UoM General Chat

[scribble]

LOL. trust phd students to have no sympathy for first years <3

[Hancock]

How I felt entering ECON10003: Intro Macroeconomics. Too bad I couldn't find another 1st year breadth subject.

[scribble]

should've taken drawing naked people (Y)

[charmanderp]

How I felt entering ECON10003: Intro Macroeconomics. Too bad I couldn't find another 1st year breadth subject.

(Image removed from quote.)

I'm the master of tutorial participation marks. Just ask a bunch of dumb questions every class and shout out anything when your tutor asks for an answer to a question.

[Hancock]

It's actually why I liked FNCE10001 more than ECON10003; I could skip tutorials when I knew the material well enough, and not lose marks over it. This isn't high school, I shouldn't have to rock up and pretend I'm interested to a tutor, when we both know what's going on, just to get marks.

[charmanderp]

Yeah I was talking to my tutor from Macro last semester and he was saying they just want students to turn up for class, hence 10% for attendance and participation. Otherwise the attendance rate drops dramatically.

[jinny1]

It's actually why I liked FNCE10001 more than ECON10003; I could skip tutorials when I knew the material well enough, and not lose marks over it. This isn't high school, I shouldn't have to rock up and pretend I'm interested to a tutor, when we both know what's going on, just to get marks.

The 10% attendance mark is there for a reason. You might know the material very well but there are others who hardly know anything and still refuse to attend.

Providing an incentive to attend tutorials each week not only helps students who are struggling but also gives free marks to whoever is willing to sit down in an air conditioned room for an hour a week.

Personally would much rather have a 10% tutorial attendance mark than a 10% assignment mark.... but that's just me.

[vox nihili]

It's actually why I liked FNCE10001 more than ECON10003; I could skip tutorials when I knew the material well enough, and not lose marks over it. This isn't high school, I shouldn't have to rock up and pretend I'm interested to a tutor, when we both know what's going on, just to get marks.

But you're literally getting marks to nap?

[LeviLamp]

Furthermore, if you're choosing a subject because it's an easy breadth rather than because you're genuinely interested and/or challenged by its content then I don't think you really have the right to complain about tutorial participation.
(Disclaimer: I am aware commerce subjects are useful for engineering)

[Ballerina]

During my 5 PM - 7 PM mandatory tutorials for the prerequisite subject MBB2, I accomplished nothing sans wasting an exponential amount of money on mochas I could have earned during work shifts. The tutor was a beautiful ray of sunshine, but the content itself was useless. As an adult, the onus is on me to perform well using my own learning style.

should've taken drawing naked people (Y)

Oh dear God, I'm taking that and it is very much worth commuting between Parkville and Southbank. models plz

[Hancock]

I could've chosen another breadth, but chose to do Macro even if is one of the more difficult classes for first year commerce (plus I liked micro, no one who took macro said it was easy by any stretch of the imagination). Irrespective of whether I did it or not, having an opinion about a class requirement is my right, and anyone's right.

In my opinion, once you hit Uni, you shouldn't have to be prompted to go to tutorials. If you don't go and miss stuff, you'll get a lower mark and it'll be your fault.

[jinny1]

Nobody here is saying you dont have a right to your own opinion.

I really hate the belief that once you hit uni, that you shouldn't or need to be guided. School is so drastically different to university that i really appreciated the structure and stability that mandatory practicals and tutorials gave me. I was barely 18 without any idea of how and what to study.I felt like Melbourne uni actively cared about my education at a time that i was completely unsure of myself.

 I'm sure i would still be lost if Melbourne Uni was basically a free for all, do whatever you want, no framework place. I would hate it if Universities held the same belief that all the onus is on the student and that the university, as an entity, is a distant third party. I believe universities, as a place of learning, still have the duty to teach, encourage, engage and actively strive to bring the best out of students.

Going to a tutorial won't hurt your learning. There are going to be plenty of worse things to be worried about when you finish uni.

[Hancock]

I'm not really talking about people caring about my education, I'm talking about enforced participation to keep tutorial attendance high. I agree that it's nice to have some guidance, but if I have to travel 1.5+ hours for a 1 hour tutorial, you can see why that's an annoyance.

For the most part, people would still turn up to tutorials even if they didn't have tutorial participation. On a side note, my meme joke has sparked some serious debate. So I've got that going for me.

[jinny1]

It's a pain in the ass if you just have the one tute on that day. My tutes were always on lectures days so i didn't have that problem though.

I think mandatory tute attendances are designed for those struggling...IF you are one of the smarter students who know what they are doing, i can see how it can be restricting. I guess you can't please everyone.

[scribble]

i also think that mandatory tute attendance is a bit ridiculous. I get it for pracs where youre actually being assessed on the work, but i can't understand why you'd force students to go to tutes when it's not necessarily beneficial. I feel like we should be able to judge for ourselves whether or not going to tutes is aiding our learning or not, and if its not, it should be fair enough to not go. I went to all my math tutes last semester because I found them helpful, but went to a total of two chem tutes (and regretted it both times) because they were a huge waste of time. I'm so glad I wasn't forced to go to any more than that too.
I feel like by the time we're in uni, we should be able to use our own discretion as to whether or not we want to go to class, and if we don't, we shouldn't be forced to. It's not like the university has a duty of care or anything like that. 


+ I feel like the students who are really struggling are the ones who'd skip the tutes even if theyre mandatory. Or they'd go and not make any effort to learn in them anyways.