The other side of that coin
is that researchers have to think of undergraduates as junior scholars as well, and see involving them as a central part of research role. Unfortunately that just doesn't happen in far too many cases - researchers see teaching, like public engagement, as far below their dignity.
(ubergeekian, Fri 7 Sep 2012, 15:23, 1 reply)

Well, yes -
but it doesn't follow from that that UGs have a central part in the research mission of the University. I mean: there's a range of things that they have to learn. But my point is that you don't have to see that as spoonfeeding: it's perfectly possible for them to be given reading lists, and assignments, be told to go and work stuff out for themselves.

That's how a substantial part of my UG career worked - and this was only in the mid-'90s, at a provincial postwar university: so it's not even as if I'm from the Oxbridge elite. In essence, I was told during freshers' week, "Hello: you're giving a paper to the seminar group next week. This is what it's on. 15 minutes or so should do it. Here's some suggested reading. Give it to me the day before, so I can get the discussion afterwards moving. No idea what the topic's about? If you knew this stuff already, there'd be no point in teaching it. And you've got a whole week. Now: off you trot..."

Probably about half my UG courses were modelled in that way.

And it was terrifying. But, in retrospect, it was a great way to run a course. We weren't taught except by doing it: by playing the role of scholars-in-the-making. Some of the other courses I did were, admittedly, more conventional, with lectures and more structured seminars. But they were never as good.

I've tried to introduce UG courses of my own on something approaching that model, and pretty much been laughed at, on the grounds that the students wouldn't accept it: they want more contact hours than that'd generate. Because, as I said, we live in terror of the NSS and the expectations of undergraduates about what they think university is all about.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 7 Sep 2012, 16:16, closed)