I tested out of most of the introductory general required classes in undergrad. My undergraduate degree is in engineering. My department’s introductory classes generally were broken into multiple sections of about 30 students, so my experience here is perhaps not representative. The 4 large (100+ student) classes I took were in the math and physics departments.
In the physics classes (which were specifically for engineers, not physicists), the actual topics were dumbed down so much that I had to modify my thinking to do well in the class. And I found the classes to be dreadfully boring in general because the more interesting topics that used math were avoided. Anything involving more than the simplest calculus was avoided. If I could think of a way to do something involving differential equations, surely that was not what the professor wanted. I often had difficulty figuring out why certain (unnecessary) assumptions were made, and I came to the conclusion that they were made to make the class more manageable for the least capable students. Often which assumption to use was ambiguous because any number of bad assumptions could be made.
My experience here is that these classes were designed for the lowest common denominator, and with a large sample size your probability of having someone who’ll really hold back the class is near 1. Often this worked to the detriment of the most capable students. I speculate this was done because the engineering school wants to produce more engineers. Seems that their main approach to this is to dumb down classes. I’m somewhat convinced this does more harm than good, partly because I think most of the least capable students would struggle no matter what they were given, though I don’t have strong justification for these beliefs at the moment.
Another impression I got from the physics classes was that the professors didn’t want to teach these classes. They seemed to consider it a chore, like taking out the trash. There was no consistency between semesters or years in who taught these classes. I’d guess the physics department required professors to teach these introductory classes on a rotating basis, i.e. “It’s your turn to take out the trash.” There was no passion in these classes, which contrasted heavily with the one upper-level physics class I took.
This did not change my desire to become an engineer. I would fill in gaps in my knowledge on my own time. These classes mostly harmed my time efficiency.
One of these classes required me to buy a clicker, but it never was used in the class. One of the courses used some online homework thing that I thought was dreadful, mostly because I had a difficult time thinking in the constrained way they wanted me to, and also because some of the answers in there were wrong! These courses used Blackboard to manage the other course content, but I didn’t use any of the advanced features. I recall downloading assignments and checking my grades.
The large math classes (calculus and differential equations) were for all majors (including math majors) and I didn’t feel the topics were dumbed down or that the professors didn’t want to be there. My impression was that the professors were not concerned that people couldn’t keep up. If a student couldn’t keep up, that was their problem. I think this might have partially motivated me to take more elective math classes than physics classes during undergrad (2 undergrad + 1 grad math class vs. 1 undergrad physics class), but applied math is more my interest, anyway.
The math classes had their own websites. No advanced things like clickers or Blackboard were used.
I found the textbooks for the physics classes to be poor jumping off points for more advanced topics. Once you understood calculus, there was little reason to read these books. They also were basically worth no money after the class was over. I vaguely recall throwing mine away because they were so worthless. In contrast, I still own and sometimes refer to my calculus and differential equations books.
I often had difficulty figuring out why certain (unnecessary) assumptions were made, and I came to the conclusion that they were made to make the class more manageable for the least capable students.
I found this when I TAed physics for engineers, which was sad. The professors (through experience, no doubt) didn’t trust students to propagate errors by adding in quadrature, and so they were told to just add the standard deviations together. I was scared by the idea of an engineer who couldn’t sum errors that way.
Interesting to hear your experience as a TA validates mine as a student. That’s a good example of what I mean by an unnecessary assumption or simplification that was done purely to make the class more manageable for some students.
A not-insignificant portion of engineers don’t know much anything about physics or math and want nothing to do with either. This is very scary, because these people tend to blindly follow standard engineering practice (which is not necessarily correct) or worse, make up something that is very wrong. A friend of mine told me they went to a job fair and heard a recruiter for an engineering company brag that you won’t have to do any more calculus if you worked for them.
As far as I can tell, a significant fraction of the people in every major don’t really understand it, don’t care very much, and are continually half-assing everything. The problem with just flunking these guys is that they can still be valuable to employers, and their tuition money is nice to have.
I tested out of most of the introductory general required classes in undergrad. My undergraduate degree is in engineering. My department’s introductory classes generally were broken into multiple sections of about 30 students, so my experience here is perhaps not representative. The 4 large (100+ student) classes I took were in the math and physics departments.
In the physics classes (which were specifically for engineers, not physicists), the actual topics were dumbed down so much that I had to modify my thinking to do well in the class. And I found the classes to be dreadfully boring in general because the more interesting topics that used math were avoided. Anything involving more than the simplest calculus was avoided. If I could think of a way to do something involving differential equations, surely that was not what the professor wanted. I often had difficulty figuring out why certain (unnecessary) assumptions were made, and I came to the conclusion that they were made to make the class more manageable for the least capable students. Often which assumption to use was ambiguous because any number of bad assumptions could be made.
My experience here is that these classes were designed for the lowest common denominator, and with a large sample size your probability of having someone who’ll really hold back the class is near 1. Often this worked to the detriment of the most capable students. I speculate this was done because the engineering school wants to produce more engineers. Seems that their main approach to this is to dumb down classes. I’m somewhat convinced this does more harm than good, partly because I think most of the least capable students would struggle no matter what they were given, though I don’t have strong justification for these beliefs at the moment.
Another impression I got from the physics classes was that the professors didn’t want to teach these classes. They seemed to consider it a chore, like taking out the trash. There was no consistency between semesters or years in who taught these classes. I’d guess the physics department required professors to teach these introductory classes on a rotating basis, i.e. “It’s your turn to take out the trash.” There was no passion in these classes, which contrasted heavily with the one upper-level physics class I took.
This did not change my desire to become an engineer. I would fill in gaps in my knowledge on my own time. These classes mostly harmed my time efficiency.
One of these classes required me to buy a clicker, but it never was used in the class. One of the courses used some online homework thing that I thought was dreadful, mostly because I had a difficult time thinking in the constrained way they wanted me to, and also because some of the answers in there were wrong! These courses used Blackboard to manage the other course content, but I didn’t use any of the advanced features. I recall downloading assignments and checking my grades.
The large math classes (calculus and differential equations) were for all majors (including math majors) and I didn’t feel the topics were dumbed down or that the professors didn’t want to be there. My impression was that the professors were not concerned that people couldn’t keep up. If a student couldn’t keep up, that was their problem. I think this might have partially motivated me to take more elective math classes than physics classes during undergrad (2 undergrad + 1 grad math class vs. 1 undergrad physics class), but applied math is more my interest, anyway.
The math classes had their own websites. No advanced things like clickers or Blackboard were used.
I found the textbooks for the physics classes to be poor jumping off points for more advanced topics. Once you understood calculus, there was little reason to read these books. They also were basically worth no money after the class was over. I vaguely recall throwing mine away because they were so worthless. In contrast, I still own and sometimes refer to my calculus and differential equations books.
I found this when I TAed physics for engineers, which was sad. The professors (through experience, no doubt) didn’t trust students to propagate errors by adding in quadrature, and so they were told to just add the standard deviations together. I was scared by the idea of an engineer who couldn’t sum errors that way.
Interesting to hear your experience as a TA validates mine as a student. That’s a good example of what I mean by an unnecessary assumption or simplification that was done purely to make the class more manageable for some students.
A not-insignificant portion of engineers don’t know much anything about physics or math and want nothing to do with either. This is very scary, because these people tend to blindly follow standard engineering practice (which is not necessarily correct) or worse, make up something that is very wrong. A friend of mine told me they went to a job fair and heard a recruiter for an engineering company brag that you won’t have to do any more calculus if you worked for them.
As far as I can tell, a significant fraction of the people in every major don’t really understand it, don’t care very much, and are continually half-assing everything. The problem with just flunking these guys is that they can still be valuable to employers, and their tuition money is nice to have.