Assignments in university are often one-hit wonders for students, slaved over for the purpose of a mark and then discarded in the trash, but they don’t have to be, according to one Carleton professor.
Jim Davies, associate professor of cognitive science, said he believes assignments that are just graded and then thrown in the trash are a waste of time for students.
“I try to give assignments to students that are useful to somebody other than the students who are trying to learn . . . I try to make assignments that can be useful to other researchers or other students,” Davies said.
“It’s not a waste in the sense that the student gets educated and it’s used for generating a grade, but it’s a waste that it could be put to even more use. That’s where the waste is happening,” he said.
Davies likened the situation to that of a baking class, where the final project is to make a cake. These cakes are made, graded, and then discarded in the garbage after the class is done.
“That’s a waste,” Davies said. “It was useful for learning and because you got a grade, but somebody could’ve eaten the cake.”
Some of the strategies he implements in his own class to make the most of students’ work include summaries of papers that have yet to be summarized. Instead of having an entire class write summaries for the same paper, he gives a list of many different options and allows for students to choose ones that interest them.
After the summaries are written, Davies compiles them on a website that now has over 200 student-written summaries. This way, students get their name published and their work can be accessed by other students and researchers too.
He also has students create flashcards for individual lectures, which helps with memorization for the student creating them, but also helps future students navigate the class easily.
Aladdin Daher, a third-year legal studies student at Carleton, said his own university education has been okay, but that he is very open to alternative teaching methods like Davies suggests.
“I feel like if we have alternative teaching methods placed into the courses then we can actually get more out of it, especially if you’re summarizing a class and giving it to future generations,” Daher said.
He also said that having his work published would encourage him to work more diligently because he knows it will be online and associated with his name.
However, not all faculty are getting on board with the innovative teaching methods. Chantal Dion, a French professor at Carleton with a research interest in education, said she thinks traditional teaching methods should not be dismissed completely.
“We call them traditional because they’re methods that have proven that they do something,” Dion said.
She said that doesn’t mean we should shy away from finding new ways of teaching that are more fitting for new learners, but that reflection and awareness thinking should be a larger part of our university education.
“University is not a place where you’re selling cars,” she said. “We’re into deepening knowledge. What Professor Davies calls wasting time . . . I call it investing in knowledge.”
