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Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
SirQuack #292688 02/17/10 06:09 PM
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 Originally Posted By: Dr.House

The really good professors in my experience use their own textbooks that they have published no matter what year, along with the use custom courseware. You are right that professors seem to stray away from textbooks at higher level courses but that is because undergrad is more theory based and years 4 or 5 + is more applied and research (no textbooks for that) oriented. Textbooks are usually replaced with custom course material put together by the prof.


You’re point about the nature of text books and custom course material sounds basically the same as what I was trying to make. That textbooks are written in a more constrained form since the theories they present (sometimes multiple theories if none is dominant) are generally more accepted, where as most higher level courses I took were as you say “more applied and research” but I would also add often more theoretically eclectic. In the most advance courses I took most of the study was outside of and often inconsistent with the dominant paradigms.

I always understood and accepted professors sourcing their own material especially when referencing papers they’ve written since they’re teaching theses courses in conjunction with their own research. However, that didn’t stop it from bothering me when a professor required a book he wrote for the course only to use say 2 small sections out of it that could easily have been copied out (royalties paid) and put in the course reader. But I guess professors need to make a living and have egos too.


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Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
grunt #292690 02/17/10 06:18 PM
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 Originally Posted By: grunt

However, that didn’t stop it from bothering me when a professor required a book he wrote for the course only to use say 2 small sections out of it that could easily have been copied out (royalties paid) and put in the course reader. But I guess professors need to make a living and have egos too.


That's what my wife refers to as "publish or perish". We have both had professors that somehow got their work accepted as the course text only to find out most of the time it was pure cr@p. If one made the fatal mistake of pointing out errors, even typos, a 15 minute lecture would begin pointing out the various differences between the professor and the (obviously stupid) student.

Scott


Scott

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Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
grunt #292691 02/17/10 06:24 PM
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Egos are a real big problem at the college and university level.


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Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
BlueJays1 #292695 02/17/10 06:47 PM
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I had a real bad case of a lecturer, not a professor, for entry level classical social theory lecture (I couldn’t opt out of for a higher level course since it was the foundation for everything else) foisting her agenda on the class. Were we supposed to be studying the likes of Marx, Durkheim and Weber but there were no Dead White European Males to be seen. Instead a collection of feminist and third world social theorists. Interesting stuff but not what the course was supposed to be about.

I went to the Dean of the department and showed her the syllabus from that lecture and the ones on file for the previous years and how they didn’t compare at all. I then showed her the course descriptions and syllabi for the courses for which this was a prerequisite and asked her how this lecture was going to prepare me for those. She pulled out a syllabus from a couple years prior when she had to teach that lecture and told me I didn’t have to attend because she would be handling “my” course. The next semester the lecturer was gone.


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Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
tomtuttle #292701 02/17/10 07:38 PM
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 Originally Posted By: tomtuttle
I love you, Dean!


I keep thinking of getting involved in the discussion and then not committing because I'll just come across as a dumbass next to Dean and others.

Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
grunt #292702 02/17/10 07:39 PM
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 Originally Posted By: grunt
I went to the Dean of the department and showed her


That's some good Dean-on-Dean action.

Come on, you knew someone was going to say it.

There, that's my contribution to the discussion.

Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
CV #292705 02/17/10 07:43 PM
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We're comic relief.


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Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
tomtuttle #292707 02/17/10 08:32 PM
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You are?

:runs away laughing:


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Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
pmbuko #292717 02/17/10 10:15 PM
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 Originally Posted By: pmbuko
I'd just like to throw some facts into the ring.

Why global warming can mean more snow


I apologize for lacking the time to read everything like I used to be able to do, but in case it hasn't been said already:

The humor we find in global warming skeptics using the snow to ridicule alarmists lies in the knowledge of how mass media has used isolated weather events to stoke warming hysteria in the past.

I don't care who you are that right there is funny. \:D

Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
a401classic #292738 02/18/10 01:04 AM
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My goodness this thing has been active.

I'll throw in my $.02

1. Yes Dean, the idea that man is not part of nature is a bit of an artificial construct used to shift the framing of the 'problem'. However, consider that a man, whether his head has been bashed in by a rock (nature) or splattered by a bullet (man made) matters little since it makes him equally dead.

2. Population biology. J-curve. Many organisms naturally go through boom and bust cycles. The bust, though natural, ain't pretty. Take a look at the human population growth curve over the last 200k years and tell me it doesn't look like a J-curve.

3. The truth. In reality is what you believe. Convince enough people to see it your way and you have a universal truth. Well, until the next universal truth comes along anyway.

4. Why do those dammed left wing lunatics use every weather event as proof that their theories are right? The same reason that those right wing fundamentalists use every weather event as proof that AWG is a left wing conspiracy. Its a war. In war you shoot first and ask questions lat... well, you don't ask questions.

5. Short term species, long term problem. As a species that has lived hand to mouth for the last 200K years (if you believe evolution is a truth) it is a real challenge for us to grasp a problem for which cause and effect are more than two weeks apart. By the time we find the 'smoking gun' in this debate, the bullet will have splattered our collective brains all about. Man made or natural, does it matter?

Right, carry on...


Fred

-------
Blujays1: Spending Fred's money one bottle at a time, no two... Oh crap!
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