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Thank goodness I went to a traditional uni. in the UK in the mid 70s. In the physics department there were no classes, only lectures and tutorials. Lectures w

Thank goodness I went to a traditional uni. in the UK in the mid 70s. In the physics department there were no classes, only lectures and tutorials. Lectures were optional. and the class of your degree depended only on the finals and final year dissertation/project report. We were able to arrange our own working patterns and were responsible enough to do it.

gundmc 4y ago
> In the physics department there were no classes, only lectures and tutorials. In my experience in the US, "class" is used interchangeably with lecture. Although some subjects will also have labs, small group discussion, or recitation. I'm not sure what distinction you have in the UK.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  Ah, two countries divided by a common language, or something like that! I don't know how it's done in UK universities now either, but I do know that many (most?) of the less prestigious universities have switched to modular courses where it is the accumulation of points that counts rather than performance in finals. I always think of classes as a kind of compromise between a lecture which is a large number of students and no individual contact between the lecturer and student except for the occasional clarifying question and a tutorial which is a very focussed meeting with a tutor and typically four or five students where exercise that were issued the previous week are discussed in detail. Classes always seem to me to be the worst of both worlds: big enough for weak students to hide in (and thus fail to get the help they need) but not big enough to get an economy of scale.