a journal of a researcher

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Western teaching and eastern teaching

Educated in China, I moved around the world to pursue my career and excellence in academics. I see the contrasts in both systems. In the Western system, the teaching and learning responsibility is falling on the shoulders of the profs. The professors have to be smart, excellent, kind, and expressive. They ought to make the lectures not only interesting, but also entertaining. The students suppose to be able to understand the lectures right away in the classroom. In addition, they have very little homework to do. In the eastern system, the professors are more respected in the classroom and in the society. Education is not a service, rather a given to the students. The students are supposed to work hard and finish a big work load of homework. But the eastern system does not encourage students to go beyond the lines.

So the western students have less formed ground in theories and knowledge than the eastern students. But if they are good, they can use the theories more flexible. The problem is I am not sure the western students can face the hardship of research. Maybe that is why more and more international students filling in the graduate schools.

What want is that the students have to be properly trained to the future CS career. I need to give them enough and necessary trainings.

2 Comments:

  • Actually, you can pretty much give your students the homeworks you want. You can be as nasty as you want. You are the boss!

    My experience has been that too much homework is a waste of time, however. Students do it, but they don't learn more.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:42 AM  

  • That is exactly the different thinking. Why do you think more homework is not necessary? At least they can experience more, think more and remember more. Here, I found they do not do enough exercises to master a programming language. The interview questions are harder than our exams. When can they learn this?

    I dare not to give more homework to the students. The student evaluation system is not so good. The professors are evaluated by their students. In fact, the teaching effect should be evaluated by how much the students can learn by throwing them a test. Now, higher rating strongly correlated to higher grades the students receive.

    By Blogger flydragon, at 3:54 PM  

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