halls- single variable calculus, physics & chemistry 101, etc. Then as you advanced in your discipline, class sizes shrunk, all the way down to 5-10 pupils in some of the most specialized classes, which was where the close interaction with the teacher was most valuable. Most undergraduate students aren't ready to participate in research. Of those that are intellectually prepared, few have the grit/persistence required. More indirectly, few have any kind of serious investment in the research. In college I volunteered to help on a plant study. I was assigned to meticulously clean dirt from dried plant roots and weight each plant. For like four hours at a time. Thousands of specimens. It needed to be done, but I had no investment in the project aside from general excitement, so I just didn't care enough to suffer the drudgery week after week.

Izkata 8y ago
Your experience matches mine in CS; the large lecture halls were only used by a handful of early required courses that bottlenecked the students, a basic prerequisite for a variety of other courses all done in smaller classrooms.
throwawayjava 8y ago
Yes, CS is a completely different beast for two reasons. First, our intro-level courses are fairly stable but nowhere near as stable as Calculus or Physics intros. If you don't change your intro for a decade, it starts to show. Whereas I'm pretty sure my children will take more-or-less the same calc course that I took, and my calc book was pretty indistinguishable from my mother's. To really emphasize the point, my mother's CS course was done on punch cards... And it's not just content. Student preparedness has been changing a lot lately. We reached "peak physics/calc" in high schools a long time ago (hell, my grandpa took calc in high school). But students showing up at university knowing how to program is relatively new for most institutions. Third, enrollments have been increasing exponentially (yus, really exponentially) year over year (yes, every year) for close to a decade now (yes, a decade). So. Yes, CS ed is very different from the more stable STEM fields, especially recently.

by ip26 8y ago

Izkata 8y ago

Your experience matches mine in CS; the large lecture halls were only used by a handful of early required courses that bottlenecked the students, a basic prerequisite for a variety of other courses all done in smaller classrooms.

throwawayjava 8y ago

Yes, CS is a completely different beast for two reasons. First, our intro-level courses are fairly stable but nowhere near as stable as Calculus or Physics intros. If you don't change your intro for a decade, it starts to show. Whereas I'm pretty sure my children will take more-or-less the same calc course that I took, and my calc book was pretty indistinguishable from my mother's. To really emphasize the point, my mother's CS course was done on punch cards... And it's not just content. Student preparedness has been changing a lot lately. We reached "peak physics/calc" in high schools a long time ago (hell, my grandpa took calc in high school). But students showing up at university knowing how to program is relatively new for most institutions. Third, enrollments have been increasing exponentially (yus, really exponentially) year over year (yes, every year) for close to a decade now (yes, a decade). So. Yes, CS ed is very different from the more stable STEM fields, especially recently.