student hindering my education (rant)
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You're passing judgment on the school based on one instructor? I ran the Computer Science department at a local private college for 2 years, and I had 14 instructors. Some were good, some were not. This could very well be an issue with the instructor. To recommend that he change schools because of one issue seems a bit drastic.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
The instructions from the instructor are so bad that I've a hard time accepting the idea that someone can pass off that advice without it being a policy of some sort. Sure, take it to the dean and if he gives the same "it's the real world" advice take your money elsewhere - because, that too happens in the real world.
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The instructions from the instructor are so bad that I've a hard time accepting the idea that someone can pass off that advice without it being a policy of some sort. Sure, take it to the dean and if he gives the same "it's the real world" advice take your money elsewhere - because, that too happens in the real world.
The difference is that he's PAYING for this education. The school is a business, and he's the customer. Deal with it like any other business complaint - take it to management.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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A little rant against my school's policy on failing students (and pairing them with good ones). I'm currently studying software engineering, I'm in my second year, and now we've got to do a project. There's nothing wrong with the project itself but there is with the person I'm doing the project with. The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice. You're allowed to fail for a few subjects if you pass them in your second year and he's doing them at the end of the second year. This is my problem. I have to complete a project with a team member that lacks the necessary skills. He's not great with UML (the second thing he failed for) and he's dyslexic which means I can't put him on documentation duty. The teacher (which is supposed to guide us)a said I'll just have to teach him because such situations also happen in 'real life'. Isn't teaching their job? Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation but I do want it to be the last. So, what should I do? Ask another teacher's opinion? Make the project alone and hope for the best?
nbgangsta wrote:
Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts.
There's an old teacher saying, "if the learner hasn't learnt, the teacher hasn't taught". It could be that you don't understand OOP well enough to teach it - and this exercise is a great way for you to solidify this knowledge yourself.
Chill _Maxxx_
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier -
A little rant against my school's policy on failing students (and pairing them with good ones). I'm currently studying software engineering, I'm in my second year, and now we've got to do a project. There's nothing wrong with the project itself but there is with the person I'm doing the project with. The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice. You're allowed to fail for a few subjects if you pass them in your second year and he's doing them at the end of the second year. This is my problem. I have to complete a project with a team member that lacks the necessary skills. He's not great with UML (the second thing he failed for) and he's dyslexic which means I can't put him on documentation duty. The teacher (which is supposed to guide us)a said I'll just have to teach him because such situations also happen in 'real life'. Isn't teaching their job? Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation but I do want it to be the last. So, what should I do? Ask another teacher's opinion? Make the project alone and hope for the best?
nbgangsta wrote:
The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice.
That's just ridiculous, unless that course was somehow over a million times as hard as the one I followed back in university. My guinea pigs could pass that course.
nbgangsta wrote:
So, what should I do?
Can you afford to fail this class and re-take it? That should probably be the very last back-up plan, because it's terrible. It does have the nice effect of not letting that sucker that you got teamed with pass.
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Having taught college, I recommend that you make one more attempt to talk to the instructor. Tell him that you have made every effort to help this other student, but it's not working. If you don't get results, then go speak to the instructor's boss, typically the head instructor or Dean of Students.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Good advice. :thumbsup: /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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OriginalGriff wrote:
In the real world, you could be saddled with a waste of oxygen for ten years - and have to do his work as well as your own...
Sounds like you speak from experience. Who got saddled with you? ;P
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
All of them did, obviously! ;)
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger. English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
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The dream's of innocence, how cute. In the real world, that dumb-feck is there because he's the boss's brother/son/mate and you've gotta man up, grow a pair and carry the retardon.
speramus in juniperus
Dats da kitty!
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger. English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
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nbgangsta wrote:
Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts.
There's an old teacher saying, "if the learner hasn't learnt, the teacher hasn't taught". It could be that you don't understand OOP well enough to teach it - and this exercise is a great way for you to solidify this knowledge yourself.
Chill _Maxxx_
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easierThere is a lot of truth in that. I can do OOP but I can't always explain it to someone who barely knows the subject. Teaching is the best way to understand the matter, that much is true, but I don't have the time to do it. This gets frustrating when the person doesn't see the difference between casting to a string and use the toString() method (which is the case). That difference tells me that almost nothing of the classes he's taken have stuck with him.
The first rule of CListCtrl is you do not talk about CListCtrl - kornman
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A little rant against my school's policy on failing students (and pairing them with good ones). I'm currently studying software engineering, I'm in my second year, and now we've got to do a project. There's nothing wrong with the project itself but there is with the person I'm doing the project with. The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice. You're allowed to fail for a few subjects if you pass them in your second year and he's doing them at the end of the second year. This is my problem. I have to complete a project with a team member that lacks the necessary skills. He's not great with UML (the second thing he failed for) and he's dyslexic which means I can't put him on documentation duty. The teacher (which is supposed to guide us)a said I'll just have to teach him because such situations also happen in 'real life'. Isn't teaching their job? Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation but I do want it to be the last. So, what should I do? Ask another teacher's opinion? Make the project alone and hope for the best?
Just do the work your self, in the end of the day it's your grades that will suffer if you don't get it done. What's up with your user name? Are you in a gang?
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A little rant against my school's policy on failing students (and pairing them with good ones). I'm currently studying software engineering, I'm in my second year, and now we've got to do a project. There's nothing wrong with the project itself but there is with the person I'm doing the project with. The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice. You're allowed to fail for a few subjects if you pass them in your second year and he's doing them at the end of the second year. This is my problem. I have to complete a project with a team member that lacks the necessary skills. He's not great with UML (the second thing he failed for) and he's dyslexic which means I can't put him on documentation duty. The teacher (which is supposed to guide us)a said I'll just have to teach him because such situations also happen in 'real life'. Isn't teaching their job? Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation but I do want it to be the last. So, what should I do? Ask another teacher's opinion? Make the project alone and hope for the best?
Make a good faith effort to teach your partner. If it fails again, speak with the teacher. (And though it's cliche, teaching someone else how to do something really is a good way to learn it better yourself.) Regardless, don't depend on your partner for the project, even though that means extra work for you and your partner gets a good grade for doing nothing. Now that's real world experience!
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A little rant against my school's policy on failing students (and pairing them with good ones). I'm currently studying software engineering, I'm in my second year, and now we've got to do a project. There's nothing wrong with the project itself but there is with the person I'm doing the project with. The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice. You're allowed to fail for a few subjects if you pass them in your second year and he's doing them at the end of the second year. This is my problem. I have to complete a project with a team member that lacks the necessary skills. He's not great with UML (the second thing he failed for) and he's dyslexic which means I can't put him on documentation duty. The teacher (which is supposed to guide us)a said I'll just have to teach him because such situations also happen in 'real life'. Isn't teaching their job? Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation but I do want it to be the last. So, what should I do? Ask another teacher's opinion? Make the project alone and hope for the best?
I suppose my reply to him would be that the school has obviously been unable to teach him successfully thus far, and they're (supposedly) professionals at teaching, so how do they expect you to teach him when you're still learning. Also, you signed up for a class to learn, not to teach people they failed to teach. If you wanted to learn to teach, you would have signed up for such a course. While true that you will have to deal with similar situations in the future, you will typically have much more recourse - like going to the person's manager with this issue and have them do something about it. Obviously some cases there isn't much you can do, like when the person is the child of someone higher up, but by and large I've found that raising the issue to their manager helps a lot, if not outright solves the issue.
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Just do the work your self, in the end of the day it's your grades that will suffer if you don't get it done. What's up with your user name? Are you in a gang?
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A little rant against my school's policy on failing students (and pairing them with good ones). I'm currently studying software engineering, I'm in my second year, and now we've got to do a project. There's nothing wrong with the project itself but there is with the person I'm doing the project with. The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice. You're allowed to fail for a few subjects if you pass them in your second year and he's doing them at the end of the second year. This is my problem. I have to complete a project with a team member that lacks the necessary skills. He's not great with UML (the second thing he failed for) and he's dyslexic which means I can't put him on documentation duty. The teacher (which is supposed to guide us)a said I'll just have to teach him because such situations also happen in 'real life'. Isn't teaching their job? Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation but I do want it to be the last. So, what should I do? Ask another teacher's opinion? Make the project alone and hope for the best?
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About my name: I made it years ago and when all that stuff was cool. I kind of regret that now. I'm changing my username :)
The first rule of CListCtrl is you do not talk about CListCtrl - kornman
Haha I was just kidding. Good luck with the project :)
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A little rant against my school's policy on failing students (and pairing them with good ones). I'm currently studying software engineering, I'm in my second year, and now we've got to do a project. There's nothing wrong with the project itself but there is with the person I'm doing the project with. The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice. You're allowed to fail for a few subjects if you pass them in your second year and he's doing them at the end of the second year. This is my problem. I have to complete a project with a team member that lacks the necessary skills. He's not great with UML (the second thing he failed for) and he's dyslexic which means I can't put him on documentation duty. The teacher (which is supposed to guide us)a said I'll just have to teach him because such situations also happen in 'real life'. Isn't teaching their job? Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation but I do want it to be the last. So, what should I do? Ask another teacher's opinion? Make the project alone and hope for the best?
That's what I had to do in the same situation. Dave.
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You're passing judgment on the school based on one instructor? I ran the Computer Science department at a local private college for 2 years, and I had 14 instructors. Some were good, some were not. This could very well be an issue with the instructor. To recommend that he change schools because of one issue seems a bit drastic.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
He did note that it was the "school's policy". That sounds like a valid call to move on as they're making their failures his failures.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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The instructions from the instructor are so bad that I've a hard time accepting the idea that someone can pass off that advice without it being a policy of some sort. Sure, take it to the dean and if he gives the same "it's the real world" advice take your money elsewhere - because, that too happens in the real world.
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The difference is that he's PAYING for this education. The school is a business, and he's the customer. Deal with it like any other business complaint - take it to management.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Kevin Marois wrote:
The difference is that he's PAYING for this education. The school is a business, and he's the customer.
That wouldn't seem to be the case in the US. In the standard institution getting rid of tenured professor is basically impossible. And in larger institutions an individual student is a trivial participant in the economics. The larger schools make a great deal of money from governments, companies, donations, sales, etc all of which a single complaint about a the process of a professor is unlikely to ever even be seen. And a student leaving is a trivial event given often there are waiting lists for admissions and the drop out rates are so high. It is however possible to get some action if more than one person complains. But, again noting the tenure of a professor and other classes they might teach, one might want to be sure that they really want to fight the good fight before challenging the one that hands out the grades.
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nbgangsta wrote:
Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts.
There's an old teacher saying, "if the learner hasn't learnt, the teacher hasn't taught". It could be that you don't understand OOP well enough to teach it - and this exercise is a great way for you to solidify this knowledge yourself.
Chill _Maxxx_
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier -
A little rant against my school's policy on failing students (and pairing them with good ones). I'm currently studying software engineering, I'm in my second year, and now we've got to do a project. There's nothing wrong with the project itself but there is with the person I'm doing the project with. The programming language is Java, which we learned in our first year, and he failed his exams twice. You're allowed to fail for a few subjects if you pass them in your second year and he's doing them at the end of the second year. This is my problem. I have to complete a project with a team member that lacks the necessary skills. He's not great with UML (the second thing he failed for) and he's dyslexic which means I can't put him on documentation duty. The teacher (which is supposed to guide us)a said I'll just have to teach him because such situations also happen in 'real life'. Isn't teaching their job? Nonetheless, I have tried to take his advice but I can't get my team mate to understand OOP concepts. This isn't the first time I've been in this situation but I do want it to be the last. So, what should I do? Ask another teacher's opinion? Make the project alone and hope for the best?
I have been out of school for a few years now, but I am well versed in dealing with people that don't have a clue what they are doing. College : I was with a guy that had to be mentally ill in some way, on a project that was basically a 3 tier website. He often would cry when he had trouble understanding things. Yes, cry!. I was faced with the task of getting a project done in a week with a guy that wasn't very much help. I could do it alone but I would be up nights and have zero time for testing or flashy stuff which is where I really learned the most. What I ended up doing was assign him a list of pages and have him build them as static pages with a css file and then I built the database and back end logic and gave him some help connecting them but always made sure he looked it up at least once before asking me. He ended up failing out after he had some sort of break down. The Great thing about learning to deal with dead weight : My first job after college was a programmer for a call center where I was the only one there that had any clue at all. Not a great place to learn, but the idiot that built the the foundation for there system with visual basic and MS Access was my boss. He had no education beyond high School and this was the only technical job he ever had. So having experience at being tactful and educational came in handy.
