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That’s unfortunate. I got a BA, and while I often question its value, one thing I do think college taught me was how to distill complex ideas, integrate them, a

That’s unfortunate. I got a BA, and while I often question its value, one thing I do think college taught me was how to distill complex ideas, integrate them, and then form my own complex ideas from what I’d learned. I’d only really fully grok the concepts I was writing about (and the ideas I was trying to convey) after hours of trying to splice things together, staring at my screen, and rewriting and reformulating. Blue book exams have their place, but relying on them to the exclusion of long form essays deprives students of the chance to really sit with their ideas. (I acknowledge that this is a tough situation for the teachers and that many students are going to bullshit their way through with AI slop if given the chance.)

abeppu 2y ago
> relying on them to the exclusion of long form essays deprives students of the chance to really sit with their ideas I think the crux of the issue is that professors want students to do the deep thinking you're talking about, but they know that if they base the course around writing papers, a bunch of the students aren't actually likely to do it. But if you tell students that when they do the reading they should be asking themselves "What would the author of reading A think of reading B?" "Which of C or D do you find more convincing and why?" "How would you frame T in terms of S?", "What evidence does W cherry-pick an what do they ignore, and why?", and they know for some material the class discussion will look like that, and they'll be asked questions which both demand recall and synthesis in the blue book essays ... can they be nudged to do some of the thinking you're talking about before they see the specific question? Perhaps even using writing at the computer as a tool (but not necessarily as an output)?
wnissen 2y ago
Yep. What I tell my kid is, "The purpose of homework isn't to get correct answers, any more than the purpose of weightlifting is higher weights."

abeppu 2y ago

> relying on them to the exclusion of long form essays deprives students of the chance to really sit with their ideas I think the crux of the issue is that professors want students to do the deep thinking you're talking about, but they know that if they base the course around writing papers, a bunch of the students aren't actually likely to do it. But if you tell students that when they do the reading they should be asking themselves "What would the author of reading A think of reading B?" "Which of C or D do you find more convincing and why?" "How would you frame T in terms of S?", "What evidence does W cherry-pick an what do they ignore, and why?", and they know for some material the class discussion will look like that, and they'll be asked questions which both demand recall and synthesis in the blue book essays ... can they be nudged to do some of the thinking you're talking about before they see the specific question? Perhaps even using writing at the computer as a tool (but not necessarily as an output)?

wnissen 2y ago

Yep. What I tell my kid is, "The purpose of homework isn't to get correct answers, any more than the purpose of weightlifting is higher weights."