"I decided we would do an oral exam* because it's a great way to see if people have actually learned anything from my course and aren't just parroting notes. Because I can ask them to elaborate on their answers."
Yeah and it's also a great way to get otherwise good students to go blank because it isn't possible to absorb every bit of complex information you spent 12 weeks rushing through, Barbara.
This "gotcha" style teaching fucking pisses me off. There is no time in the real world people are not going to be able to look up their notes. Fuck, half the time I'll ask a professor something and they'll be like "I'll have to look that up later and get back to you." Why? BECAUSE THEY'RE HUMAN AND THATS HOW BRAINS ARE.
This type of teaching only favours students that already had experience with the subject beforehand and freaks with amazing memories. This kind of understanding of the material only comes from experience and repetition, something that the traditional 12 weeks of rushed lectures/labs that discard each topic quickly to fit all of them in don't do.
I fucking hate how much I am going into debt to be taught only the vaguest concepts but doing most of the teaching myself in my own time. Education under capitalism is a joke.
*An oral exam is an exam where instead of answering questions in a quiet room on paper, you have to answer questions on a live video call with your instructor.
My final sociology exam to get a BA was a 4 hour exam where we had to sit down and write three 2000 word essays off of 6 random questions presented at the exam.
No notes allowed.
When the fuck will I ever have someone put a gun to my head and say 'reguiritate from memory these three topics with SOURCES and write them in pen, you have an hour'
Absolutely useless exam type. I still passed but it felt more like a speedrun than an actual test.
There's a teacher at our college who forces students to write 1000 word essays. Not around 1000, exactly 1000 words or else it's an automatic zero. This isn't so bad until you have to write on paper with a time limit and you have to fucking count it by hand.
Literally just ego-tripping bullshit to get people to fail for meaningless mistakes.