How often do you answer questions in class?

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jc6chan
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05 May 2010, 12:16 pm

Back in the good ol' days before I entered university I answered a lot of questions in some classes. I remember a certain teacher (I think it was math class) told me to stop raising up my hand and let others have a chance to answer. So if I raised my hand, the teacher will need to wait until another person raised their hand.

In university, things get more difficult and I don't always have answers.



Michael_Stuart
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05 May 2010, 12:43 pm

The questions are usually easy enough that if I answered every one of them I'd be there all day. Plus, according to my logic, I'm not the one that's employed to teach others.



tSunshineLove
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05 May 2010, 1:01 pm

I have to intentionally hold back and wait until other people have had a chance to answer. I'll only raise my hand if no one else volunteers. Of course, I've also stopped raising my hand when I think the teacher won't call on me and I just speak instead. This probably works better in college.



zer0netgain
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05 May 2010, 1:25 pm

jc6chan wrote:
Back in the good ol' days before I entered university I answered a lot of questions in some classes. I remember a certain teacher (I think it was math class) told me to stop raising up my hand and let others have a chance to answer. So if I raised my hand, the teacher will need to wait until another person raised their hand.


In many classes, I was just like that.

I wonder how much it annoyed others.



Apera
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05 May 2010, 3:16 pm

Well I get along well with one of my teachers, and we talk about things all the time. But if it's something I don't know, I just try not to make eye contact.

I had one teacher that was a blatant fool. Most of his students knew more about what he taught than he did. He didn't know what several acronyms were, but my friend had been in a Cisco networking class and knew them by heart. He tried to convince the class that fiber optics is faster than cables because photons move faster than electrons, While this is true, it is not the reason - fiber optics cables can carry a nearly infinite number of different frequencies simultaneously, whereas copper wires can mainly just have one signal each. When I tried to explained this to him, he just got all bitchy.

Most of all, when he had us first go on the computers to do these dumb lab things, he gave us a sheet of paper with the folder location of the program. We navigated to the program and ran it, so it could start by teaching us how to use a mouse and keyboard.

I have another lab teacher that essentially just berates you if you ask a question about the vague or incorrect labs. I understand why someone with that knowledge would not want to teach it to a large number of students on a regular basis - I am the same way. But then, why did he go into teaching?


So basically, just be thankful that you are allowed to ask questions.


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kc8ufv
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05 May 2010, 3:41 pm

Apera wrote:
Well I get along well with one of my teachers, and we talk about things all the time. But if it's something I don't know, I just try not to make eye contact.

I had one teacher that was a blatant fool. Most of his students knew more about what he taught than he did. He didn't know what several acronyms were, but my friend had been in a Cisco networking class and knew them by heart. He tried to convince the class that fiber optics is faster than cables because photons move faster than electrons, While this is true, it is not the reason - fiber optics cables can carry a nearly infinite number of different frequencies simultaneously, whereas copper wires can mainly just have one signal each. When I tried to explained this to him, he just got all bitchy.

Most of all, when he had us first go on the computers to do these dumb lab things, he gave us a sheet of paper with the folder location of the program. We navigated to the program and ran it, so it could start by teaching us how to use a mouse and keyboard.

I have another lab teacher that essentially just berates you if you ask a question about the vague or incorrect labs. I understand why someone with that knowledge would not want to teach it to a large number of students on a regular basis - I am the same way. But then, why did he go into teaching?


So basically, just be thankful that you are allowed to ask questions.


Actually, copper can carry multiple simultaneous signals. Your cat-5 UTP is basically 4 100 ohm balanced feedlines in one jacket. As far as multiple simultaneous signals on one wire, that's exactly how television, especially cable television, works. Now, copper has more variable attenuation at different wavelengths than fiber does for light....



Descartes
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05 May 2010, 7:21 pm

I answer questions more in some classes than I do in others. For example, I always jump up at the opportunity to read aloud in Spanish class because I enjoy reading foreign languages.



aleclair
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06 May 2010, 12:01 am

Most of my math professors tend to ask the question "What is the next step of the proof of this theorem?". Most of the time, it's to see if you read the lecture notes or the textbook in advance, but sometimes it's also to see if you have the combination of intuition and formalism to be able to determine how to construct the proof in three seconds [which, amazingly, some people can do!].

I am not good at constructing proofs at the top of my head. But sometimes, the answer is blatantly obvious, and nobody's said it. In one of my classes, there are three people (myself included) that tend to answer the questions.



Avarice
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06 May 2010, 2:18 am

Never. I usually know the answer, and can't believe that nobody else does. But it's not my job to teach the class. If the teacher would stop asking questions and just explain much more work would be covered. Sometimes I whisper the answer to my more social friend and he says it, but I never answered unless asked to.

There isn't even a participation mark, so answering questions is foolish. It's much better to use the time productively rather than listening to the teacher. If i have a textbook to read from anyway.



MathGirl
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06 May 2010, 11:18 am

All the time. Funny how there's another girl with AS in one of my classes and the teacher once pointed at both of us and said something like, somebody else please answer the question besides these two. And we both sit at the opposite ends of the room in the first row. How convenient.
Whenever I get the opportunity to do so, I either answer questions, volunteer to read out loud, or just say something that at least contributes to the class discussion. Sometimes I say something random and people find it hilarious and start laughing. I don't suppesss the urge of saying things that are on my mind, though. And even if I look like an idiot for a moment there, I'm still one of the highest achieving students in all of my classes. So they can't possibly say that I'm stupid.


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06 May 2010, 4:54 pm

My Western Civilization classes were often just me talking to my professor for 2 hours, since noone else ever read the texts for class. Problem was, I liked to sit at the back of the class, and everyone would keep turning their heads back and forth as we took turns. It was unwanted attention, but I wanted class to move forward.