Yamirskoonir-
If papers are never on the same topic why are we having this discussion?
This coming from the perspective of a 2nd year Mechanical Engineering student who is going to college to learn something NEW not the same old shit I have already done.
We’re having this discussion because other individuals who have posted here seem to think that a paper on a particular topic can only be written one way, and with a finite amount of attainable information.
If you have a problem with your professor handing out the same, word-for-word topic over and over again, you could always take it to the dean. However, even if an asshole professor (and I’m not denying that they do exist) is doling out the same, word-for-word topic over and over again, there’s still a learning opportunity. You could explore nuances of different aspects of the research or make a more cohesive argument. No paper submitted is ever absolutely perfect.
Hmmm. I could see this very phenomenon as a useful tool in a writing class. Pass out the same topic five times in one semester; challenge the students to make it better and more informative/interesting/solid each time. Would stretch their writing skills, possibly make them more effective communicators.
Like I said before, a discipline like engineering is definitely going to have a feel of redundancy to it, since there are so many facts that need to be regurgitated. But that’s why you learn any discipline in stages – of course you’ll encounter the same information the second time around, but this time you’ll have a better understanding of it and can build upon it. I’m sure your senior paper on thermodynamics will need to be a lot more detailed and cohesive than your 101 paper was…
Podkayne said it best. We do not spring fully-formed and informed from high school into college, from grad school into the real world. Our entire lives are a continual learning process. Not taking the opportunity to expand upon what you already know is merely denying yourself the ability to adapt in a rapidly changing world.
BTW, treis – I’m sorry to hear that your educational experience has not been fulfilling, or challenging to your existing knowledge thus far. That sounds like a failure on the part of the department and the faculty. I hope that in future classes you’ll finally have an instructor that’s more interested in cultivating minds than test scores.
When I submitted an essay in college six years after I had actually written it, with no change whatsoever, I didn’t get a smack down for it, I got a thank you for the privilege of reading this essay from the department chair. Apparently it didn’t need modifications.
Unless he crawled up my ass and pitched a tent, he wouldn’t. Which is why I’d never bring it up, just slide it in there and figure that if it’s never been published online and it wasn’t read by someone he knows, he has a slim to nil chance of figuring it out.
I’ve never dropped out of college.
Well that depends. I can assure you that I worked very hard in many classes while I was in school, particularly in those classes where I stood to learn something valuable. The Intro to Telecommunications class, however, was a flying joke and the only reason I took it was that it was ‘required’. It got about five minutes of my attention a week - long enough to print out that week’s PowerPoint slides. The ‘projects’ were cake, and I walked away from it with an A. Guess I shouldn’t tell you that half the time I didn’t show up to hear the professor ramble for three hours about Internet Explorer?
Where’d I say that? I said that my time is a finite resource, and it will be applied where it is of most benefit to me. Not where Professor Dickwad thinks it should be.
Like I said, I never dropped out of college.
I could evaluate the nuances of belly button lint, but that doesn’t mean I’ll learn anything from it. When several projects are going on at once, and one of them is a boring nightmare of crap I’ve already demonstrated I understand, guess which one’s not getting the effort?
There wasn’t much redundancy in my engineering program. Those professors were too busy having us design stuff. Once we got past Ohm’s Law the first time, they didn’t make us spend a week learning it again the next fucking semester.
It’s cute that you think I’m a dropout though.
It was my assumption from putting together
and
and
Had you said, “I was a student but have since graduated,” this point would have been more clear. It might have actually lent more credence to your position the first time I read it. Anyhow, my mistake. Apologies.
And your point is - what? That some institutions allow this? (you aren’t clear whether this was work that was done previously at the institution; I’m assuming that it wasn’t). And if it wasn’t, then so what? I’m sure there are plenty of old papers that students have written in high school that were submitted as work for college classes. As far as the college is concerned, you’ve demonstrated that you’ve learned the material and completed all the necessary requirements for earning a grade for the course (assuming, of course, that the work you submitted was done outside the college in question, and that there isn’t any formal policy of disallowing this practice. The rules and ethics of this can vary from institution to institution). Whether you’ve actually gotten something from the class or learned something new is entirely up to you.
Or was it rather the smug satisfaction of knowing that you got away with something?
So bully for you - you got away with submitting the same work for two different courses. Note, of course, whether this is against school policy or not (if it’s not, no biggie). If discovered, don’t be surprised if someone does get upset if it is against school policy and someone makes a big deal of it.
Except that here in the real world, we do “plagiarize from ourselves.” Regularly. As a matter of fact, the entire publishing world exists on our ability to spin the same nugget of content into several rebranded products with as little change as possible from editors. I would also say (from my own experience) that much of the world of law also rests on “self-plagiarization.” It’s taking a disclosure document that you’ve used describing one biotech firm and tweaking it very, very, slightly before using it for another biotech firm.
Good lord, if I were your boss, and you wasted time redoing the same work for Johnson that you alread did for Smith, I’d fire your ass - unless the work actually needed to be redone, which generally speaking, it does not.
Podkayne and you seem to believe that the work itself is supposed to be the point - but no, it isn’t. Not really. If the student already knows the topic and has the skill, then your job is done. Lucky you! Yes, it’d be nice if you didn’t have to waste space in your class on people who don’t really need it, but in the credentialized world in which we live - tough.
Personaly, I wouldn’t have a problem with a student submitting work done in a previous class if the work I required was exactly the same. But it’s rarely the case that the assignment is exactly the same. Usually, some modifications are required. And for many instructors, it’s perfectly acceptable to submit modified versions of previously submitted work.
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Who said anything about doing the exact same work? Different tasks often require that work previously done needs modification. To me, it would be perfectly acceptable to submit previous work done if the previous assignment was exactly the same as my assignment. However, this is rarely the case. Also, it is perfectly acceptable (to me) to submit previous work done if it is modified to meet the specifications I ask for.
No, I haven’t made that point, but I believe that Podkayne has. I think it largely depends on the class being taught. For some classes the work itself is important; others less so. Which is which is open for debate; obviously for Podkayne he/she feels the work is important for the course he/she teaches.
And as long as we, as educators, are required to act as the determinants for those credentials, then you’ll have to deal with how those credentials are metted out - tough 
In engineering, product is the point. Getting the product done, up to or beyond spec, by deadline.
Why would it be any different for something I did in my free time as opposed to something I did for another course with the same assignment?
Thankfully there is such a thing as ‘test out’.
I don’t think the work is the entire point. I think that the learning is the most important goal. And I don’t think that learning occurs without effort. And it’s just human nature, that 95% of people won’t put forth the effort unless you assign homework and grade it.
If you don’t believe me, just look at this thread. Multiple people believe that if they get an assignment similar to something they’ve done in the past, they should be allowed to just turn in old work, they shouldn’t have to put forth any effort, and don’t want to learn anything more either. Is it because they’re just lazy, or because they think they don’t have anything more to learn? The latter would be a tragic failure of the educatonal process.
It’s very disheartening to me that so many people seem think that my job as a professor is to present the material and then evaluate students like a DMV license examiner, to check off a row of boxes signifying that the student has “adequate” skill and “adequate” knowledge. I just don’t think of my work that way. My assignments aren’t hoops to jump through to demonstrate that you’re “adequate.”
Cripes. My grammar, spelling and punctuation in the post above clearly represents a tragic failing of the “educatonal” process. Sorry.
Or sometimes you reach a point where there is no more valuable information to acquire about a topic. It seems you don’t think it’s possible to exhaust a subject. I assure you, it is.
It probably seems like a personal insult to you if your course doesn’t offer any new challenge to a student, but that may in fact be the case. If you have a class of a hundred, there’s a chance that one student in that class is sitting there because something higher than ‘C’ has to fill that box on their transcript and may not learn anything at all from you. Not every course is an opportunity for pearls of wisdom. Some of them are called ‘fluff’ for a reason.
I don’t pay you to be my mother. I don’t pay you to set goals for me. I don’t pay you to ram knowledge down my throat. I pay you to assist in my quest of knowledge.
You know believe it or not there are people in your class that don’t want to be there and don’t give two shits about what you are teaching. A good number of humanities majors absolutely hate calculus and would be much happier if they didn’t have to take it. An equal number of math majors would be much happier if they didn’t have to sit through humanities. Why do they? Becuase if you want an engineering job in this country you must have a little slip of paper saying you have a degree. Why do educators insist on forcing students take classes that they couldn’t give two shits about?
I hate to break it to you but that is your job. I pay you to help me on my way to knowledge and than evaluate me on that knowledge and eventually give me a piece of paper saying I learned stuff.
Colleges have gotten to caught up with this renaissance education bullshit forcing people to diversivy. Why can’t people go to school and learn just physics or just math or just sociology or just whatever they want?
Why do you keep insisting that it’s OK for you to do something when a policy of the instititution says you can’t? Again, to beat a dead horse - many instructors don’t have an issue with re-submitting previous work. If an instructor does have an issue, they usually don’t if some modifications are done to it. If an instructor (or an institution) does have a strict “no submission of previously done work”, then it’s best to avoid that instructor (or institution) altogether.
And hopefully you’ve taken advantage of it, for precisely the reasons you’ve been railing about. Institutions (and instructors) usually don’t want to force students to reapeat the same assignments/requirements if it can be avoided.
And how, pray tell, do I assist you in your quest for knowledge?
Really? Gee, I guess I’ve been locked up in the ole’ ivory tower that I hadn’t noticed :rolleyes:
And who’s forcing you to go to an institution where you have to take classes to don’t want to take? There are plenty of institutions of higher-learning that require minimal course work in “pointless and useless” classes.
And it’s not solely educators that require students to take courses not geared strictly towards one’s career choice. Believe or not, employers want it as well. Rather than have them spend additional costs in educating and training a work-force, they save money by having colleges and universities provide the training. WIth the added benefit thay they also don’t have to help you write a coherent research paper, or compute compand interest, or some other such “nonesense” that would increase their costs in doing business.
You’re willing to pay me for my help, yet complain when I offer it. Mind telling me how I should my job if you don’t mind me telling you how you should do yours?
Sorry to bust your bubble, but colleges and universities weren’t initially established for those wishing to train for a specific career. It used to be largely the bastion of the well-to-do (it still is, in some respects) - you know, those that didn’t have to work for a living. They were the only ones with the money (and the ability) to spend time in pursuit of a well-rounded liberal arts education. You know, all those useless classes like philosophy, music, art, literature, and the like. 99% of the rest of humanity worked for a living. And those that got a liberal education? Why they went on to fulfill their station in life as those that ruled the rest of humanity.
It’s only been within the last 100 years or so that commercial interests have driven colleges to expand on their course offerings, providing a wider array of education and training opportunities. 100 years ago, if you wanted to be an engineer you went to work for a company and got trained there. Today, companies can save money by channeling potential workers towards the colleges and universities that can provide the training (of course, colleges and universities benefit too - more students to teach).
They can - as mentioned above, there are many institutions of higher learning that offer degrees without having to take unecessary courses. In any event, you shouldn’t direct all your vituperation towards educators. Maybe you should be asking employers “why don’t you offer education and training in courses necessary for me to work for you, rather than have me go to a college where I have to take other courses I don’t want to take?” After all, it’s not the educators that are asking for the credentuals. It’s the employers.
Lectures, assigned reading, homework, papers etc. etc.
There are not plenty and certainly not many of the top universities. I haven’t heard of one that doesn’t require humanities GECs for science majors and math/science requirements for Humanities majors. If you could point out some I would be much oblidged.
I never said any of that stuff was nonsense but writing research papers or compounding interest aren’t hard things to do. Many people don’t need to take additional classes to learn how to do these things. If you don’t know how to write a decent paper or do basic math by all means take some classes that teach you how to but I know what I can and cannot do let ME decide what classes I need to take. Its also fair to note that we aren’t talking basic math like compounding interest we are talking about in my case 8-10 humanities classes for science majors and 8-10 science classes for Humanities majors.
Excuse me? I sure as fuck will tell you how to do your job YOU ARE WORKING FOR ME! I never complained about offering help I am talking about taking it and ramming it down my throat.
Employers want a piece of paper saying that I have completed training as an engineer. In order to get that piece of paper I have to do what the University says I have to. They really could give fuck all if I studied luxemburgs culture or whatever required GEC I had to take.
The reason that I get so worked up about this is that I really don’t have time to do pointless stuff at college. Thats what redoing a paper is its pointless I have learned the skills necessary already and demonstrated that I have them. I want to learn at college but I want to learn about stuff I want to. I am in class 22-23 hours a week and as a general rule I spend 2x that time on homework outside of class. Add in activities, sports and socializing pretty much every minute of my day is spent doing something. I am not complaining thats actually what I love about college, my point is that my time is extremely valuable to me and when in my mind someone is wasting it I get very pissed off.
Engineering firms do offer additional training, six sigma and advanced engineering courses are required at the place I am currently working.
Students don’t pay instructors. Students pay the university–or in many cases, the state–for the opportunity of taking classes. The instructors answer to their departments and divisions. Certainly, they have a responsibility to impart knowledge, information and corrections as necessary, but the students do not get to dictate terms to them. The students are supposed to follow the syllabus, which the instructors are supposed to base on the course requirements and other mandates.
It wouldn’t hurt you to bone up at least on fused sentences, since your posts are full of them. It takes me twice as long to read them as it should since you can’t be bothered to put a period or semicolon where it belongs.
Lots of 2-year or community colleges offer associate degrees in engineering. DeVry Institute is a four-year institution that primarily offers courses for the technically inclined.
Many liberal arts colleges offer degrees in thr humanities with little math and science requirements. My fiancee got a degree from one and the majority of the classes she took where in the social sciences and humanities. They offered (and she took) sciences courses that didn’t require lots of math to complete the course.
Really? See my first post in this thread. I have difficulty in getting students to properly format a bibliography; this even after they have supposedly taken a course that covers this technical detail as part of that class (the pre-requisite for taking my class is that a student has successfully completed English composition; so I should expect that students have some working knowledge/ability in writing papers).
And you’re telling me that it’s not difficult for students to write a paper with a properly formatted bibliography? After they should already know even before they take my class? Even after I explain how to do it my class? Even if I provide a sample paper that clearly shows them how to properly format a bibliography?
What does the above tell you? Because that is what many of us educators have to deal with at times.
See above - one of the reasons why colleges and universities require science/math for humanities majors and humanities/social sciences for science majors is that we have no way of knowing whether a student has learned these types of knowledge already. Furthermore, it’s not just the colleges/univiersities that want these course to be taught to all students. It’s also the employers who want students to take these courses as well. If they didn’t, then surely there would be more institutions of higher learning that didn’t have them, no?
And indeed, there are. You’ve heard of community colleges, have you not? These institutions of higher learning (which is where I teach, by the way) were speficially designed for just such a purpose. In other words, what drives much of our curriculum is based on what the local community wants. Especially the business community.
See vivalostwages response below. And it not the intention of the instructor to"cram material down your throat." You do have options. As mentioned above by treis, you can often test out of a course.
Again, make your complaint to your employer. And sure, your employer may not care whether you took European history or 19th century English literature or whatever. But he/she IS going to be concerned whether you are able to write coherently (English courses), whether you are able to apply logic and reasoning to solve a problem (Logic/math courses), whether you are able to give a presentation (Speech), whether you are able to work well with others (Psychology/Sociology/Political Science courses), whether you are able to provide analysis/critical thinking to a particular problem (Logic/Science courses), whether you are candidate for a position overseas (Foreign Language/International Relations/Geography courses), whether you can manage a budget (Business/Economics courses), whether you are an engaging conversationalist (to help bring in business or to network - Religion/Literature/History/Philosophy) and the like. All the above course may not be directly tied to your career aspirations as an engineer (geting in the door); but they will certainly help you in becoming a better, more experienced, and well-rounded engineer (advancing your career). At least, that’s the idea, anyway.
Pointless to you - not necessarily to those teaching the course. Again, you have options. Test out of the course. Drop out or don’t take the course in question. See if the instructor will accept work done previously. If not possible, see if it can be modified and submitted. There’s rarely two classes that will require the exact same assignments, anyway.
I was a college student once, too. My time was just as valuable to me then as it is to you now. And it’s still valuable to me now. If you feel you’d be better served by not taking my class, so be it - you don’t have to. You’ll be saving valuable time for the both of us.
We all know that policy is never wrong.
I most certainly did. It was a lot less a waste of money than sitting through a class where the professor believed he or she was my mommy and had to make sure that I had plenty of ‘hard work’ to do.
Or maybe I knew that your class would be a fluff class that’d stick an easy A on the transcript and I wouldn’t really have to work for it during the same semester that I had 18 credits of difficult, project oriented engieering classes going on. If you were one of the professors I offended by doing that, well, too bad. I didn’t go to college to give my professors maximum benefit. I went to give me maximum benefit. Sometimes that meant throwing a fluff class on the schedule just to line up another ‘A’.
Yes but ultimately the university answers to its customers the students.
Heavens my grammer isn’t perfect on a message board?
And exactly how far do you think you will get with these ‘degrees’ in engineering?
I don’t know where your fiancee went or what his situation was. I do know that most of my friends scattered across large universities in the midwest have similiar experiences to mine.
If a student can’t properly format a bibliography on their own or get off their ass and get help than they deserve to fail. You shouldn’t hold back the ones of us that are prepared to take your class and waste our time by going over stuff we already know. Punish those who are unprepared for your class not those that are.
It tells me that you have a bunch of lazy students who can’t be bothered to get help when they need it. Fail them they certainly earned it.
Well yes and no. Employers want students out of MIT, UofI, Georgia Tech, Standford etc. etc. becuase of the reputation of their engineering schools. Its pretty easy to get a job as an engineer if you graduate from one of these schools. If you go to Podunk U it would be much harder to get a job even if your coursework was more rigorous becuase it doesn’t have the reputation of the aforementioned schools.
Lets say we have a student deciding between Podunk U and UofI. Podunk U requires only 3 GECs while UofI requires 10. Podunk U has a slightly better engineering program than UofI. Now UofI has the reputation as a top engineering school but Podunk U doesn’t. That student is probably going to pick UofI becuase while Podunk U’s 3 GECs are appealing he realizes that the UofI degree is much more valuable than Podunk U’s.
I personally find it hard to believe that there is a demand for a 2 year engineering degree.
Just as often, if not more so you can’t test out of these courses. I also might not know enough of the information presented in the course to pass the test.
Of course that is the idea but I feel it I should decide whether I need to work on these skills not someone else.
I am sorry but your opinion doesn’t matter. Lets say you want to buy a car and you think gas mileage is the most important thing. If the salesmen says no performance is the important feature in a car you would tell him to go fuck himself. Its easy to walk away and go to a different car dealership but its not easy to up and transfer to another school. If I get an assignment I feel is a waste of my time I waste my time and do it. I don’t have another option.
You’re right nobody is holding a gun to our head making us take your class but what other options do we have? I want a degree from a top engineering school and all top engineering schools have more or less the same amount of GECs you have to take.
Well, obviously I can’t convince either treis or catsix the merits of my position. It’s perfectly clear to me that what I teach has no intrinsic value (at least with respect to their educational and career aspirations). Or rather, that they have a problem with how a particular instution sets policy with respect to cheating and plagerism, and how that translates into how an instructor may teach a class.
Even though many (if not most) instructors have a rather liberal attitude with respect to submitting previous work (for arguments sake, let’s call it a term paper done in one class that’s submitted for another class). For my class, if the assignment was exactly the same as in the previous class, then I personally would have no problem with a student resubmitting the term-paper. If the assignment were similar, again, for me personally, I would have no problem with the student submitting the term-paper done in a previous class, if the paper is modified to meet the specifications for the assignment in my class.
But, yet, somehow this apparently still isn’t satisfactory.
It’s obvious to them that many professors are nothing more than task-masters and baby-sitters, at least with respect to the courses they feel have to take because of the “silly” GEC requirements foisted upon them by the professors and admistrators of the institution. Never mind that faculty and administration are often beholden to others for what they offer, what they are required to teach, what the criteria are used in determining whether a student is sufficiently “educated” or not, and the like (board of directors, alumni, large donors, the local community, employers; local, state, and federal government).
In another life, I may have had pause to agree with them. But a funny thing happens when you become part of an institution that is emeshed in a larger society with many other institutions. You start to see how all of these institutions that make up the larger society are interconnected and interact. You start to see that while a policy may appear foolish at first glance, it’s just one policy in a bundle of policies that are part of the institution. And these policies are part of a larger policy bundle - policies from other institutions combined together throughout the society.
Now, policies often change to reflect the workings that take place in an institution. But many times, these policy changes aren’t made solely from the instutional perspective only. They are often changed with respect to the changes taking place in other institutions. And the cummulative affect of these changes are reflected in the wider society.
And with respect to institutions of higher learning, as with any other large institution, change is often slow. But change is taking place. As I teach at a community college, we (faculty and adminstrators) are most attuned to the demands made on us by our students and our community. And we have made those changes accordingly.
I suspect that in the coming years both treis and catsix will see an increasing number of colleges and universities reduce the number of GEC courses students are required to take in order to a receive a degree. And there will come a day when it will be possible for students to receive a college or university degree where students will have to take zero GEC courses in order to receive a degree. I’m sure both of them will be quite happy with that. Yes, change is coming, I do not doubt that. Whether it is for the better, well, no one knows for certain.
What I do know is that if the above change takes place (zero GEC courses to get a degree), then those colleges and universities will, in effect, become glorified trade schools, guilds for training young men and women into specialized fields. I’m sure that in many places, the old tradition of students receiving a liberal arts education will survive. They may even co-exist side-by-side on the same campus with the trade schools. But there will be no more MIT, no Georgia Tech, no Stanford as we traditionally know them. The policies and traditions that bound students, faculty, staff, and adminstrators together on a university campus, that also bound them together with other colleges and universities in the wider society, will be severed. Once severd, then no one can say for certain what new policies and traditions will rise up to replace the old ones.
Sadly, the changes taking place are probably too slow for you to benefit. But I’m quite certain that your kids or your grandkids will relish in being able to get an engineering degree from Geogria Tech without having to take GEC courses. Of course, it remains to be seen whether this degree will be as prestigious as it once was. Change often has a funny way of creating unintended consequences.
In any event, it was good debating with those of you who provided responses - and in the Pit, no less :). treis and catsix, as current and former students, respectively, I wish you all the best (even though we disagree). If I’ve misconstrued any of your arguments, I apologize.