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I just finished an online neuroanatomy class at SJSU this past week. This just goes to show how dumb the kids have become in California's school systems. I we

I just finished an online neuroanatomy class at SJSU this past week. This just goes to show how dumb the kids have become in California's school systems. I went back to school this past year to change careers into health care. I took a year of pre-reqs at a local community college, and then this class as a pre-req for my program. It is shockingly absurd how easy and dumbed down they make classes in California's lower echelon schools. They basically hand you everything you need to know on every test on a silver platter: you don't need to read the book; they give you a study guide and EXPLICITLY tell you what will and will not be on the test; they sometimes will outright give you the exam questions, and students STILL screw that up. I took an abnormal psychology class where the instructor gave EVERYONE the exam questions, and students STILL did not show up for the exam or got questions wrong. I was like, HOW THE HELL IS THIS EVEN HAPPENING???!?! I don't find this system of learning at fault. I find the students at fault. I think they should fail these kids as a costly lesson: study or lose out on $2000 bones. Bunch of nit wits.

stdbrouw 13y ago
> I took an abnormal psychology class where the instructor gave EVERYONE the exam questions, and students STILL did not show up for the exam or got questions wrong. This may not be what happened in your situation, but giving students every possible exam question – with the caveat that there's a ton of them and they have open-ended answers – is actually a really smart thing to do. Anyone who wants to pass the exam will spend an inordinate amount of time crafting the perfect answers (either by themselves or in groups, which is fine) and then memorizing those. You could even say it gamifies the learning process, as every day of study you're keen to get through as many questions as possible. It's almost like being asked to write a 100 mini-essays. You end up learning more, not less.
- mililani 13y ago
  I wish that were true. The questions required simple one word or one sentence answers. It was absurd.
rimantas 13y ago
I am not from US and I can be very wrong, but can it be that things like this are the result of "feel good, don't offend anybody" attitude?
- Lewisham 13y ago
  You're close, but think about incentives rather than offense. Think about it more from the perspective of the lecturer. What are your incentives here? An easy class will net you a high pass rate, good reviews from your students, easier office hours, less to prepare for lectures. A hard class will net you a low pass rate, bad reviews, irate students (and maybe parents) beating down your door, and takes a long time to prepare. The incentive structure for lecturers is weighed very heavily towards easy classes. The only way to counteract this is for the entire institution to take pride in being difficult and create a culture where students value that difficulty as much as the institution does. That takes a heck of a lot of effort and prestige: Harvard, Oxbridge, Stanford, these are the sort of schools that can make such things happen. SJSU? Not so much. This is not to say SJSU isn't a good school. It actually is a good school with good staff. It's just very hard to stop things going out of alignment.
  - mccr8 13y ago
    These same incentives apply at elite institutions. Apparently ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation#Harvard_University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation#Harvard_Univers... ) the average GPA at Harvard in 2004 was 3.48.

stdbrouw 13y ago

> I took an abnormal psychology class where the instructor gave EVERYONE the exam questions, and students STILL did not show up for the exam or got questions wrong. This may not be what happened in your situation, but giving students every possible exam question – with the caveat that there's a ton of them and they have open-ended answers – is actually a really smart thing to do. Anyone who wants to pass the exam will spend an inordinate amount of time crafting the perfect answers (either by themselves or in groups, which is fine) and then memorizing those. You could even say it gamifies the learning process, as every day of study you're keen to get through as many questions as possible. It's almost like being asked to write a 100 mini-essays. You end up learning more, not less.

mililani 13y ago
I wish that were true. The questions required simple one word or one sentence answers. It was absurd.

rimantas 13y ago

I am not from US and I can be very wrong, but can it be that things like this are the result of "feel good, don't offend anybody" attitude?

Lewisham 13y ago
You're close, but think about incentives rather than offense. Think about it more from the perspective of the lecturer. What are your incentives here? An easy class will net you a high pass rate, good reviews from your students, easier office hours, less to prepare for lectures. A hard class will net you a low pass rate, bad reviews, irate students (and maybe parents) beating down your door, and takes a long time to prepare. The incentive structure for lecturers is weighed very heavily towards easy classes. The only way to counteract this is for the entire institution to take pride in being difficult and create a culture where students value that difficulty as much as the institution does. That takes a heck of a lot of effort and prestige: Harvard, Oxbridge, Stanford, these are the sort of schools that can make such things happen. SJSU? Not so much. This is not to say SJSU isn't a good school. It actually is a good school with good staff. It's just very hard to stop things going out of alignment.
- mccr8 13y ago
  These same incentives apply at elite institutions. Apparently ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation#Harvard_University http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_inflation#Harvard_Univers... ) the average GPA at Harvard in 2004 was 3.48.