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if i discovered this over 20 years ago i would immigrate to the U.K instead Canada(universities/colleges here a similar)
Quote:
How pedagogy styles differ at US universities vs UK universities
UK universities are largely lecture-based, with occasional assignments through the semester. In some cases, there may be no required assignments and a student’s entire grade may be based on a single, final exam.
In the US, most courses require weekly or biweekly assessments as well as assignments like small writing projects, major research papers, and oral presentations. Scores on these assignments and assessments, along with a final exam score, make up a student’s overall grade. (in Canada it is similar)
In the US, most courses require weekly or biweekly assessments as well as assignments like small writing projects, major research papers, and oral presentations. Scores on these assignments and assessments, along with a final exam score, make up a student’s overall grade. (in Canada it is similar)
I would agree with that. I went to university in Canada, and during my undergrad, it was much like you describe US universities as. We had papers to submit, presentations and written assignments to make, and so on, along with a final exam. Everything was laid out up front, as in "Essay, 40%; Written Assignments, 20%; Final Exam, 40%," for example. Such a system provided a way to pass the course, so even if you bombed on the final exam, you still had a chance of passing the course.
The single high-stakes exam was unknown--until I got to law school in Canada. Canadian law schools (the common-law ones anyway) follow the Langdellian system, pioneered at Harvard by Christopher Langdell, and involve one single exam at the end of the course. You cannot rely on one or two essays and/or written assignments to help you if you do poorly on the exam; it is one single exam, for most courses. Watch the 1973 movie The Paper Chase if you want to know what a law school education is like. It is frighteningly accurate.
Granted, not all courses were like that. There were what we called "paper courses," where your final grade rested on submission of a research paper. No final exam. But still, it was one, and only one, chance to get a grade in that course. Class participation and discussion didn't count.
But all good practice for the bar exam. Which was actually eight exams in my province, on which you had to get 100% on each, just like those law school all-or-nothing finals. I am proud to say that I did pass all, and was admitted as a member of the provincial bar.
I'm curious. Why would you prefer a single, high stakes, exam?
Way back when I was in college & in grad school, I discovered I had a comparative advantage in such classes. I could power cram & get the highest grade on the test. I was unusual in that regard.
One of my friends from college was a Rhodes Scholar and another a Marshall Scholar. Both studied at Oxford University. We all went to an Ivy League university for undergraduate studies for context. Interestingly enough, I was taken aback that both of them said that they were unimpressed by the overall/general caliber of students at Oxford and other British universities they interacted with.
Note, I've had similar sentiments shared by friends of mine who transferred to my university from UC Berkeley.
I'm curious. Why would you prefer a single, high stakes, exam?
I agree, a single assessment seems pedagogically inferior. Not that tertiary education is known for being pedagogically sound, but still. The point is to educate, not to trip people up or cull. A single high stakes exam is similar to forcing a normal curve on a class's grades. It's needlessly punitive, does nothing to enhance the transmission of knowledge that less punitive alternatives could not do, and ultimately is a form of gatekeeping more than teaching.
I think the reason such systems exist is mostly historical, especially in the UK. Professors and instructors historically had more leverage as there were fewer alternatives to learn. Education was seen as a privilege, not a public good. If a professor wanted to teach a course a certain way, say to lighten his workload, that was that.
More prosaically, I wouldn't be surprised if this is also a vestige of the time when writing materials were more expensive, and the pedagogy has never been updated. Can universities propagate traditions that are centuries out of date? Yep, they do it all the time.
I'm curious. Why would you prefer a single, high stakes, exam?
Exactly. It's not only the UK that has that. European universities in general are notorious for designing courses that allow students to slack until the end, then suddenly cram for the one high-stakes exam. And not only Euro universities, but I've read similar about Japanese colleges too. For students in those systems, the big crush is to get through highschool with the best grades to qualify for a prestigious university, and once they get accepted, it's party time.
OTOH, there is no single model of course requirements in the US; professors have tremendous leeway in what they require their students to do. Some don't require a class research/writing project at all. Some only have two exams in the whole course, others have weekly quizzes. Some include class participation in daily discussions as part of the grade, others don't. And I've never heard of requiring an oral presentation. That sounds to me like the typical book reports required in schools I attended from 6th grade through much of highschool. By university I'd hope to be past that stage.
Exactly. It's not only the UK that has that. European universities in general are notorious for designing courses that allow students to slack until the end, then suddenly cram for the one high-stakes exam. And not only Euro universities, but I've read similar about Japanese colleges too. For students in those systems, the big crush is to get through highschool with the best grades to qualify for a prestigious university, and once they get accepted, it's party time.
OTOH, there is no single model of course requirements in the US; professors have tremendous leeway in what they require their students to do. Some don't require a class research/writing project at all. Some only have two exams in the whole course, others have weekly quizzes. Some include class participation in daily discussions as part of the grade, others don't. And I've never heard of requiring an oral presentation. That sounds to me like the typical book reports required in schools I attended from 6th grade through much of highschool. By university I'd hope to be past that stage.
I always hated the two test, midterm and final, grading scheme. Pretty much mess up one test and you're done. The three test version was much better but still not great. I much preferred the ones who graded on multiple projects throughout the semester. More work but much less dependent on being perfect on just one or two test days. Tests were too rushed but with projects there was time to do them right. They seemed like the grade was more related to the effort put in and not memorization the night before.
I actually did have a several classes in college that included a major oral presentation as part of the grade. But they were a far cry from the book reports. They took a lot of research and effort. In sophomore German class we were broken into teams and each team had to write, stage, and present a 15-minute play in German. Talk about embarrassing. A couple of physics professors went so far as to require each of us to research a topic and present an entire 50-minute class on it. Those were killer because you had to really understand the topic to be able to answer questions not just from the professor but from the class as well. These were for 300 & 400 level physics classes.
I always hated the two test, midterm and final, grading scheme. Pretty much mess up one test and you're done. The three test version was much better but still not great. I much preferred the ones who graded on multiple projects throughout the semester. More work but much less dependent on being perfect on just one or two test days. Tests were too rushed but with projects there was time to do them right. They seemed like the grade was more related to the effort put in and not memorization the night before.
I actually did have a several classes in college that included a major oral presentation as part of the grade. But they were a far cry from the book reports. They took a lot of research and effort. In sophomore German class we were broken into teams and each team had to write, stage, and present a 15-minute play in German. Talk about embarrassing. A couple of physics professors went so far as to require each of us to research a topic and present an entire 50-minute class on it. Those were killer because you had to really understand the topic to be able to answer questions not just from the professor but from the class as well. These were for 300 & 400 level physics classes.
In biology class in HS each of us had to teach a chapter from the textbook. And you did have to understand the material, so you could answer students' questions. Mercifully, I didn't have presentations to do in college. Writing and producing a play in 2nd-yr German class is fairly advanced work. I noticed the language classes at my university didn't have students writing original work (usually following a short-story fiction model from a variety of writing styles and authors) until 3rd year. A lot of the students couldn't do it...?! They complained to the Dept. Chair in both the German Dept. and Spanish, and both those outstanding instructors got canned!!
Juggling too many classes in one semester that require projects and research, etc. is difficult. I think universities started requiring more of that after I passed through the system. I usually only had 1 course per trimester that required that, or sometimes--none. But I filled up my schedule to the overload level with extra language classes, just for fun.
There were a number of loopholes universities closed, so students couldn't deliberately avoid challenging work. The option to drop a course in the first couple of weeks was very liberal when I was in school, so students would use that to attend the first week, to find out if a research project was required, then they'd drop the classes that had that, and would search out alternatives within the same gen-ed category, that didn't have a big project. Most universities AFAIK limited that option eventually. So universities went through a phase where they tightened up requirements. I'm not sure what's going on now; from the OP topic it sounds like things are devolving in the opposite direction, but I don't know how widespread that is.
In biology class in HS each of us had to teach a chapter from the textbook. And you did have to understand the material, so you could answer students' questions. Mercifully, I didn't have presentations to do in college. Writing and producing a play in 2nd-yr German class is fairly advanced work. I noticed the language classes at my university didn't have students writing original work (usually following a short-story fiction model from a variety of writing styles and authors) until 3rd year. A lot of the students couldn't do it...?! They complained to the Dept. Chair in both the German Dept. and Spanish, and both those outstanding instructors got canned!!
Juggling too many classes in one semester that require projects and research, etc. is difficult. I think universities started requiring more of that after I passed through the system. I usually only had 1 course per trimester that required that, or sometimes--none. But I filled up my schedule to the overload level with extra language classes, just for fun.
There were a number of loopholes universities closed, so students couldn't deliberately avoid challenging work. The option to drop a course in the first couple of weeks was very liberal when I was in school, so students would use that to attend the first week, to find out if a research project was required, then they'd drop the classes that had that, and would search out alternatives within the same gen-ed category, that didn't have a big project. Most universities AFAIK limited that option eventually. So universities went through a phase where they tightened up requirements. I'm not sure what's going on now; from the OP topic it sounds like things are devolving in the opposite direction, but I don't know how widespread that is.
Since they videoed our plays, we got to see how awful we were. Most were unintentionally hilarious though embarrassing to be that bad in front of everyone. Me trying to speak German with my southern accent.
Drop/Add was pretty common the first week and there was certainly a lot of juggling professors, but for a lot of folks it was more schedule driven. I only had one Drop/Add during college and it was for two GenEds scheduled at the same time. My major department closed the loophole by having only one section of the required courses so everyone was in there. Of course that pretty much set the entire schedule since those were required and everything else had to fit around them. The only Drop/Add option which some took was to drop it entirely and try to take it over summer somewhere so it didn't mess up the sequence. If you missed a sequence course it could cost you a year.
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