this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2024
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I guess the question is how do you develop that capability if you are cheating or using a tool to do things for you? If I use GrubHub to order food or pay someone else to cook for me, does it make sense to say I can cook? After all, I am capable of acquiring cooked food even though I didn't actually do any of the work nor do I understand how to well, actually make food.
The how is relevant if you are trying to actually learn and develop skills, rather than simply getting something done.
Perhaps the piece of paper doesn't actually indicate a person's capabilities in part because enough students cheat to the point where getting a degree is meaningless. I do not object to that assessment.
Look, I'm not arguing that schooling is perfect. It's not. Far from it. All I am saying is that if your goal is to actually learn and grow in skill, development, and understanding, then there is no shortcut. You have to do the work.
I agree that the only way to get better is to do something over and over again. However, there is the more practical issue of there only being 24 hours in a day. I think students should be expected to work less over a longer period of time. I ground myself into dust in undergrad and I wish I just took an extra year of school. It was almost as bad in high school. I was waking up to go to school at 6:30 AM and then not finishing my homework until 10 PM or later.
I agree that the amount of work for many students can get quite out of hand and to be honest when I first started teaching, I was pretty guilty of having very work intensive courses.
That said, over the years, I've worked to streamline my courses to only have what I believe to be absolutely critical to learning and have added a lot of scaffolding and automated tests (for immediate results). In general, I try to have no busy work and make sure everything assignment is meaningful (as much as it can be anyway).
Additionally, because I understand that sometimes life happens, I have built-in facilities for automate extensions for assignments and even have a system for dropping certain homeworks.
This not to say that there isn't work in my classes... it's just that the work is intended to be relevant and reasonable, which most students seem to agree with these days.
I think this would be a great idea. Or rather, I think it would be great to allow students to learn at different rates... some may want to go faster, some may want or need to go slower.
I think the modern course-based education system is often too rigid and not flexible enough to adequately accommodate the needs of students with different experience levels, resources, or constraints. Something like a Montessori model would be a lot better IMHO.