Recently our CHP class has been talking about the disengagement pact and student disengagement in general. The idea of the disengagement pact is explained in this article by George Kuh. In a nutshell, the disengagement pact is the idea that students and professors mutually agree to make each other’s lives easier, the professor by not giving the student as much work to do, and hence the student by not giving the professor as much grading to do. In this situation both the professor and student have a role, but even the most dedicated professor cannot (at least for the sake of this argument) force all of their students to be engaged in the class. Said another way, there are some students who are going to be disengaged from the class, either because they dislike school in general, or feel that the particular class they are in is unimportant.
Before I continue, I should give a proper definition of what I am talking about. I would say that all of the students in this CHP class are very good students who care about learning. However, I think I speak for the class when I say that we have all been in classes that we were simply uninterested in, or felt were not applicable to our education. I would venture further and say that for most of us those classes fell into the category of being a gen-ed or prerequisite requirement.
My point for laying this framework is to be able to discuss the question of whether or not it would be beneficial for some of the required courses in a major to be dropped, with students being given the option of taking free electives instead. Although from my introduction you might think I would be in favor of this, I can actually see both sides of the issue, but in general tend to disagree.
The first category of classes would be prerequisite classes for further courses in your major. Since I am in the ME program, I will use it as an example. Mechanical Engineers are required to take a broad range of foundational courses before they ever get into courses specifically in their major. These would be things like physics, calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, statics, dynamics, programming, etc. The argument could be made that since these don’t necessarily relate directly to Mechanical Engineering, they should be optional. Why make students struggle through something they don’t think they will use?
Having played the devil’s advocate, I will now state that I think that this would be a very bad idea. I feel that almost all, if not all of the classes I have mentioned comprise what I would call the multiplication tables of engineering. Even though you might not like them, they really are useful and important down the road, including in your more specific ME classes.
That being said, however, some of you are probably thinking “well yeah- courses in your major, including prereqs are important, but what about general electives?” I am honestly not sure what I think about this for several reasons. First off, due to AP credit, I really haven’t had to take that many gen-ed classes, so don’t have much experience to base this argument off of.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly is the time/experience issue. I can say the engineering prerequisite classes are important because I have seen firsthand that I need them for my specific ME classes. I cannot say the same for the gen-ed classes I have taken, because quite frankly, I don’t have enough experience to know whether or not they were indeed useful. Will Econ 103 benefit me down the road, or would another class have been better? How can I say at this point in my life?
I will try to pull some loose threads together before I continue. In general, the classes that otherwise good students become disengaged in are probably in the category of being pre-reqs or gen-ed requirements. Given this disengagement, especially given that fact that we are talking about very good, motivated students, would it be beneficial to allow more freedom in the class requirements so that students can take classes that they are more engaged in? I feel that this would be a bad idea with respect to the prerequisite courses, but the jury is still out on the gen-ed requirements.
The argument for gen-ed classes is that they allow a student to have more rounded education. Even though, as I mentioned before, I don’t have the experience to have a better view point on this, I do think I see the benefit of broadening your education. I took Geog 101 over the summer because it was a class which was available and which fit into my schedule. Was it my favorite class? Not necessarily. Was I ever disengaged during class? Most likely. Am I glad for the alternative perspective it gave me? Yes. While I might not have perfectly learned all of the concepts the professor would have liked me to learn, I still feel that I got a benefit from the class.
My point then, is that I have benefitted from taking both Geog 101 and Econ 103, even though I wouldn’t necessarily have taken them if not “required” to. I think if I had been given the choice of taking a “free elective” instead of a more directed gen-ed, I still would have taken some random, interesting class. My thought is that the intent, even if not the actual “law” of the gen-ed requirements is to give students some direction and guidelines for doing just that- taking classes which are interesting, yet somewhat useful.
Well, I have blogged for longer than usual, only to come to the conclusion that I like things just the way they are! Call me the “anti-change conservative” if you want, but I still think that a lot of thought and planning goes into setting the requirements for a degree, so why argue against those older and wise then us, especially when down the road we may “discover” that they were right. However, I am sure that not all of you who read this blog are of the same opinion, so I would love to hear your thoughts.
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Your writing style (or at least what I am getting is your writing style) is very well shown here. It's very clear, straightforward yet insightful.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up some good points about the benefits of pre-reqs and gen-eds. However, the question I have for you is whether you think allowing students to take an internship experience or some form of hands on/work/experiential learning would be MORE beneficial than these pre-reqs and gen-eds. In Jake's post from earlier this week, he talked about how he really gained his marketable skills b/c he did the internship. So, do you think that students are even BETTER prepared than they are now if they have the choice of doing an internship instead of having to take all these other required classes?
There is possibly also the argument that perhaps students aren't ready for an internship until they have taken those required classes...or whether companies would be willing to take these students? what do you think?
Christine,
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point, and one which honestly I had forgotten about when I was writing the blog. Again I see both sides of the issue.
From the employers perspective, I think that they would much rather have students who have been "out in the real world". During my intership this summer I really didn't use a lot of the "hard" information that I have learned (equations, etc.) but put to use the thinking skills that I have acquired. Therefore, in some respects classes aren't necessarily a prereq for a successful internship. However, the maturity and "intangible" growth which a student acquires while here on campus is probably of more importance, yet harder to measure. This would then say that a student does have to have a certain amount of schooling for the internship to be as effective as it could be.
That being said, however, I think that from the schools perspective internships in place of class would be a nightmare for several reasons. First off, there is the scheduling issue. How do you gaurantee that there will be enough companies willing to participate and provide students with and internship experience that the school deems beneficial. This leads to the next issue, which is uniformity. The way it is set up right now, students who graduate from U of I are fairly similar in that they have all been through the same program. Granted, there experience will be different, but as a whole, the university has a lot of control over "producing" a certain type of student. Allowing companies who do not answer to the university to have an effect on the students education would, or at least could lead to a great(er) disparity between graduates.
So, the short answer is, yes, I think that an internship could be as valuable, if not more valuable than a class. However, in my mind the uniform implementation thereof would be very difficult from the university's perspective.
Elsewhere I've written that things we learn can be classifies as like "riding a bicycle" meaning that once learned it stays learned for life or alternatively as "use it or lose it" meaning that if there is not repeated practice after the initial learning, then none of it is retained. That is one dimension of what I was asking about. I'd argue that the use it or lose it stuff might be toned down.
ReplyDeleteThere is a different dimension, particularly for the math content, on whether you can self-teach on this stuff - meaning you can go to the textbook and work through the derivations and the proofs of theorems on your own, without hearing the lecture first or seeing the TA do something similar. If you can self teach on the math to a large extent, then a very good case can be made pedagogically to learn the math at or near the time where it is needed for the ME, which would motivate learning the math, where as you've written now you might have been disengaged with it. And thinking that way there is the question of whether you need to the full pre-req for the ME or only bits and pieces of it. I do suspect that once you are out of school you will have to teach yourself additional math as the need arises. So the question is whether any of that preparation you've had has gotten you ready for this.
On a more mundane point, I'm going to take you to the woodshed. Where you say "this article by George Kuh" you need to link to the article. References need to be cited and in our class where you are writing online, citation occurs via linking.
Finally, let me turn to your real point in the first paragraph. As we will discuss next week, it is not as simple as how you put it. The environment matters. Whether the student gets timely and well considered feedback on the work the student does matters. Whether other students seem committed matters. It is not just what is in the head of the particular student that determines it all.
Sorry about the link. I had a hyperlink when I typed the article in MS word, but it must not have copied. I have corrected the issue.
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