Re: Radio trailers for DAB

John wrote:
> DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
>
>>>> You can just picture him in the class-room now, can't
>>>> you...
>>>
>>> No, I cant!!!
>>
>>
>> Think about the character traits of all the worst teachers you had at
>> school and roll them into one human being - that's my image of the
>> teacher John Porcella.
>
>
> I was talking to a Professor in the electrical department at the
> University of Southampton the other week and he talked about the
> students which start every year lack the fundamental understanding
> of Mathematics and the Sciences. Therefore to educate these potential
> engineers the University these days has to teach Mathematics from
> GCSE upwards and this is done over two and in some cases three years,
> which is absolutely ridiculous.


Are you sure he wasn't including the foundation year as one of the
years? Engineering subjects are very heavily maths-based and if you
can't do maths then you can't pass the exams. I do agree though that
it's a very real problem.

At the uni I went to at undergrad level - one of the biggest uni's for
engineering - they split us up for maths in 1st year into, IIRC, those
that got an A or B grade at A-level and those that did not. I did not,
because I hadn't done maths A-level, but I wouldn't say the maths was
easy. First maths lecture was on complex numbers. I walked into the
lecture 10 minutes late, and there was this German bloke with a thick
accent, wild hair and dressed all in black going on about imaginary
numbers. To be perfectly honest, I *** myself, because I thought if
this is what university proper is going to be like I'm not going to
understand a word of it, because in my underdeveloped mathematical
brain, I thought that the square root of -1 cannot exist. Anyway, it was
just an initial scare, and Engineering Mathematics by Stroud explained
everything.

Overall, I'd say they didn't go easy on us, and we were taught maths
very well. A measure of how comprehensively they teach you maths can be
determined from how well you can understand engineering text books,
because they don't pull their punches mathematically, and I'd say they
did teach us everything we needed to know in order to understand the
text books for all the subjects they taught on the course. I did change
courses at the end of 2nd year, which meant that I did need to learn
some extra maths concepts that were applicable to electronic engineering
but not relevant to mechanical engineering (which is what I had been
studying), but I don't think that's a bad reflection on the maths taught
on the mech eng course.

The year before I started my degree I was on a foundation course, and
that was shocking, because it consisted of mainly people that had failed
their A-levels so they couldn't get onto a degree. The work effectively
consisted of being taught maths A-level and a few other relatively easy
things. The calibre of the students on that course was abysmally low,
either because they weren't up to it in the first place or they simply
didn't work at all. And the shocking thing was the vast majority of
people that took the exams at the end of the year did pass and were
therefore allowed to go on to study the degree course. I took the
foundation course at an ex-poly, and hence my view that students from
ex-poly's aren't very good (which I think you've disagreed with me about
in the past, but I'm just saying it as I saw them at the time). I
honestly couldn't see how virtually any of them could've passed the
degree I took at a better uni, so I'll always wonder how many of them
did pass at that ex-poly. I do reckon they go really easy on students at
ex-poly's because of my experience there. And that's why I think degrees
from ex-poly's devalue degrees from the far better universities, because
a lot of HR department staff don't have the slightest idea which are the
best and which are the worst uni's apart from the obvious ones like
Oxbridge.

I find it hard to believe that students that get into Southampton Uni
elec eng department are as bad as maths as that professor said, because
Southamption has one of the best elec eng departments in the country, so
the number of A-level points needed to get onto the course should really
be high. But I'm not disputing what he said, other than I reckon he was
overstating the problem a bit.


> When the University gives feed back to local teachers and various
> government departments they all protest and state that all these
> students are passing exams with excellent results.
>
> To me that further proves that modern teachers are teaching subjects
> they are not prepared to do and that GCSE's and A levels are not worth
> the paper they are written on.


I think it's self-evident that if GCSE and A-level marks go up
continually over, what, 15 to 20 years or so, there's something gone
wrong. Big time. A lot of the assessment these days consists of
coursework, so the exam element has been diminished, and although some
may disagree, I think exams are the best way to assess students, because
it differentiates between those that can do it and those that can't in a
set time, whereas anybody can do coursework if they spend enough time
doing it.

You also have to wonder about whether students cheat on the coursework.
If they've all got to complete the same questions then these days this
is well open to abuse. Some students at uni cheat all the time on
coursework, largely because everybody has computers and access to the
Internet, and I don't see any reason why this would be different for
school pupils.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

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