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    that seems like a good resource indigo. 800 schools should cover all the schools one would want to go to, I am assuming.

    And I like how it breaks it down. Environment, outputs, engagement.

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    Originally Posted by cricket3
    The quick/simplistic answer, as far as I understand it, is that colleges don’t have graduate students or programs. So by definition, one of, if not the main goal, is the education of undergraduate students.

    This is what I understand the specific definition to be, but fwiw when used by many folks in the US the word college takes on a broader meaning. For instance, the institution where I received my higher ed (in the US... many years ago) has both undergrad and graduate programs, and has a reputation as a highly regarded research institution. It is also referred to by both staff, alumni and current students as a "college" - I can't think of one time I've ever heard of it referred to as a university. We also tend to ask people "Where did you go to college?" rather than "Where did you go to University?" (eta - this might be a regional thing?)

    Re the question of which colleges (or universities) have great teaching - access to the teacher is in many ways as important as the quality of teaching. For my kids, it's more inspiring to be in a small class rather than a large lecture hall, and the peers in the classroom play a role in the teaching as they often take in as much or more from the discussion that takes place as they do from what's prepared for the lecture of the day. Being able to meet with a professor during office hours without having to wait in line or having to meet as a group for help is a huge plus. Are the teachers so bogged down with a large number of classes, large number of students, or research that they are not able to spend time with individual students? Lastly, teacher style is a factor that can't be quantified - two of my kids have gone to the same high school and taken classes from the same teachers and had polar opposite learning experiences simply because of the teacher's style and the way they relate to the teacher as individuals.

    The good news is, (just my opinion from having been through one child's college search and in the process of another)... there are a *lot* of good options out there, especially if you attempt to go beyond the mindset of feeling it's necessary to attend one of the elite universities who prides itself on extremely low admissions rates. (please note that I'm not knocking those universities - they're amazing institutions but are often simply out of reach for even many qualified students based on the large number of applications)

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

    Last edited by polarbear; 09/05/19 01:27 PM.
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    I would agree that class size and access to faculty are huge factors, especially now, when so many standard first- and second-year courses use the same small pool of textbooks, with many of the publisher-provided electronic resources (e.g., teaching videos, interactive demonstrations, online problem sets, text-aligned assessments). As students move into upper-division, more-specialized coursework, I think research opportunities become more important.


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    Originally Posted by indigo
    This webpage from CollegRank.Net may help explain the differences between college and university:
    What Is The Difference Between College and University?

    Helpful link, thank you! That is more complex than our system. We have only universities and TAFE (formalized further education not at university level, apprenticeships often involve formal course work at TAFE). Our children rarely "go away" to university unless the course they want is not available locally, or they have another specific reason.

    There are private boarding facilities situated near universities which are used by interstate, overseas and rural students and they generally have "college" in their names but I don't know that much about them as I have never known anyone who used one. Actually I had one semi-rural friend when I was at uni who stayed in one during the week. It's possible they provide tutors and emotional support but I think mostly it's room and meals. They don't offer courses, just somewhere to live near a university.

    Many of our universities hold a percentage of their post graduate places, particularly in popular courses, for their own undergraduate students as an incentive to start out your study with them. Entry is purely on a nationally standardized high school score (with exceptions for certain courses which may also have an audition or interview). Sometimes popular postgraduate courses will be offered as a guaranteed pathway from the undergraduate degree if your high school entrance mark is high enough (ie at the universities which don't offer undergraduate medicine they may offer a guaranteed place in graduate entry medicine, or guaranteed psychology honors year, one uni offers a guaranteed post grad degree of your choice for the highest .05% of students)

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    Originally Posted by tigerhog
    Originally Posted by puffin
    I keep thinking college is the same as our university. You go after high school and for the same reason. Then I read these threads and realise that they are not the same. No help really.


    Why differences have you detected? I have no idea! They still sounded like the same things to me.

    First year classes at universities are 200 students plus. You are not taught, the lecturer stands at the front and lectures you for 50 minutes then leaves. Every lab I ever took was run by a post grad student (one paper may not have been totally). As long as you complete labs no-one knows or cares whether you go to lectures. There are optional tutorial sessions for some papers and a lot of lecturers have office hours but mostly you help and get help from your fellow students. You take only those subjects that relate to your degree so it is unusual for a science student to take an English paper for example. Except for post grad you don't go on to further study. You don't to university then medicine or law university is the medicine and law (this seems to vary in the US).

    College sounds more like an extension of High School. But then many of our high schools are called xyz college.

    Last edited by puffin; 09/06/19 03:52 AM.
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    At college presentations, it is often said that "our courses are taught by professors" (rather than graduate students), but according to a study at a Dutch business school, it makes little difference. The difference in pay between tenure-track professors and graduate students and adjuncts is vast, and substituting cheaper labor is good for students only if some of the cost savings is passed on, which does not seem to happen.

    The Better Teacher: A Professor or Another Student?
    by Shannon Watkins
    James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal
    SEP 6, 2019

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    Originally Posted by puffin
    First year classes at universities are 200 students plus. You are not taught, the lecturer stands at the front and lectures you for 50 minutes then leaves. Every lab I ever took was run by a post grad student (one paper may not have been totally). As long as you complete labs no-one knows or cares whether you go to lectures. There are optional tutorial sessions for some papers and a lot of lecturers have office hours but mostly you help and get help from your fellow students. You take only those subjects that relate to your degree so it is unusual for a science student to take an English paper for example. Except for post grad you don't go on to further study. You don't to university then medicine or law university is the medicine and law (this seems to vary in the US).

    College sounds more like an extension of High School. But then many of our high schools are called xyz college.


    Having studied engineering, which is at a university, the freshman classes were always huge with a lecturer standing in front. Some classes are smaller, like math and as you specialize -- I was civil, so geology and soil mechanics etc. But early lectures were just a professor up there teaching the class, even my hated "heat, mass and momentum" where you really had to follow the diagrams and math. But professors were available for help. And they were professors. That was so long ago, I cannot stand by that now. I have no idea what goes on schools now.

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    Lessons in learning
    Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think
    by Peter Reuell
    Harvard Gazette
    September 4, 2019

    For decades, there has been evidence that classroom techniques designed to get students to participate in the learning process produces better educational outcomes at virtually all levels.

    And a new Harvard study suggests it may be important to let students know it.

    The study, published Sept. 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that, though students felt as if they learned more through traditional lectures, they actually learned more when taking part in classrooms that employed so-called active-learning strategies.

    Lead author Louis Deslauriers, the director of science teaching and learning and senior physics preceptor, knew that students would learn more from active learning. He published a key study in Science in 2011 that showed just that. But many students and faculty remained hesitant to switch to it.

    “Often, students seemed genuinely to prefer smooth-as-silk traditional lectures,” Deslauriers said. “We wanted to take them at their word. Perhaps they actually felt like they learned more from lectures than they did from active learning.”

    ...

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    But what is active learning across subjects? Math, you learn the rules and do problems. You can do active learning in sciences because you do labs. You apply principles in labs and understand how it works.

    Hasn't active learning been applied in languages since the beginning of time, writing and doing plays, doing research and presentations? What is active learning that is new?

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    Originally Posted by Bostonian
    Lessons in learning
    Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think
    by Peter Reuell
    Harvard Gazette
    September 4, 2019
    A blog post about the study:
    Active Learning Works But Student’s Don’t Like It
    by Alex Tabarrok
    Marginal Revolution
    September 9, 2019 at 7:25 am in Education
    A carefully done study that held students and teachers constant shows that students learn more in active learning classes but they dislike this style of class and think they learn less. It’s no big surprise–active learning is hard and makes the students feel stupid. It’s much easier to sit back and be entertained by a great lecturer who makes everything seem simple.

    Despite active learning being recognized as a superior method of instruction in the classroom, a major recent survey found that most college STEM instructors still choose traditional teaching methods. This article addresses the long-standing question of why students and faculty remain resistant to active learning. Comparing passive lectures with active learning using a randomized experimental approach and identical course materials, we find that students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less. We show that this negative correlation is caused in part by the increased cognitive effort required during active learning. Faculty who adopt active learning are encouraged to intervene and address this misperception, and we describe a successful example of such an intervention.

    The authors say that it can help to tell students in advance that they should expect to feel flustered but it will all work out in the end.

    The success of active learning will be greatly enhanced if students accept that it leads to deeper learning—and acknowledge that it may sometimes feel like exactly the opposite is true.

    I am dubious that this will bring students around. An alternative that might help is to discount student evaluations so that teachers don’t feel that they must entertain in order to do well on evaluations. As Brennan and Magness point out in their excellent Cracks in the Ivory Tower:

    Using student evaluations to hire, promote, tenure, or determine raises for faculty is roughly on a par with reading entrails or tea leaves to make such decisions. (Actually, reading tea leaves would be better; it’s equally bullshit but faster and cheaper.)… the most comprehensive research shows that whatever student evaluations (SETs) measure, it isn’t learning caused by the professor.

    Indeed, the correlation between student evaluations and student learning is at best close to zero and at worst negative. Student evaluations measure how well liked the teacher is. Students like to be entertained. Thus, to the extent that they rely on student evaluations, universities are incentivizing teachers to teach in ways that the students like rather than in ways that promote learning.

    It’s remarkable that student evaluations haven’t already been lawsuited into oblivion given that student evaluations are both useless and biased.

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