3 ms·
One of the great successes of the university I attended were several weekly hour-long two-on-one sessions (two students, one supervisor) with either a professor
by Osmium 14y ago
One of the great successes of the university I attended were several weekly hour-long two-on-one sessions (two students, one supervisor) with either a professor or a grad student, talking about that week's lectures.
The regularity and length of them allowed a relationship to be built up over the course of the semester, and you could be damn sure you'd learn a lot more from that dialogue than you ever would from sitting bleary-eyed in the lecture hall at 9am.
- mvc 14y agoI've heard that's what you get at Oxford. Seems great but as a mere mortal who attended a slightly less prestigious institution, I had to make do with tutorial groups where 18-20 people would cram into a room designed for 12.
- Osmium 14y agoYou get it at a few places. It has its downsides though: expensive for the university, and a big time suck for the supervisors, but honestly it's a really successful system. I'd go as far to say that if there's any one thing an institution can do to improve the abilities of their students, it would be to adopt a system like that. I'm not sure how students can be expected to learn from a one-sided teaching system. We're not photocopiers. There's so much value from a meaningful, extended dialogue between a student and a "mentor." Unfortunately, a lot of people have to wait until postgraduate programs to get that, and even then may not. A lot of US institutions have office hours which could offer much of the same if students knew to take advantage of them in the right way.