Timeline for How do I identify and deal with waste-of-time assignments?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 26, 2023 at 20:58 | comment | added | Buffy | Let me point out, importantly, that people learn in different ways. What might be a waste of time to one person might be essential to another. Early career academics often forget that students are not like themselves and have different learning styles and different goals. If you go on, don't forget that if you want to be a successful teacher. | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 20:40 | answer | added | user176372 | timeline score: 2 | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 18:19 | comment | added | John Moser | Maximization is a goal that requires eliminating things that aren't useful; but yes, I assume the optimization problem in general is unsolvable and has the same issues as seeking Pareto optimality (i.e. local vs. global maximum is not obvious). Perhaps that was poorly worded. | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 18:06 | comment | added | user176372 | I'd note that you have asked two different questions: First you ask how to ascertain whether particular assignments are helping students learn. Then you ask how to determine whether any given assignments maximize student learning. These are probably different questions, and "maximizes" is maybe ill-specified to the point of uselessness. | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 17:55 | comment | added | fedja | "common sense justifies anything you want to think is right" That depends on one's definition of "common sense". Mine is "personal observations resulting from reasonably extensive trial and error". It is subjective, but you will, probably, agree that what works for some teacher with some class may dramatically fail for another teacher or another class. I never assign extensive compulsory homework, BTW, just give regular in class quizzes letting the students know what types of problems will be there in advance and allowing them to choose how much/little practice they need to prepare for them. | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 17:42 | comment | added | John Moser | The problem with that is common sense justifies anything you want to think is right. For example, in grade school (NOT college), it's common sense that homework is important…except many teachers have found that the students learn best if they eliminate homework and take a different approach to teaching. Seems homework in grade school is almost if not entirely worthless. This is used heavily to manipulate people in politics (in this case you could just argue that homework is obviously important, everyone knows that, and people would buy it because it's common sense). | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 3:21 | answer | added | Wolfgang Bangerth | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 26, 2023 at 0:56 | comment | added | fedja | All I can say is "follow your common sense". As instructors, we are all prone to errors and under/overestimating the usefulness and difficulty of the assignments we give to the students. Try to diversify a bit combining routine exercises with more challenging assignments and give the students some leeway like having the maximum possible score of 120 with 100 points officially enough for an A. There is no "size that fits all" in homework: what is a total waste of time for one student may be very useful for another and vice versa. Just play it by the ear and monitor the outcomes. | |
| S Nov 25, 2023 at 19:57 | review | First questions | |||
| Nov 25, 2023 at 20:05 | |||||
| S Nov 25, 2023 at 19:57 | history | asked | John Moser | CC BY-SA 4.0 |