“I decided we would do an oral exam* because it’s a great way to see if people have actually learned anything from my course and aren’t just parroting notes. Because I can ask them to elaborate on their answers.”
Yeah and it’s also a great way to get otherwise good students to go blank because it isn’t possible to absorb every bit of complex information you spent 12 weeks rushing through, Barbara.
This “gotcha” style teaching fucking pisses me off. There is no time in the real world people are not going to be able to look up their notes. Fuck, half the time I’ll ask a professor something and they’ll be like “I’ll have to look that up later and get back to you.” Why? BECAUSE THEY’RE HUMAN AND THATS HOW BRAINS ARE.
This type of teaching only favours students that already had experience with the subject beforehand and freaks with amazing memories. This kind of understanding of the material only comes from experience and repetition, something that the traditional 12 weeks of rushed lectures/labs that discard each topic quickly to fit all of them in don’t do.
I fucking hate how much I am going into debt to be taught only the vaguest concepts but doing most of the teaching myself in my own time. Education under capitalism is a joke.
*An oral exam is an exam where instead of answering questions in a quiet room on paper, you have to answer questions on a live video call with your instructor.
On the other hand as a person with adhd I love oral exams because then I don’t really have to pay attention in class. I can bullshit my way to a B-A+ with the bare minimum of academic effort. I’ll be able to yap so much they can’t ask any questions and then they’ll bemoan the fact we don’t have more time because I seem to have a wealth of knowledge hehehe.
Written exams though? Hello executive dysfunction
Ha, that rules (the being able to talk part, not the written exam dysfunction part. I feel you pain).
I guess our ADHD manifests in different ways, I get overwhelmed in interview type situations and end up forgetting which words I want to use “Uhh… I mean…nuh what’s the word for that again?”
Another thing I do is tell them that I am nervous! It has only yielded positive results so far
Thanks for the advice
That sucks! That happens to me too, but I try to yap thru it or jump to a different association. “I don’t recall the specific technical term at the moment, so let me instead describe the practice” (-3 minutes of interview time spent on something that is trivial to discuss) then I often end up doing something like “now when I describe it like this, it of course sounds quite similar to this, but they differ in key ways, which are…” Yapyapyap “oh you have a question professor?”
I think it also depends on the course content and the level of technical knowledge.
Plus the oral exam set up, i.e. if you don’t hit all the required points by not effectively using your time to regurgitate the course content you fail.