Last night marked the end of my semester. For those of you who don’t know, I teach a course every semester at the University of the Incarnate Word here in San Antonio. This semester’s topic was Linux/UNIX.
This was a tough semester for me. I’m getting married in September, trying to buy a house and was traveling a lot for work. I definitely understand that I wasn’t able to put the amount of prep time into this class that I wanted to, but again I was fairly disappointed with the effort extended by the students.
I think that I just have to be a jerk in the future. I mean, these are all suppose to be highly motivated students, private college, students looking to go the extra mile. Instead they’re just students!!!! Ok, maybe I have high expectations, and I know that I could be a bit lazy, but I still don’t remember pulling half the stuff that these students pull. I knew better than to try and turn something in 3 weeks late and expect full credit.
I’ve noticed that the students are quite bold. More than willing to tell me when I’m wrong and mocking me if I made a mistake – that was the part that really hacked me off. So I gave a review, and I had a mistake in it. On the test, they (All the students) parroted back the mistake on a multiple choice question that was from the review. On the test, they had to write some code. They got the code sections right! They parroted the multiple choice answer that was wrong and yet could answer the questions.
I'm obviously not the only having issues with students feeling entitled - I like the entry below from a law professor
http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2006/10/disciplining_th.html
Maybe its just a case of students will be students, but I again had another frustrating semester. Maybe teaching is too much for me right now in my life.
I teach management of technology next semester. I want it to be a really good course. I’m thinking of really using group work and articles. I want them to prove that they are ready to graduate. We’ll see.
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2 comments:
Do you think it is a question of how focused students are on their goals?
I think there are several factors.
1) I think you are onto something with the goals. The school is getting better about placing students in internships and that does help. The students I have that have been in internships and are really excited about IT seem much more driven.
2) I think another factor is their other classes. I only teach one class and I know the other professor (small department) can be pretty lenient. Actually, I've heard that he's taking some cues from me and has started being a little more strict which is much needed.
3) I think that some of these students just don't really know what the real working world is like. Some of them don't work, only go to school and some of them have never worked before.
Overall, I think its just a matter of me putting the time in to make sure the class is properly prepared and then go from there.
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