"I decided we would do an oral exam* because it's a great way to see if people have actually learned anything from my course and aren't just parroting notes. Because I can ask them to elaborate on their answers."
Yeah and it's also a great way to get otherwise good students to go blank because it isn't possible to absorb every bit of complex information you spent 12 weeks rushing through, Barbara.
This "gotcha" style teaching fucking pisses me off. There is no time in the real world people are not going to be able to look up their notes. Fuck, half the time I'll ask a professor something and they'll be like "I'll have to look that up later and get back to you." Why? BECAUSE THEY'RE HUMAN AND THATS HOW BRAINS ARE.
This type of teaching only favours students that already had experience with the subject beforehand and freaks with amazing memories. This kind of understanding of the material only comes from experience and repetition, something that the traditional 12 weeks of rushed lectures/labs that discard each topic quickly to fit all of them in don't do.
I fucking hate how much I am going into debt to be taught only the vaguest concepts but doing most of the teaching myself in my own time. Education under capitalism is a joke.
*An oral exam is an exam where instead of answering questions in a quiet room on paper, you have to answer questions on a live video call with your instructor.
I'd like to consider myself a freak with an amazing memory but, yeah, that on the spot pressure/call-outs were especially rough in graduate-level sciences. I get the whole in-situ "determine the limits of your knowledge on the subject" but damn if it didn't feel like the primary investigator of the lab I was in just saw me as a lab rat to poke and prod for his curiosity when I was presenting research updates.
Also not fun to learn I probably had test anxiety for my entire scholastic career & never had accomodations suggested to me until I was nearly done with my coursework :/
username etc etc
I don't get it?
this, along with your comment, makes your username funny/relevant to the post
Gotcha, I didn't consider the video call aspect cause my grillings were in front of 10 of my peers where I had to draw out the electron pushing mechanism for how the molecule I was researching produces hydrogen peroxide.
I did get it right after like 20 excruciating minutes standing in front of the whiteboard reasoning out the mechanism, but it was never previously taught to me by my PI.
The livestreamed collapse name is based on some old meme about how the future sucks & the only cool technology we have is some pocket screen to doomscroll the collapse of society & climate with.