what do you think?

I hate this instructor in my current class at UOP, yes, hate, don’t just dislike, hate, he’s a jerk.

2 weeks into this class and nada on the teaching skills. First assignment was a setup for failure and frustration, the information was incomplete, he didn’t explain how to calculate the formulas or even tell us if we’re doing it right, I think that’s the most frustrating part to me, how can one write a paper if they have no idea how to calculate a formula and no one is teaching or guiding one on how to calculate that formula, hopefully i never have to use it because I don’t get it. And not once has he responded to any discussion questions, we are on our own again, reading material, discussing among ourselves and hoping that maybe our instructor will respond, I seriously doubt it at this point.

Some interaction between him and I, don’t think he likes me very much either for that matter.

Instructor:
This Week’s assignment was an exercise in making decisions based on incomplete information, and analytical thinking. Often in our work environments we are presented with incomplete information, and we will need to make assumptions based on the information at hand. It is never an easy task.

Me
I think if I had known what the exercise was about it would have really helped me feel like I wasn’t just completely lost, I felt like I was lead done a path to fail at the assignment (and maybe I wouldn’t have worked on an assignment for 8 hours that had no solution).

Instructor Comments
Julie,

The Guillermo assignment is not about the solution. There are as many as there are ideas in the universe. There is no one correct answer. Instead, I will be reviewing how the students analyzed the information, made assumptions for missing data, (which Guillermo probably would not know anyhow), and presented themselves to the potential client. In other words, this assignment is about GRADUATE level thought, not a textbook solution.

The whole point of the assignment is to see how you will utilize your cognitive abilities, and make assessments based missing or inadequate information.

My response and he pissed me off with that GRADUATE level thought comment
I understand now that there was no way to solve the problem with the data given. But if I had been given the information that this assignment was about my critical thinking skills (cognitive abilities) within an accounting problem or my critical thinking skills on a GRADUATE level, it would have made the assignment more capable of being accomplished rather than an exercise in failure.

I also understand the importance of developing critical thinking skills in accounting, you never know what you’re going to find in real-world scenario and having good/great critical skills and thinking outside the box will immensely help in the real world, especially in figuring out the sequence of steps in an accounting problem but I still don’t understand NPV or present value and how its calculated, I’m not even sure if we were ever suppose to understand that.

So I guess my question is what do you think?  Am I just being too sensitive or was this guy jabbing me with that GRADUATE level comment? And if he’s not teaching and frustrating everyone, should or should he not be reported? 

All I want is to have an instructor that actually teaches, if the whole point of this exercise is to read a book and learn on my own, I could have saved some money and gotten more sleep.

One thought on “what do you think?

  1. I’m afraid it depends on the school you are attending. At a public college they would be less likely to give you open ended problems.

    If it is a private school you are getting what you paid for. Open ended problems with jerkwad professors/doctors is a part of a Master’s degree. They figure that you are mentally “dead” by the time you get to the Master’s level. 🙂

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