General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Professors at research universities prefer teaching with old-fashioned whiteboards [View all]GiaGiovanni
(1,247 posts)Physics and chemistry classes should never be huge lecture classes. It's an insane way to teach what is important. Universities decided to save money by overloading these kinds of classes. They have recently decided to save even more money by allowing foreign grad assistants to teach these huge classes. (The administration loves using these cheap, exploited workers whom they would have to pay anyway to assist actual professors. They get more work out of them this way.)
Of course, if this is your experience, then you're learning on your own anyway, and to be paying outrageous amounts of student loan debt later in life for this travesty of education is just ludicrous. An online class would certainly be a much better option here. In fact, a good Schaum's outline a couple of hours a day could teach you what you need to know too. But this is no substitute for real teaching or what a real teacher can do for you. This is why a lot of young students go to community colleges to get their basics in and then go to the university. CC classes are still capped and, depending on the school, you can actually get a better education at a CC for this level of math and science.
That being said, I remember a couple of amazing lecture hall profs who really knew how to teach several hundred people and keep their attention. Some people really do this well. Most, unfortunately, don't. A large class doesn't have to mean a loss of communication and learning.