Now that midterms are over, here’s what I really learned
At the beginning of the semester, my chemistry prof announced that we'd be having only one midterm. He explained his belief that having two midterms means students study only for the test, instead of actually learning the material. I wish all of my classes could somehow have a similar philosophy.
Instead of just learning what we need to know in order to pass midterms and finals, we'd actually be learning for the sake of, well, learning. You know, actually mastering the material.
I love biology, and sometimes even chemistry can be fascinating. But, unfortunately, the way we usually measure a student's success at school is how well they can regurgitate the parts of the course the profs (or TA's) have decided are the most important to have memorized.
In my history course, we touched briefly on the Black Death, the plague that wiped out up to two thirds of Europe's population in the 1300's, devastating an entire continent. Leading up to the plague, in the 1100s and 1200s, Europe had become a centre of learning and philosophy. Universities were cropping up in Italy, France, Germany and Britain. More than 40% of English men were literate.
And then the Black Death swept across Europe, setting them back hundreds of years.
I wanted to know more. The history professor only briefly mentioned the origins of the plague, and then recommended a book on the topic for those of us who found the subject particularly interesting. There's also an entire chapter on the plague in our history textbook, discussing the environmental, cultural and societal impacts of the plague.
But instead of learning more about the Black Death, something that I personally found interesting and engaging, I just moved on to the next chapter in the textbook. I'll probably never get that book the professor recommended, either. Instead, I'm preparing for the clicker quiz this Tuesday, getting ready to regurgitate specific, arbitrary facts from a certain chapter in the textbook.
Every Tuesday and Thursday I sit in my history class, clicker in hand, waiting to play that game show unique to certain university courses: the Clicker Quiz. Hundreds of students lean forward, clickers on the ready, then pounce when the prof asks his question. He's making sure we've read and memorized the parts of the assigned course readings which he feels best proves that we're doing the work he thinks we should.
I won't pretend to have a better plan or solution to this issue. But I can't help but feel it's such a missed opportunity for true learning when, instead of exploring the history of the Black Death more in depth, I'm forced to try and anticipate which parts of the material the prof is going to pick to try and trip us with.
If I've learned anything in history class so far, it's that clickers only get in the way of learning.
Tagged with
midterms,
clickers,
regurgitation
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