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My last writing professor didn't have a Wikipedia page, but he was fantastic, and taught with an approach on iteration: He allowed us to submit our assignments

My last writing professor didn't have a Wikipedia page, but he was fantastic, and taught with an approach on iteration: He allowed us to submit our assignments for review, and then let us take back the paper to work on it more, and we could continue to do that until it was an A paper. This essentially guaranteed everyone an A in the course, if they did the work. But the focus was on getting you to improve your writing, not to fail people out. My opinion is that this is how writing should be taught, rather than giving you one shot to get a grade. (I also once had a writing teacher who gave me a zero for a paper because it wasn't submitted in a manilla folder, and no late submissions were accepted, so I had no chance to fix it.)

ak39 7y ago
Your comment made my day. That professor is one incredibly great teacher! Imagine indeed if all teaching was done like this. Standardised testing and reliance of testing memory is probably robbing generations of gifted students.
WalterBright 7y ago
My father was a professor of business finance for a few years. He wrote on the board the first lecture that if any of the following words were misspelled, it was an automatic F: 1. business 2. entrepreneur 3. your, you're 4. its, it's 5. they're, their, there Also, for the term paper due at the end of the semester, for every day the paper was late, one grade would be subtracted. I.e. 2 days late meant a B would become a D. No excuses would be accepted, as they had the entire term to get it done. The first time he taught this course, half the students were a day or more late. He followed through. The next year, word apparently got out as he only received one late paper. His point was that in business, excuses were not acceptable.
- throwawaycorona 7y ago
  This is a disservice to all students. In business excuses is the standard MO. Look at all the business men and women out there. It's about failing quickly and often. I hope he changed his tune later in life because he was hurting so many students for no good reason.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  The example I gave was of a terrible writing professor: I learned no writing in her course. Because when her arbitrary requirement that the paper be in a manilla folder cost me two letter grades for the whole course, I dropped her course, rather than accept a C as my highest achievable grade. It's the sole withdrawal in my entire transcript. Furthermore, I never got any legitimate feedback on the paper, which I put a lot of time and thought into. It's important to teach the values of timeliness and attention to detail, but you aren't teaching anything if you're not giving students a way to recover and improve.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    There was a lot of skepticism with this from the students at first. They didn't take it seriously. But after the first semester, the students took a liking to "no bullshit, no excuses" and thrived on it. His classes swelled with students. If you're in business, and write business letters misspelling "business", you aren't going to be taken seriously (though you likely won't realize why the rejections are happening). If you graduate from a business school and can't spell "business" then the school's reputation suffers, too. In college, you're an adult. The requirement that "business" be spelled correctly is made quite clear. No excuses, no bullshit.
    - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
      But while the second year, the "word had gotten out", how many students may he have seriously harmed the careers of to make his "point" in the meantime? Would a subtler corrective action been equally effective at outputting successful students without harming others?
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        I more or less failed my freshman classes in college, got the kick in the pants I badly needed, straightened out, and wound up graduating with honors. Caltech had a famous class, EE91 lab. The rules were simple. The first week, you produced a spec for a project. If the spec was approved, you had the whole semester to get it done. If the project met the spec, you got an A. If you didn't, you got an F. Again, no excuses, no bullshit. It was a very popular class. I took it too, was very careful to spec something I could accomplish and got it done well in advance. These students aren't in kindergarten. They're adults in college. And getting your project designed, built, and debugged is a LOT harder than remembering how to spell "business".
dvnguyen 7y ago
Thank you for the story. If I have a chance teaching coding, I'll definitely steal that assignment.

ak39 7y ago

Your comment made my day. That professor is one incredibly great teacher! Imagine indeed if all teaching was done like this. Standardised testing and reliance of testing memory is probably robbing generations of gifted students.

WalterBright 7y ago

My father was a professor of business finance for a few years. He wrote on the board the first lecture that if any of the following words were misspelled, it was an automatic F: 1. business 2. entrepreneur 3. your, you're 4. its, it's 5. they're, their, there Also, for the term paper due at the end of the semester, for every day the paper was late, one grade would be subtracted. I.e. 2 days late meant a B would become a D. No excuses would be accepted, as they had the entire term to get it done. The first time he taught this course, half the students were a day or more late. He followed through. The next year, word apparently got out as he only received one late paper. His point was that in business, excuses were not acceptable.

throwawaycorona 7y ago
This is a disservice to all students. In business excuses is the standard MO. Look at all the business men and women out there. It's about failing quickly and often. I hope he changed his tune later in life because he was hurting so many students for no good reason.
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
The example I gave was of a terrible writing professor: I learned no writing in her course. Because when her arbitrary requirement that the paper be in a manilla folder cost me two letter grades for the whole course, I dropped her course, rather than accept a C as my highest achievable grade. It's the sole withdrawal in my entire transcript. Furthermore, I never got any legitimate feedback on the paper, which I put a lot of time and thought into. It's important to teach the values of timeliness and attention to detail, but you aren't teaching anything if you're not giving students a way to recover and improve.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  There was a lot of skepticism with this from the students at first. They didn't take it seriously. But after the first semester, the students took a liking to "no bullshit, no excuses" and thrived on it. His classes swelled with students. If you're in business, and write business letters misspelling "business", you aren't going to be taken seriously (though you likely won't realize why the rejections are happening). If you graduate from a business school and can't spell "business" then the school's reputation suffers, too. In college, you're an adult. The requirement that "business" be spelled correctly is made quite clear. No excuses, no bullshit.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    But while the second year, the "word had gotten out", how many students may he have seriously harmed the careers of to make his "point" in the meantime? Would a subtler corrective action been equally effective at outputting successful students without harming others?
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      I more or less failed my freshman classes in college, got the kick in the pants I badly needed, straightened out, and wound up graduating with honors. Caltech had a famous class, EE91 lab. The rules were simple. The first week, you produced a spec for a project. If the spec was approved, you had the whole semester to get it done. If the project met the spec, you got an A. If you didn't, you got an F. Again, no excuses, no bullshit. It was a very popular class. I took it too, was very careful to spec something I could accomplish and got it done well in advance. These students aren't in kindergarten. They're adults in college. And getting your project designed, built, and debugged is a LOT harder than remembering how to spell "business".

dvnguyen 7y ago

Thank you for the story. If I have a chance teaching coding, I'll definitely steal that assignment.