Back in late February, I wrote a piece in the Charlatan called “Talking Heads Can’t Replace the Traditional Classroom,” which garnered a response from the law course professors Vincent Kazmierski and Brettel Dawson.
LAWS 2908 is a course that is attempting to be fully digital, with in-person labs being taught by teaching assistants in the fall and winter semesters. In my opinion, it is failing faster than a first-year GeeGee.
Once the elephant was in the room, the supervising professor and I arranged a meeting to discuss what we felt worked, what didn’t, and how to improve upon the course in the future.
He also recommended that I re-take the course with the same recorded lectures, but with an actual, trained professor teaching the labs this time around, as opposed to some random TA.
I was also surprised to hear that contract professors in a couple of fourth-year law classes referred to my piece. Now, if I can stroke my ego for a little bit, if some contract professors in the law department were talking about it, then it’s very probable that other contract professors in other departments are also talking about it, too.
Fast forward to this past June 4, where Carleton president Roseann O’Reilly Runte wrote about academia using technology and how that would save money in the Globe and Mail.
Now, stroking my ego just a wee bit more (and feel free to poke my helium-inflated head so it can plummet back down to earth), what made Runte write that opinion piece in the Globe? Gosh, I hope it was me!
Wesley Petite wrote in a recent letter to the Charlatan that he calls Runte’s bluff on saving money, to which I agree. If that is the case, Carleton students would be seeing those savings instead of facing tuition hike that is right up to the maximum 3 per cent.
All this time, I thought Carleton University was an academic institution where students gain knowledge and academic, as well as, life experience—not another one of those corporate conglomerates that just takes your money and says, “Buh-bye.”
I still stand by my February letter that this academic format of “new learning” is ridiculous. No matter what Kazmierski, Dawson, and Runte say, I do believe that we, as students, are getting ripped off paying a tuition amount that should be reserved for having trained professors teaching us, instead of some undergraduate TA who were hardly “the most carefully prepared and supervised TAs in the University.”
That said, re-taking the class with a flesh and blood professor physically in the same room with the students made a massive difference in the learning environment. The method in imparting the material by the professor was very clear, and was certainly more hands-on and approachable than the TA I had the previous go around.
I have nothing personal against TAs, but leave them to do what their job title says: teaching assistant. To get them to actually teach a class is an insult for all parties involved because the ones who I have seen conduct lectures were woefully inadequate.
Where will these “cost-cutting” measures end? With iPads giving us lectures? Oh, wait . . .
