8 ms·

My father who is a college professor in his late 70s is starting to do this in the US as he found less correlation between a written assignment and students act

My father who is a college professor in his late 70s is starting to do this in the US as he found less correlation between a written assignment and students actually knowing what the material was. Forcing a presentation makes it harder for them to cheat.

n4r9 4y ago
On the other hand, it risks privileging students that are extroverted and skilled at using rhetoric to disguise ignorance.
- mannykannot 4y ago
  If students are successful at using rhetoric to disguise their ignorance from their teachers, we need to be looking into how teachers are selected, trained and compensated.
- staticautomatic 4y ago
  Only so long as the teacher can’t tell the difference.
- mountainb 4y ago
  Just like real life. When schools had more prestige, they also relied more heavily on intensive oral examinations. Some of the most prestigious schools in the world still rely heavily on intense oral examinations. Universities can also crib from how law school exams work if they want to still do written examinations.
  - foobarian 4y ago
    IIRC Harvard Business School tracks attendance, students have name plates, and get cold called.
    - criddell 4y ago
      I’m not sure you can do the cold calling thing at a public school. Everybody at HBS signed up for that, public school kids did not.
      - frostburg 4y ago
        Every school (and many university professors) does "cold calls" in Italy, as far as I know; scheduled oral examinations are the exception, not the rule, before university. Not knowing the answer at a random university lecture doesn't generally impact your grades, however, because in most cases those are 100% based on a final (often oral) exam. I wouldn't argue that it is a system without issues but it's still better than rote essay writing.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- account42 4y ago
  On the other hand, oral exams can be less stressful as long as the examiner is friendly as there can be opportunity to correct mistakes where you do know the subject matter but just had a brainfart. You also get a chance to spend more times / show off on the parts you do know better. I am very much not an extroverted person and in University written exams were almost always more stressful than oral ones as they try to cram as much as possible into into the time available or were too easy (so at the top end grading becomes very nitpicky) or too hard (which can be demoralizing if no one even manages to complete all questions). Oral exams have much more flexibility to adapt to the individual here.
  - gyy52380 4y ago
    I think this really depends on your specific university. At my university in Eastern Europe the teachers were bitter and overworked, and that really showed during oral examinations. Because of the high number students enrolled in the classes, almost all oral exams also featured a written component, very similar to a regular exam. Because of the unstructured nature of oral exams, you would have an arbitrary amount of time to solve it. After that the professor would make you elaborate some of your anwsers, or not, depending how he felt like. The students who performed best were indeed very extroverted and able to convince the professor that they actually meant something other than what they wrote. The professors also used these exams to give you an arbitrary grade for the subject, depending exclusively on your oral exam "performance". I remember having a high 90% grade in the written part of my Advanced Electronics class. The professor didn't feel I was confident enough in my answers during the oral exam, so he passed me with 1/30 points even though I answered most of the answers correct, thus bringing my grade down to barely a C. Oral exams sound great in theory but in practice they always felt somewhere between unfair and traumatizing. I much prefer the objectivity of written exams.
  - gjulianm 4y ago
    > On the other hand, oral exams can be less stressful as long as the examiner is friendly as there can be opportunity to correct mistakes where you do know the subject matter but just had a brainfart. You also get a chance to spend more times / show off on the parts you do know better. I don't agree with this at all. Even with a friendly examiner, they have far more presence than in a written exam. You are presenting and being actively judged, unlike in a written exam. Also, you'll spend more time on the parts you know worse precisely because you'll be slower, make more mistakes... > they try to cram as much as possible into into the time available or were too easy (so at the top end grading becomes very nitpicky) or too hard (which can be demoralizing if no one even manages to complete all questions). Oral exams have much more flexibility to adapt to the individual here. Badly adapted exams are a feature of the teacher, not the type of exam. If anything, oral exams are worse for more complex content, as they tend to be shorter in time.
- prepend 4y ago
  I don’t think extrovert is necessarily correlated with skilled speaker. I know lots of extroverts who are terrified of speaking in front of others and introverts who love it. I think this is easier for people who are good at speaking but I think exercises like this will develop the skill.
  - fullstop 4y ago
    > I don’t think extrovert is necessarily correlated with skilled speaker. My oldest is quite introverted but can somehow flip a switch internally and is excellent at public speaking. She's won a number of speech competitions and is far better at this sort of thing than I will ever be.
    - Auracle 4y ago
      I’m quite introverted and wasn’t at the level that your daughter is, but apparently did well enough at an impromptu speech in college that I had a very cute girl from the class look me up and add me on Facebook. I still absolutely hated doing it though.
      - fullstop 4y ago
        Please tell me that you made a move.
        Auracle 4y ago
        I was already dating someone. Oddly enough she married someone from my hometown. The college was 3.5 hours away from that town of ~2,000 and he didn't go to our college. If I ever bump in to one of them I'm going to need to ask how that came about.
        fullstop 4y ago
        I'll be honest I wanted to hear that the two of you met up, got married, and had a bunch of babies together. I guess your answer will have to do!
- sethammons 4y ago
  I loved the style of book report that we had with a high school English teacher. While the class was otherwise busy, the teacher called you up to report on your self-chosen-from-a-list book. The teacher opened the book to a page and would read a passage and ask questions about it like what are they talking about, what happened right before and after this. After a couple of passages at different spots, you got your grade. You are not feigning anyone familiar with the material.
- sroussey 4y ago
  Does not work with math and engineering. I had a very difficult electrical engineering course and the final was solving a problem on a whiteboard in the teachers office.
  - n4r9 4y ago
    Either there is no discussion with the teacher, in which case it might as well be done on paper at a desk; or there is discussion with the teacher, in which case students with more advanced social skills are often able to elicit more help without betraying that they lack knowledge or intelligence.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  good. youre right i got through a lot of presentations easier than other classmates but thats cause learning to present really well is an essential skill. students should be skilled at using rhetoric so i see that as a feature not a bug. everything else in life will reward being well spoken and outgoing, why shouldnt school as well?
  - gjulianm 4y ago
    School should be testing you for knowledge and ability in a certain subject, as objectively as possible. Unless you're in a public speaking course, your public speaking skills should have as little bearing on your grades as possible.
    - collegeburner 4y ago
      no. every course should incorporate significant written and oral components because if you cannot adequately synthesize and communicate the information you're meant to be learning, that course is functionally useless. one of the important things i have learned is nobody cares what you know unless you can communicate it well.
      - gjulianm 4y ago
        Teachers have to prepare their classes because, despite knowing the subject well, actually talking about something requires preparation. It’s unreasonable to ask students to not only study and understand the material, but also prepare all the course knowledge enough to be able to communicate that well when asked about a random part, and do that for all the classes they might have. If you wanted to give them time to prepare a specific topic it wouldn’t be an exam anymore. Synthesizing and communicating properly a subject is the work of a teacher. It takes practice, deep knowledge of the subject, extra materials. You’re asking students to both be students and teachers of all the material for a single exam.
        collegeburner 4y ago
- aqsalose 4y ago
  Sure, extroverted students have some advantage. On the other hand, extroverted people have similar advantage in the real life. I myself am quite happy for every lesson where I was pushed to practice people-facing skills (presentations, demonstrations, etc). Even an introverted person can learn to talk about topic knowledgeably if they know it -- which often is valuable confidence-building experience to have. Despite the introversion, one can do it! If the professor - lecturer administering the test is any good, empty rhetoric won't help too much. If they are lazy, students one can try to give "answers" without showing what they don't know in written exams, too.
- juve1996 4y ago
  Probably not true at the university level - they'll detect bullshit a mile away.

n4r9 4y ago

On the other hand, it risks privileging students that are extroverted and skilled at using rhetoric to disguise ignorance.

mannykannot 4y ago
If students are successful at using rhetoric to disguise their ignorance from their teachers, we need to be looking into how teachers are selected, trained and compensated.
staticautomatic 4y ago
Only so long as the teacher can’t tell the difference.
mountainb 4y ago
Just like real life. When schools had more prestige, they also relied more heavily on intensive oral examinations. Some of the most prestigious schools in the world still rely heavily on intense oral examinations. Universities can also crib from how law school exams work if they want to still do written examinations.
- foobarian 4y ago
  IIRC Harvard Business School tracks attendance, students have name plates, and get cold called.
  - criddell 4y ago
    I’m not sure you can do the cold calling thing at a public school. Everybody at HBS signed up for that, public school kids did not.
    - frostburg 4y ago
      Every school (and many university professors) does "cold calls" in Italy, as far as I know; scheduled oral examinations are the exception, not the rule, before university. Not knowing the answer at a random university lecture doesn't generally impact your grades, however, because in most cases those are 100% based on a final (often oral) exam. I wouldn't argue that it is a system without issues but it's still better than rote essay writing.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
account42 4y ago
On the other hand, oral exams can be less stressful as long as the examiner is friendly as there can be opportunity to correct mistakes where you do know the subject matter but just had a brainfart. You also get a chance to spend more times / show off on the parts you do know better. I am very much not an extroverted person and in University written exams were almost always more stressful than oral ones as they try to cram as much as possible into into the time available or were too easy (so at the top end grading becomes very nitpicky) or too hard (which can be demoralizing if no one even manages to complete all questions). Oral exams have much more flexibility to adapt to the individual here.
- gyy52380 4y ago
  I think this really depends on your specific university. At my university in Eastern Europe the teachers were bitter and overworked, and that really showed during oral examinations. Because of the high number students enrolled in the classes, almost all oral exams also featured a written component, very similar to a regular exam. Because of the unstructured nature of oral exams, you would have an arbitrary amount of time to solve it. After that the professor would make you elaborate some of your anwsers, or not, depending how he felt like. The students who performed best were indeed very extroverted and able to convince the professor that they actually meant something other than what they wrote. The professors also used these exams to give you an arbitrary grade for the subject, depending exclusively on your oral exam "performance". I remember having a high 90% grade in the written part of my Advanced Electronics class. The professor didn't feel I was confident enough in my answers during the oral exam, so he passed me with 1/30 points even though I answered most of the answers correct, thus bringing my grade down to barely a C. Oral exams sound great in theory but in practice they always felt somewhere between unfair and traumatizing. I much prefer the objectivity of written exams.
- gjulianm 4y ago
  > On the other hand, oral exams can be less stressful as long as the examiner is friendly as there can be opportunity to correct mistakes where you do know the subject matter but just had a brainfart. You also get a chance to spend more times / show off on the parts you do know better. I don't agree with this at all. Even with a friendly examiner, they have far more presence than in a written exam. You are presenting and being actively judged, unlike in a written exam. Also, you'll spend more time on the parts you know worse precisely because you'll be slower, make more mistakes... > they try to cram as much as possible into into the time available or were too easy (so at the top end grading becomes very nitpicky) or too hard (which can be demoralizing if no one even manages to complete all questions). Oral exams have much more flexibility to adapt to the individual here. Badly adapted exams are a feature of the teacher, not the type of exam. If anything, oral exams are worse for more complex content, as they tend to be shorter in time.
prepend 4y ago
I don’t think extrovert is necessarily correlated with skilled speaker. I know lots of extroverts who are terrified of speaking in front of others and introverts who love it. I think this is easier for people who are good at speaking but I think exercises like this will develop the skill.
- fullstop 4y ago
  > I don’t think extrovert is necessarily correlated with skilled speaker. My oldest is quite introverted but can somehow flip a switch internally and is excellent at public speaking. She's won a number of speech competitions and is far better at this sort of thing than I will ever be.
  - Auracle 4y ago
    I’m quite introverted and wasn’t at the level that your daughter is, but apparently did well enough at an impromptu speech in college that I had a very cute girl from the class look me up and add me on Facebook. I still absolutely hated doing it though.
    - fullstop 4y ago
      Please tell me that you made a move.
      - Auracle 4y ago
        I was already dating someone. Oddly enough she married someone from my hometown. The college was 3.5 hours away from that town of ~2,000 and he didn't go to our college. If I ever bump in to one of them I'm going to need to ask how that came about.
        fullstop 4y ago
        I'll be honest I wanted to hear that the two of you met up, got married, and had a bunch of babies together. I guess your answer will have to do!
sethammons 4y ago
I loved the style of book report that we had with a high school English teacher. While the class was otherwise busy, the teacher called you up to report on your self-chosen-from-a-list book. The teacher opened the book to a page and would read a passage and ask questions about it like what are they talking about, what happened right before and after this. After a couple of passages at different spots, you got your grade. You are not feigning anyone familiar with the material.
sroussey 4y ago
Does not work with math and engineering. I had a very difficult electrical engineering course and the final was solving a problem on a whiteboard in the teachers office.
- n4r9 4y ago
  Either there is no discussion with the teacher, in which case it might as well be done on paper at a desk; or there is discussion with the teacher, in which case students with more advanced social skills are often able to elicit more help without betraying that they lack knowledge or intelligence.
collegeburner 4y ago
good. youre right i got through a lot of presentations easier than other classmates but thats cause learning to present really well is an essential skill. students should be skilled at using rhetoric so i see that as a feature not a bug. everything else in life will reward being well spoken and outgoing, why shouldnt school as well?
- gjulianm 4y ago
  School should be testing you for knowledge and ability in a certain subject, as objectively as possible. Unless you're in a public speaking course, your public speaking skills should have as little bearing on your grades as possible.
  - collegeburner 4y ago
    no. every course should incorporate significant written and oral components because if you cannot adequately synthesize and communicate the information you're meant to be learning, that course is functionally useless. one of the important things i have learned is nobody cares what you know unless you can communicate it well.
    - gjulianm 4y ago
      Teachers have to prepare their classes because, despite knowing the subject well, actually talking about something requires preparation. It’s unreasonable to ask students to not only study and understand the material, but also prepare all the course knowledge enough to be able to communicate that well when asked about a random part, and do that for all the classes they might have. If you wanted to give them time to prepare a specific topic it wouldn’t be an exam anymore. Synthesizing and communicating properly a subject is the work of a teacher. It takes practice, deep knowledge of the subject, extra materials. You’re asking students to both be students and teachers of all the material for a single exam.
      - collegeburner 4y ago
aqsalose 4y ago
Sure, extroverted students have some advantage. On the other hand, extroverted people have similar advantage in the real life. I myself am quite happy for every lesson where I was pushed to practice people-facing skills (presentations, demonstrations, etc). Even an introverted person can learn to talk about topic knowledgeably if they know it -- which often is valuable confidence-building experience to have. Despite the introversion, one can do it! If the professor - lecturer administering the test is any good, empty rhetoric won't help too much. If they are lazy, students one can try to give "answers" without showing what they don't know in written exams, too.
juve1996 4y ago
Probably not true at the university level - they'll detect bullshit a mile away.