slykar
Joined 8 years ago
Joined 8 years ago
Chances are you will have a similar experience. I'm not speaking about a single professor. I'm speaking about 9 out of 10. I'm not blaming professors tough.
My friends have similar experience at other universities in Poland. Friends who went to German universities have a completely different experience. They actually use some LMS, provide online recordings of the classes and spend 1/3rd of the time at university.
> People shouldn't just accept this sort of thing as normal
It's not "normal", but it's the norm. It's not the fault of the professors, because the truth is they should not teach in the first place, but the education system requires them to.
> make a complaint to the course leader that the lecturer isn't teaching you well enough.
There's no such thing here as the course leader. Most of the time you have a prof. responsible for the theory and another one for the practice.
You can complain to the dean (what multiple students did), but there's no replacement or no one cares.
I don't want to put any blame on the teachers here. I see this as a systemic issue.
Listening to a professor speaking to himself from a distance of 10 meters is an awful experience compared to a video recording that you can stop/rewind. Heck, you can even take some proper notes that you will actually understand!
For labs it's not like you get any help either. You just have to follow some instructions point by point and if you do not understand something, tough luck, the professor has already moved to the next exercise.
The worst part is that you have to spend 6-8 hours a day, 5 days a week like this and then you still need to find online materials to actually learn the thing. Some people have to work too.
Did I mention 2 hours of commute time every day?
If I've found out some website is using my upload bandwidth without my consent I would just quit using it.
It's a dick move to utilize user's resources.
Person next to you has the same low quality notes you do. In my group we designated a single person to take notes and after the class you just snapped a photo, since no other materials were provided. Other people were listening and trying to understand the subject. Taking notes is distracting you from learning.
Making friends in a class of 100-200 people is hard. My friend went to a Berlin university. You are just a number there. I find it much easier to engage in a discussion using a forum.
> Meet older students
How do you approach them? You have no idea who they are. You are never in class with them. University is basically the same model as high school here. You are not picking subjects or classes, you have to follow a script. You only meet students of your year.
There are some sorts of after hours interest circles, but they start after your 6 hours of learning.
Peer learning can also be done online or after an online course.
The good parts of university are the ones that can be done outside of it, hence there's no need to visit the building at all.