On the Internet, I occasionally see some education experts criticizing some curriculum examinations in our undergraduate education, especially in some universities, which still use "objective test questions" as the main means of high school examinations.Mr. Qiu also mentioned the phenomenon of "scrubbing questions" in college students' daily competitions. He said that "objective" answers would be fine if they could stimulate young people's enthusiasm for science.Some higher education workers have also criticized undergraduate curriculum exams, which use standard answers as the main questions, namely, those who choose to fill in ABCD answers, or "brush questions."
In my opinion, it seems understandable to write questions about elementary-primary-secondary education, especially high school education, which has long been aimed at further education in China.Because one's acquisition of knowledge is usually progressive, so is one's ability to understand.In my opinion, we can not erase the "objective" problem type, that is, "brushing" to a person in the process of knowledge acquisition positive significance.Those of us who have been in academic enclaves for decades know that rote memorization may seem like a brushstroke, but it has far-reaching implications for a person's acquisition of knowledge.Our education should follow the basic laws and proceed in order, "writing questions" belongs to the primary-primary-secondary education in the important knowledge learning stage.Moreover, if the college entrance examination adopts "subjective" question-type examination, it will bring great challenges to the examination questions and examination papers.
Recently, to supplement the "My Understanding of Universal Value Higher Education" section of the "I Talk About University Life" report, I read some of the opening speeches by presidents of Harvard, MIT, Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford University.These presidents have a common characteristic in their speeches, emphasizing that students should focus on developing independent learning and living skills during their college years.In the popular language of our society, "you can't read dead books in college."Here, "reading dead books" is probably in the middle school stage to "brush questions" as the main content of the study.For example, Harvard University's former president argued that "college students should learn more outside of class than in class; Richard, president of Yale University from 1993 to 2003."If a student graduates from Yale and has some kind of professional knowledge and skills, it's the biggest failure of Yale education," Levin said.The core of undergraduate education is general knowledge, which is to cultivate students' ability to think critically and independently, and to lay the foundation for lifelong learning."It has been said that university students should acquire only one-third of the knowledge they acquire during their professional teaching at university.All these ideas need to be trained in independent thinking, which requires a lot of subjective curriculum education, and strengthen students' "general knowledge" learning in the process, so as to improve their ability to think independently.On this topic, I asked two students who teach at American universities.Both students teach geophysics at relevant universities in the United States.Dr. Sun, a tenured associate professor at the University of Houston, told me that research (mainly professional) courses are project-oriented, undergraduate courses usually have lab, and at the end of the semester teams look up a topic and report.Dr. Yang, an assistant professor at Purdue University, told me that (the final exam) is usually done in the form of a course report, and that none of the three subjects I have taught so far have a general (regular) exam.
The core of undergraduate education is to cultivate outstanding talents.Although it is impossible for an outstanding person to grow up by only four years of undergraduate education, a high-quality four-year undergraduate education is of great importance to a person's knowledge development.This is the main reason why top universities in Europe and America attach importance to undergraduate education.However, undergraduate education in many of our universities is mainly professional skills education, as can be seen from the undergraduate education objectives, specific curriculum and examination methods of these universities.There is a serious lack of "general education" in our country's university education, however, the "general education" in undergraduate education needs to pay attention to the "subjective" type of curriculum assessment.The independent thinking habits and abilities of university students need basic training at the undergraduate level.It is impossible to find talented students who have the potential to study in the way of "scrubbing questions", which is verified by the average achievement of some high-scoring students years after graduation.In my public service report, Do Your Own Scientific Research, I cited emails from undergraduates at the University of the Philippines 20 years ago hoping to get my academic papers on their studies.Twenty years ago, when electronic literature was not yet developed, I sent them a "single-line" copy of the papers, which the editorial department gave away for free.How many of our undergraduate students can contact their international counterparts voluntarily and get help and guidance from their international academic counterparts?
I have been responsible for two sessions of "Introduction to Geophysics" (optional) and "Geophysics" for students of School of Geoscience and Geological Engineering, Zhongshan University.These professional backgrounds are different, the students mathematical foundation is very different, I generally use the "subjective question type" as the main assessment method in the course end examination.I remember one time the National Geological Science Base class "Introduction to Geophysics" course used open-book examination, I saw a lot of students from the library borrowed a variety of reference books, unique flavor.The subjective examination questions in the course of college students' study will undoubtedly put forward high demands on the teacher's knowledge, including "examination questions" and fair examination papers.This requires our university teachers themselves to study actively, constantly improve the knowledge of the curriculum, and lay a foundation for adopting the "subjective" type of curriculum examination.