Identity crisis in our universities

**the_wildthing** · October 26th, 2006 02:25 AM

Nasa tao yan. Some people actually learn for learning's sake. It's not everyone.

**niky** · October 26th, 2006 12:36 PM

Originally Posted by bender

UP really has no choice as they were not able to commercialize their vast land holdings. The facilities were not really maintained but it was the quality of teachers that made UP what it is. But in recent years, a lot of instructors went to La Salle, Ateneo & UAAP because of the relatively low pay they were getting because of the salary standardization law. They needed the increase just to avoid the detereoration from getting worse.

With regards to the choice between programmed/course based learning and problem based learning: courses are designed to give you information about certain subjects. It is up to you to try to apply what you have learned into real life situations and convert that information into knowledge.
People always tell me to think out of the box. My answer is that you have to be in a box first before you can think out of it.

It's sad what's happening to the state of teaching in UP. UP is lucky that it has some distinguished professors who are willing to sacrifice to uplift the quality of education in that school, but a lot of teachers have divided loyalties... simply because they need to feed themselves.

RE: programmed versus problem based: It's possible to incorporate, but the benefits of problem-based over a mixed traditional/problem based program are huge.

Take medicine, for example. What's the use of memorizing the innervation, origin and insertion of each muscle in one year, when the nearest application you're going to have for this info is two years later.

In problem based learning, you learn what you need to know to actually do something. After one year, a PBL-tutored doctor will be able to treat common ailments, diagnose common complaints, perform emergency resuscitation, etcetera... After two years, the same student will be able to do more in-depth analysis, know what lab tests to request given certain symptoms...

Before they graduate, these guys will be able to perform simple operations.

In a traditional program, by the second year, all a med student will have in his head is a ton of trivia. It's only by the upper years that he starts to practice all of this.

It's not thinking out of the box. It's thinking about the box as a whole instead of piece by piece.

...it's the difference between reading about sewing and having someone show you how to do it.

It's just good teaching-learning technique, actually: "I hear, I forget... I read, I remember... I do, I understand."

**swimstroke** · October 26th, 2006 12:52 PM

Tama, hindi dapat puro memorize, application agad dapat para mas ok ang comprehension and retention. Tuturuan ka about cerebral palsy, kung anong mga dapat mong hanapin, etc. pero walang actual patient na nasa harap mo. Mukha kang timang na nagmimimic ng spasticity, for example. Ang hirap, hahalukayin mo sa baol lahat ng natutunan mo for the past 4 years para sa internship mo sa 5th year.

**uls** · October 26th, 2006 01:11 PM

mag memorize....

sa galing mag memorize naka pasa at naka graduate.

mission accomplished diba? may degree na. may diploma na.

isnt that the whole point?

hehe

**mbeige** · October 26th, 2006 04:26 PM

Can you blame the students? I mean, you don't need all those courses to finish the course talaga dahil kung iisipin mo, you've taken English courses in elementary. You've taken them in high school. And you take them again in college. Is that too much learning? Some students think so.

While others are very good at memorizing, using codes, patterns, formulas, etc (yosi), some students simply have a hard time learning these and those ones are the real achievers dahil sila yung naghirap to earn the grade. Besides, a grade is not a reflection of who you are, it's just a grade, a measurement of how you did in school. However, to some students, a grade is everything. Why? Because the system (big shot companies) demand competitive work and the only basis of this is grades. That's why a lot of students don't really care about the hard work learning the subject matter for real, but just pass the courses and get the grade they need to get into the job. It's all about necessity.

Think of it, do we really need school? I mean we can learn things by ourselves, pero to really earn good money (imposed by the society we live in) we have to attend school so we can put up a business/learn how to manage people/work in a company and earn our ranks until we are big shot individuals in our own small worlds.

I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say that I believe there are more people than we expect who are really interested in whatever courses/jobs they are taking.