One class I am taking right now involves reading 3 or 4 studies or journal articles each week then writing a summary of the strengths and limitations of each. Then, in class, one student presents the article over 10 minutes, then we discuss it. This could be a good way to learn how to critically analyze the primary literature, but it seems to be just a waste of time. We have to read the articles as preparation for the discussion, yet we are also forced to sit through a ten minute presentation over the article. It feels very redundant. The presentations are usually pretty bad, too. Many people write a good outline, but then just read it, almost word-for-word. The only thing worse than listening to someone do a presentation word-for-word is having a copy of the outline in front of you so you can see all the things they misread or present incorrectly.
The organization of this class is also very higgledy-piggledy. There seems to be a disconnect between the lead instructor/"course master" (I have always thought this term to be pretty funny – makes me think of a Darth Vader- or Voldermort-type arrangement) and the people who lead each discussion section. Expectations are often unclear and only given to students hours before a deadline or just after the assignment has been turned in. As someone who is so compulsive about organization, this bothers me to no end. I'm just glad I got the section leader who is most lax about assignments. As long as we get the gist of the assignment, we get close to full marks. Other sections' assignments get nit-picked for each little technicality. I feel bad for them, but I can't complain since I'm not in that boat.
I had to give a presentation today about a review article on Chemotherapy-Induced Nausea and Vomiting. For some background, we just got done with a grueling 4 weeks of lectures on Chemotherapy and an exam (mere hours before I prepared this presentation) that was 22 pages long. The outline we are supposed to use to present our articles is designed for such things as randomized-controlled-trials, which are much more complicated that this article I was assigned to present (which was just an overview of a topic). So the last thing I wanted to do after a solid weekend of studying and a long exam was to read an article giving basic information about a topic for which I had already memorized all of the guidelines. I managed to write my presentation outline without even reading the article. I thank the IB program in high school for teaching me that skill (when I mastered the art of participating in discussions and writing papers about books I hadn't read). I don't feel too bad about not reading the article, though, since last week when someone asked a complicated question about one of those studies we were supposed to have read, our instructor admitted that she "ran out of time and didn’t actually read it." I can't see any reason that I should read all these articles when the instructor isn't going to take the time to do the same.
It's too bad that this class was such a combination of useless busywork, circular discussions, and wasted time, since the subject matter could actually be useful in the future. I did learn some things about how to evaluate the scientific literature, but I think I could have learned a lot more with a better-designed course that was founded on better organization and inter-instructor communication. Throughout the quarter, I felt like I learned nothing and that the only purpose the course served was to drive me crazy, but looking back, I guess I did get a little smarter.
One more paper to write and 5 more hours of class until Thanksgiving…I can't wait for 4:30 tomorrow afternoon!
No comments:
Post a Comment