Lack of Common Sense among college professors?

[the debater]

This is something that is really discouraging me right now. College professors who have inefficient schedules for homework or classwork, or who don't do a good job of teaching their students. My english professor has this grading system for writing papers that goes like this:

1) Tuesday: Bring rough draft of paper to class. Trade your draft with a classmate. Grade each other's draft, and give out advice.

2) Thursday: Bring your revised rough draft to class, and turn it in for a final grade.

So yeah basically, we get only one chance to turn in our papers! It's horrible. To make matters worse, the amount of time my classmates and I get on Tuesday to go over each other's drafts is too short, at least in my opinion. Normally, to adjust to this predicament, I would go to my professor's office on Wednesday for help. But, there's one little problem. I actually have a class on Wednesday during my english professor's office hours, and thus, I can't make it to office hours to get help. So I'm basically screwed when it comes to these papers.

Plus, in my physics intermediate laboratory course, we jumped right into working with oscilloscopes and AC circuits too quickly. More than halfway into the semester, I still don't know what I'm doing, and the in-class notes are somewhat confusing, if I recall correctly. I strongly believe that there should be at least one lab session dedicated to a "tutorial" lab, where the students do nothing but play around with the oscilloscope, just to get a feel for it. But my class didn't really get that opportunity, so some of us are still pretty lost, especially those of us who never had any high-quality physics labs in high school.



Does anyone understand what I'm talking about here? Are there any fellow college students who feel as if their professors seem to lack common sense in teaching their students? I would normally talk to my professors and ask them to change their routines, but my english professor just basically ignored me when I did just that. So it seems too many professors are just not open at all to change. It is a generational issue or something? I just don't get it. :(

[Yuppie Grinder]

you see this is why i'm wise enough to not seek out post-secondary education

[Alexios]

My first year writing class was like this. I don't understand why they expect you to get anything out of peer-review considering all the other students are just as lost as you are. It makes their job a lot easier since all they have to do is show up for class and grade a paper once every two weeks. My only advice would be to see if the college provides free writing tutors.

[the debater]

My first year writing class was like this. I don't understand why they expect you to get anything out of peer-review considering all the other students are just as lost as you are. It makes their job a lot easier since all they have to do is show up for class and grade a paper once every two weeks. My only advice would be to see if the college provides free writing tutors.

Whew, well, at least I'm not the only one. Better yet than seeing a tutor, maybe the professor could hire a teaching assistant whose specific job is to go over my class's papers. Ideally, the TA would be able to collaborate with my professor and would be able to fully understand the parameters of each and every paper.

I wonder, what would Marx's position have been on this issue? :cool:

[Lobotomy]

a lot of college professors don't actually give a shit about teaching undergrad students, and only became professors for the prestige/to be a part of the academic community.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Some people have just been teaching too long, IMO. They somehow forgot to retire and are just coasting off their tenure, going through the motions and not giving a shit. That was the case in one class in particular I had, where the dude had been teaching since the 70's.

Most of my classes as of late have been pretty good though, actually, you can tell that the teachers actually like their subjects and like imparting their knowledge unto other people. Although the teacher in my English class is probably as old as I am and that's kind of weird.

[Red Commissar]

I think with many professors it might be a consequence of having learned a lot about their subject area and conversely not much about actually teaching (finer points of pedagogy). Combine that with their own busy schedule, especially if they have to run a lab of their own if they are in science or engineering, and this can mean many of them rely on the department heads to give them lesson plans, material, and ideas.

The opposite problem exists in primary and to a lesser extent secondary (at least where I am), where teachers often have pedagogy training but very basic if any in their subject area.

[Ceallach_the_Witch]

most of my lecturers (save one but it turns out his son had died so it's fairly forgivable) have been pretty reliable and have fairly sensible timetables for coursework so maybe I'm lucky.