Upperclassmen as Wikipedia

Dave’s post on the subject of freshman/upperclassman relations mentions a number of means by which underclassmen in our University can reach upperclassmen. I just so happens that, in all of my time here as an underclassman, I wasn’t involved in any of Dave’s recommendations. I came to the university without a major, and never took an introductory class. My Resident Advisor (RA) was decidedly unhelpful, being a particularly unsocial student who spent most of his time at the gym. I was never involved in a Registered Student Organization (RSO) for more than a week.

I assert, however, that some contact with upperclassmen, especially in the first year months of college, is necessary for an underclassman to be successful. My contact came when I took a job as an undergraduate research assistant at the Nuclear Radiations Laboratory, a lab on campus.

Admittedly, I didn’t come to the lab with upperclassmen dialogue in mind. I was expecting nothing more than research experience from the job. The hierarchy of the lab, however, put me in constant contact with upperclassmen also working as undergraduate workers. Superficially, this relationship was purely job-based: they explained the (relatively simple) tasks I was to perform, and I came to them if I had simple questions about the work. This, of course, was not the extent of our communication. Since I was constantly around my upperclassmen coworkers, I had numerous chances to ask questions on any topic, be it how to switch my major, or which professors I should seek out as teachers, or whether Chipotle burritos were worth the extra cost of their Qdoba counterparts. I almost always got immediate and useful information this way. (College of Engineering Deans, Professor Ruzic, absolutely yes.)

These upperclassmen contacts were invaluable my freshman year. The way I see it, a student can only be so successful seeking information from professors, advisors, etc. Having an older student to answer questions is much more effective. This effect is comparable to one of the points in our class discussion on Wikipedia. One of the reasons I believe the open-source online encyclopedia is so popular (I wanted to say “successful” here, but that’s a whole different discussion) is its transient behavior. Wikipedia is constantly being updated (as evidenced by its Recent Changes log.) Although this may be seen as a source of its potentially inaccurate information, it also allows the encyclopedia to keep up with current events much more rapidly than a more “reputable” encyclopedia can. As an example, this Wikipedia article includes information about Iran’s nuclear program, including the minor developments that happened this week. On the other hand, Encyclopedia Britannica offers only this stagnant list of articles with the same subject matter, none updated nearly as lately as Wikipedia.

The parallel isn’t perfect, but my point is that there are some situations where Wikipedia really is the most helpful, and there are some questions that are most helpfully answered by older students. Professors and other University faculty/staff sometimes have obstacles to giving helpful information:

-they didn’t go to the U of I as an undergraduate and thus don’t have the essential experience,

-they can’t “bad-talk” other professors or staff (which students are more than willing to do)

-they may worry about losing their job by being too candid

Be it through one of Dave’s processes, through an on-campus job, or some other way, I would recommend any freshman to seek out an upperclassman as an information resource.

Klingon Birth Rates and Successful Exams

The prompt on learning immediately brought to my mind the Neutron Diffusion course I mentioned early in the class. I brought up then, and want to bring up again, the unique final the professor designed for this course.

The course’s material dealt mostly with understanding and using mathematical equations to approximate the position and dynamics of neutrons (tiny neutrally-charged particles) as they move about a nuclear reactor. Because neutrons are so small and move so quickly, they don’t always obey the “classical” laws of physics that relatively large and slow things do. Through the use of various formulas and mathematical approximations, the general behavior of neutrons can be modeled.

(It should be noted that the value of this course was immediately verified. Not only did the concepts introduced in this class appear in almost all of the next semester’s courses within the same department, countless graduates confirmed that neutron-modeling techniques are commonly utilized in actual industry settings.)

The final exam was, as I said in class, of genius design. The exam had one problem, and the professor allowed the entire three-hour period to solve it (although few students stayed past the first hour.) The problem asked the students to model the population of a planet of Klingon people through use of neutron-diffusion equations. The students were to account for Klingon births (corresponding to neutron multiplication,) deaths (neutron absorption,) growth into adulthood (neutron scattering / energy diffusion,) among a number of other aspects. Additionally, and in my mind most importantly, the problem gave directions to include modeling for “any other aspects of Klingon life you can imagine.”

In the class discussion where I brought up this exam, I explained that I was impacted most by the creative aspect of the exam: while it obviously still tested our skill with neutron diffusion equations, the addition of an interesting theme and the prompt to use our imaginations made the exam exciting and fun.

I do not see the creativity of the exam, however, as what makes it successful in measuring the amount of the students’ learning. It was the fact that the exam tested “on-your-feet” skills, instead of dry knowledge, that sets this exam above many of the other’s I’ve taken.

It’s well-known among students that nearly all of the facts and knowledge you “cram” in your brain before the exam are gone by the end of finals. I think this is the mark of unsuccessful exams. If the information has nowhere to be used, it seems to quickly be forgotten. The kind of exams like the one in my neutron diffusion class, however, do not seem to have this fate.

To answer the prompt: successful learning in a course can be characterized by the ability to do something or think about something in a new way. With this in mind, I suppose it could be said that yes, all good learning comes with a kind of personal transformation. Further, evidence of this learning is measurable through exams that require the student to test their new skill or way of thinking. Instead of regurgitating cold facts, a successful learner can use what they’ve learned to analyze something, model something, do something…

I believe that all courses, with a little work, could utilize “on-your-feet” exams, which, if the course successfully presented its content, and the students successfully learned, would verify successful learning.

For Flexibility

My gut reaction is to argue for the ability to drop classes. I knew from the moment I read the prompt that this would be my stance, and I know why. There have been numerous times throughout my college career that I have been confused why a given class would be required for my major. Currently, I am in a required Physics course in which I can see no relevance to what I want to do with my life. This alone isn’t a reason to allow this course to be dropped, as it could be that my entire major doesn’t fit with my life plans. This isn’t the case, however: these courses also have seemingly no relevance to the discipline of my major, Nuclear Engineering, at all.

In his post on this subject, Tyler brings up a good point: the people who decide which classes are required for our majors are the experts in our field, and so it would be a mistake to think we know any better. I agree with this idea: our department heads should have the final say on what coursework constitutes successful completion of a degree. I’m less supportive, however, of the idea of a “set-in-stone” course sequence.

During one of our class discussions on “Declining by Degrees”, I remember the idea of the decreasing worth of a Bachelor’s Degree being brought up. (I’m interested to see if this topic is breached at all in the movie.) In short, the argument is that a bachelor’s degree twenty (fifty? I’m not exactly sure of the time frame here) years ago was a guaranteed ticket to the job your major trained you for, but the same degree today is just a stepping stone towards a career. I believe it. More than one of my engineering professors have framed the bachelor’s degree as a test of “basic training”; to achieve further success in the engineering discipline, post-graduate education is extremely recommended, if not required.

What, then, is the final goal of earning an engineering bachelor’s degree? With my professors’ argument in mind, I would have to say that it is accumulating the basic engineering skills required for post-graduate education or training. This is a pretty concrete goal, at least for an engineering degree, because there exist nationally-accepted requirements for officially earning the “Engineer” title for all of the major engineering disciplines and many of the secondary ones (including Nuclear). The National Academy of Engineering is the governing body of these guidelines, and one only needs to take a Professional Engineering Exam to prove one’s aptitude and earn an engineering license.

What if the department heads, instead of assigning a sequence of courses required for graduation, made a list of knowledge and skills that a student must accrue to earn their degree? The list would not be a short one: I imagine it encompassing everything earning a degree by the current system involves. The difference, however, comes from the fact that this new system allows any course that teaches a skill or topic of knowledge that is on the list to count towards graduation.

Obviously, many items on the list would be pretty narrow, and couldn’t be fulfilled by more than one specific course. For instance, “Student Knows How to Solve Differential Equations” could probably only be achieved by a Differential Equations course. I’m confident, however, that some of the requirements are more general and could be fulfilled by a number of courses: this is why “professional electives” exist. In my major, at least, there is a required sub-set of courses that can be chosen among many options. My physics class is one of these courses, and the only “list item” I can think of that these courses would fulfill is “student has advanced knowledge in one topic related to scientific research.” Clearly, an enormous number of classes could fit this description.

Additionally, a publication of a requirement list would be sound with Drucker’s ideas on effective individual work, specifically, knowing one’s goals and constantly working towards them. A student who has daily access to the list of skills he or she knows must be accrued by graduation can constantly work to better themselves in these areas. The current “required sequence” style of educations seems to emphasize a different goal: good grades in each of the individual classes.

Obviously, I am proposing a change that would require the entire college (or university) to alter almost every aspect of its existence. For instance, courses university-wide would have to have their contents and “list items” determined. This is an enormous task, and a lot of time and money would have to be available to achieve what I have in mind.

I’m confident, however, that a student who knows what he or she is working towards and has more choice in the details of how to reach those goals (e.g., choice of classes) is a happier and more effective student.