Forgot the reason we're here
Dr Billson was right the other day. We're all preoccupied with passing exams, instead of just studying to be engineers.
Instead of learning everything for our own benefit. We want to know exactly which parts of the syllabus will be in the exam, the style of questions and how many marks we'll get. We've lost touch with the real reason we're here…
Nathaniel Ho
18 May 2006 18:44
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Tags: Career Engineering General
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[Skip to the latest comment]Indeed, however at the end of the day this a problem in pretty much all of education. I'm sure someone could/should write a PhD thesis on the subject.
18 May 2006, 18:52
Nathaniel Ho
Wow a PhD on Bone Idleness
…would that ever get written?
18 May 2006, 18:57
Yeah, I'd go along with that. Bravo to Dr Billson, whoever he may be.
Exams, exams, exams, that's all anyone ever thinks about. That's not why I came to uni.
(And I'd say the same about GCSE. I wish I'd appreciated the all–round education I was getting at the time, and I wish I'd listened when they told us about how to do woodwork!)
18 May 2006, 19:08
Christopher Hinds
I agree completely with the theory of learning to pass exams. It's what the education system conditions us to do in a way. The majority of what I've learned during this exam period has been things like Wiki articles that are tenuously linked to the course. I don't tend to do much revision (photgraphic memory and a habit of attending lectures) and tend to read the bits I'm interested in rather than the whole lot. I guess that's why I dislike maths type exam questions. Sure you can get high marks but it relies on you learning to pass the exam. I prefer the questions I get in manufacturing exams where I have to reason things out and it requires me to understand. I think it would be good for engineering to have a little more subjectivity put into it.
18 May 2006, 20:04
Christopher Sigournay
I disagree with your statement that maths type exam questions require you to learn them off by heart to get good marks, which is your implication Chris. The purpose of quantitative questions is to learn and understand techniques and processes, and demonstrate that by applying them to problems you haven't seen before.
18 May 2006, 22:11
Then again, we still get told if we don't hit a certain mark we're off the course, so it's only natural that we get slightly obsessed with exams…
18 May 2006, 22:39
Andrew McFarland
We're also the most examined generation in history. Figured it out the other night in the pub after an exam, I've now had exams every May/June for the last eight years, and it's all just gotten a little tiresome now. May perhaps have been easier if I'd done some courses that were coursework assessed rather than examined, but that's just not the way my mind works
After that long of being examined, in the same subject every year in the case of physics, it kind of puts you off and you just try and learn what you can to pass. Especially next monday when I have three bloody exams. No way I can understand all of that in enough depth to pass, but can cram it. Especially when one of the modules was taught by one of the department's worst lecturers.
Still, after that my degree is over….oh the drunkeness
18 May 2006, 23:19
PrincessSkunky
Unfortunately that's the way it is. It is very difficult to learn for learning sake because you are trying to cram so much stuff in one year and they have to test you to see whether you got anything in. Learning for learning sake is something you appreciate later in life when you've got more time to take it in and not having the pressure of exams over your head. Because at the end of the day, the difference between whether you are an engineer or not is whether you got a piece of paper that told you, you've passed.
27 May 2006, 13:12
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