Do you think students get too much homework?

• EndlessDreams wrote on 2012-02-08 11:04

  Quote from Etoile;767372:

  [FONT="Arial"]wait, homework is optional? O____O WHAAATTTTT. For all classes?
  
  That is amazing.[/FONT]

  
  
  Yea. The breakdown of most my classes was the following:
  
  First 3 exams = 50%-66% (Most lets you drop lowest grade)
  Final Exam = 33%-50%
  
  Homework is not even in the equation, but you better know your materials.
• Chillax wrote on 2012-02-08 11:09
  The whole point of school is to get students to understand concepts, and I feel that assigning even more take-home homework isn't necessarily a cure-all with regards to incorporating the material taught. I'd like to see schools implement something similar to Salman Khan's idea, where students watch short 15-20 minute segments about specific concepts at home then do assignments at school, where they can ask teachers for help.
  
  

  Quote from EndlessDreams;767465:

  Homework is not even in the equation, but you better know your materials.

  
  
  There's still a good number of classes that require college students to do homework. I'd count prelabs and postlabs as part of homework as well.
• Lolicon wrote on 2012-02-08 11:14

  Quote from EndlessDreams;767362:

  They should just make homework optional. Then, when the student fails the test because they don't know the material, the teacher should ask, "did you do your homework?"
  
  Good way to prepare students for college, where homework is optional.

  
  
  

  [Image: http://alltheragefaces.com/img/faces/large/misc-jackie-chan-l.png]

  
  
  Trust me. If it were optional in high school, NO ONE is gonna do it.
  And I'm pretty sure a lot of professors make it required anyways. At the JC I had to do a lot of homework, and it was a good 45% of my grade.
• Sekwaf wrote on 2012-02-08 11:26
  I've never really understood the point in home-work. I understand everything from a lecture or reading it once. It should be considered more of an optional reinforcement of knowledge. Projects are a different story to me, those are examples of your knowledge or skill in a field, but busy work from some text book spouting out theoretical problems that are never going to leave the page fail to show their relevance to learning. On a related topic, since when is taking notes mandatory? That's also a reinforcement of knowledge, or a future reference. I had this discussion with a teacher of mine and told her I could be an A student without notes, she replied that I didn't take notes and wasn't an A student in that class... "well mabye if you didn't give me 4 zeroes for missing notes..."
• Tatsu wrote on 2012-02-08 11:28

  Quote from Etoile;767417:

  [FONT="Arial"]People I know have ditched school for a day just to try and finish their homework ;_; [/FONT]

  
  
  This gets pretty common at my school, where students will skip a few classes to work on homework and projects they couldn't get to.
  
  

  Quote from Jerain;767495:

  
  Trust me. If it were optional in high school, NO ONE is gonna do it.

  
  
  Trust me, homework helps ****loads unless you're the type of person that can learn just by listening to lectures. I mean, unless you don't give a damn about grades, but whatever. Then number of people who don't actually give a damn about their grades are pretty low.
  
  Personally, I think homework should be more intuitive. Typically, it's just: Get homework over material you went over that day -> Do it -> Turn in -> Graded over correctness. And that's just totally wrong.
  
  Seriously, the only reason someone would get anything wrong on homework is if they have trouble understanding it, or if they made a simple mistake that they overlooked. The latter is pretty common and rather excusable, while the former can't be easily fixed. You can't just easily contact a teacher for help on homework when you're already home. You can always stay after school to go over the material with the teacher, if they allow it. You can argue that if you don't know the material, you should ask during class while it's being taught. But there are cases where you perfectly believe you know what's being taught, only to be demonstrated later on your homework you haven't the slightest clue.
  
  There are some teachers who will grade simply on completion and/or allows you to ask questions or briefly go over the homework prior to turning it in, but it's not that common.
  
  tl;dr
  It's not that we need more homework, it's that we should be doing homework differently.
• pkMaster wrote on 2012-02-08 11:31
  The college I go to allows the professor to decide whether or not they want to assign any work, and most of the time we get optional readings. Of course you don't at least have a basic understanding of the class, then you're pretty much boned. Then again, most of the classes offered are pretty easy and I'd say a good 20-30% are throw away classes. Thank god they allow us to test out of some of those classes.
• Rin wrote on 2012-02-08 21:48
  Maybe when the way education is taught changes, and thus homework in general, will I see the point of more homework. A lot of it is just busy work, and I'm surprised a few college lab homeworks aren't too different from before.
  
  Right now, a lot of homework is just to fill in progression charts, instead of actually being of interest to the students to re-assess what they learn.
• Milk wrote on 2012-02-08 22:40
  In college i hate it when the teacher doesnt give me homework because that ment that I would have to read a bunch and take my own notes in order to have something to study when test come around.
  
  In highschool I hated homework with a passion :/
  
  Thats why i feel better about HW in college. Its optional and isnt forced on you by the teachers (unless its a project of some sort)
• Claudia wrote on 2012-02-09 00:04
  Our school tells us grade level x 10 minutes PER SUBJECT AREA. Theoretically, juniors should be doing 6 hours of homework a night, then.
  
  It's the uneven distribution of homework that I dislike, not the quantity. Some days I have no homework, other nights it's maybe 3-5 hours.
• Kayate wrote on 2012-02-09 01:20

  Quote from EndlessDreams;767362:

  They should just make homework optional. Then, when the student fails the test because they don't know the material, the teacher should ask, "did you do your homework?"
  
  Good way to prepare students for college, where homework is optional.

  
  This I didn't do my Math homework for crap I passed just by getting high scores on my exams
  pshh daily homework my ass
• Scarlet wrote on 2012-02-09 01:25

  Quote from Kayate;768089:

  This I didn't do my Math homework for crap I passed just by getting high scores on my exams
  pshh daily homework my ass

  
  
  [FONT="Times New Roman"]Not everyone can do this easily. My chemistry teacher refuses to give an A to students who don't do their homework and rely on test grades, and even changed how much certain grades counted to prevent one of her students who did this from getting an A.[/FONT]
• Kayate wrote on 2012-02-09 01:28

  Quote from Scarlet;768092:

  [FONT="Times New Roman"]Not everyone can do this easily. My chemistry teacher refuses to give an A to students who don't do their homework and rely on test grades, and even changed how much certain grades counted to prevent one of her students who did this from getting an A.[/FONT]

  
  
  Well it varies from teacher to teacher guess I got lucky with the one I had I wasn't about to do like 100 problems for 1 chapter when eh assigned us 2-3 chapters each day.
• Scarlet wrote on 2012-02-09 01:31

  Quote from Kayate;768099:

  Well it varies from teacher to teacher guess I got lucky with the one I had I wasn't about to do like 100 problems for 1 chapter when eh assigned us 2-3 chapters each day.

  
  
  [FONT="Times New Roman"]That amount of homework seems really excessive, but doing just a few problems generally
  helps eople realize what they should know for the class.[/FONT]
• Kayate wrote on 2012-02-09 01:33

  Quote from Scarlet;768104:

  [FONT="Times New Roman"]That amount of homework seems really excessive, but doing just a few problems generally
  helps eople realize what they should know for the class.[/FONT]

  
  
  I knew what was in store I asked about people who had him he may have been tough on the homework part but he taught so well that I didn't even need to rely on homework in means of practice
• Episkey wrote on 2012-02-09 03:06
  [FONT=Tahoma]Since I want to be a teacher, homework is something I've thought about before.[/FONT]
  [FONT=Tahoma]I can say that in college, the about of assigned homework is greatly reduced - your grades are more so dependent on tests and projects.[/FONT]
  
  [FONT=Tahoma]While I like the whole less homework system, since it allows for more free time and flexibility, I still think homework is necessary at the high school grade level.[/FONT]
  
  [FONT=Tahoma]It's funny because I was talking to my High School Chemistry teacher one day and the topic of homework came up. I almost never did my Chemistry homework, but I did really well on her tests. I regret now not doing more of her homework, but some people simply don't need it to study/learn. I tend to be that kind of person, in most subjects. So, I feel it's not only dependent on the person - but the subject as well.[/FONT]
  
  [FONT=Tahoma]Anyway, my high school Chemistry teacher wanted to do her best to prepare kids for the college lifestyle. So, for her AP Chemistry class one year, she made homework optional. She said it was the worst decision she ever made. The first test scores were abysmal. Thankfully, she quickly recognized the problem and made homework required again. She claimed it was mostly experimental, but she realized how much homework can improve learning and understanding. [/FONT]
  
  [FONT=Tahoma]I also think that there is an important difference between homework and "busywork". Homework is a way for students to be guided through class concepts. I don't know why some people can manage without it and others can't. It's something that seems to differ from individual to individual.[/FONT]
  
  [FONT=Tahoma]The best I can formulate is that there's seems to be a general maturity and personal difference between the high-school and college level. People generally go to college to further their education, whereas everyone has to go to high school. Therefore college students may be more apt to pursue self-studying compared to high school students. College classes cost money and you signed up/want to be in that class? ... eh ... Maybe so.[/FONT]