| ▲ | olalonde a day ago |
| I remember in college there were always small groups of students chatting with professors after class or going to office hours. Many profs would drop pretty big hints about upcoming exams. I guess it was a mix of enjoying the attention, pitying weaker students, and wanting to reward "participation". Always felt a bit unfair to me. |
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| ▲ | buildbot a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Every professor has their own style, most of the ones I had were very open that office hours were a pretty great way to get help/more targeted hints on what to study. This isn’t in my opinion, a problem. Their goal is to educate you as best as possible in theory, via classes, homework, and office hours. Students who take the time and effort to attend office hours clearly want to at least pretend to be putting in extra effort, so why wouldn’t they out more effort into helping them learn? I doubt that they are directly giving away test answers. |
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| ▲ | zelphirkalt 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | For many profs the goal is to spend as little as possible time with students, so that they can spend more time with their research career, than lectures for students or hours after the lectures. For that they employ students, who have passed the exams. Teaching is merely a necessary annoyance to them. | |
| ▲ | olalonde 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The problem with targeted exam hints on what to study is that it can create situations where a student who understood the material better overall and put in more effort studying all the material equally, scores lower than someone who simply happened to get hints from the professor. If your actual goal is to educate, you shouldn't give exam hints, and especially not one-on-one. | | |
| ▲ | buildbot 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | For sure - I think my definition of an exam hint is more like, study these subjects or “yes, data structures of some kind will be tested, but don’t worry about sorting algorithms.” Not specific hints or answers, that’s obvious favoritism |
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| ▲ | IncreasePosts a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | In an astrophysics class I had in college , the professor called on a student to solve a problem, he got it wrong, and the professor said "if you would come to my office hours you would know how to solve this" - the students response was something along the lines of "sorry, my parents are crackheads so I need to work two jobs to pay for school" | | |
| ▲ | bombcar a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Plot twist - the student's dad was the professor. I think once they start having homework in kindergarten "doing all the class work during class" is a goal that won't be reached. | |
| ▲ | buildbot a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | With all empathy that sucks and is not fair - but should office hours be removed because one student could not attend? Many of the professors I have worked with that I respect have different methods for helping these students- for example sending them an email after class, offering explicit direct help & advice. Or connecting them with a better job, or a research position. | | |
| ▲ | IncreasePosts a day ago | parent [-] | | No, office hours shouldn't be removed. Perhaps professors should just not reward people who come to office hours beyond the extra instruction that is given. Eg no special knowledge communicated solely in office hours("this question is going to be on the test next week"), and no special treatment ("this student got the wrong answer but I know from office hours they're trying really hard so I'll give them some extra points") | | |
| ▲ | buildbot 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Fully agree, a hint should be at most about which subjects to focus on - and ideally that’s something they said in class too. |
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| ▲ | debatem1 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What's unfair about office hours? At least at my school they were posted in advance and available to any student at no charge. |
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| ▲ | olalonde a day ago | parent [-] | | It's not the office hours themselves that felt unfair, but the way some students got privileged hints about upcoming exams. | | |
| ▲ | red-iron-pine a day ago | parent [-] | | how often did you actually go to these hours? put another way, they showed up and asked questions and got info -- and you didn't. that's not privilege, that's effort | | |
| ▲ | olalonde 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not talking about getting more in-depth explanations or clarifications about class material, I'm talking about: "If I were you, I would really focus on that exercise on page 47 (wink wink). Also, just skip chapter 4 (wink wink)". This creates a scenario where a student with genuine subject mastery can actually be outscored by someone who simply got the hints. To answer your question, I don't recall ever going to "office hours", as I was generally a top student with minimal effort and an autodidact, but I learned about it through friends. Having parents who are both professors also gave me a front-row seat to how common this was. |
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| ▲ | forgotaccount3 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I guess it was a mix of enjoying the attention, pitying weaker students, and wanting to reward "participation". It probably wasn't intentional, just 'I have x minutes a day with the students to teach them the day's lesson. I have more than x minutes worth of content to convey. If you willingly spend more time with me, you may get information that was lower in importance and was missed during the day's classes.' |
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| ▲ | butILoveLife a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| While engineering school was hard, I did think quite a bit of it was pure participation testing. I used to think this was wrong, until I got into engineering.. Sure there is the rare math problem, but most of the difficult part was: "Are you willing to fly to mexico and be awake at 3am when the parts are made?" I might be downplaying though... I did calc 1 at a job. |
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| ▲ | kevinsync a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's always said that a lot of success and opportunities are attributed to being in the right place at the right time (aka "luck"), but in a lot of cases, those folks had the tenacity to be in the right place ALL the time; when opportunities arise, they typically go to whoever's present and available. Chatting with professors after class or attending office hours might be a grift, but it's not necessarily unfair. Specific circumstances aside, anybody can do it to get some leverage. |
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| ▲ | bombcar a day ago | parent [-] | | What's the old saying? So much of success is up to luck, but you can make your own luck? | | |
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| ▲ | strathmeyer a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
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