Comment Bah! (Score 1) 601
Never having commented on a Slashdot article, I was so frustrated by the attitude of this article I had to go and create an account!
This is just the sort of typical absence of logic which is killing society in general. It stinks of "Let's protect the people because they can't protect themselves". The guy is not so concerned about restricting the University's intellectual property from people who haven't paid for the service as he is about restricting it from people who haven't attended the lecture! Madness. If I can learn from a podcast, what can possibly be wrong with that? How is that different to a student borrowing a book from the library and learning? Are you going to restrict the library books only to those students who swiped their card at the lecture?
YOUR assessments place me as having passed or failed, and if attendance at a lecture is a factor in that assessment, rather than carefully crafted exams and assignments, then that is very sad indeed. By restricting the course content to students who attend lectures, you're saying you want those who don't attend to fail, and therefore attendance is an assessable part of a university student's grade. It basically says that you have no confidence in your assessments to gauge the students' proper marks, so you'd rather go with the assumption that those students who turn up to class are the ones who should get a better mark. It is illogical, and it sucks.
Make no mistake, I have nothing against restricting the content to those who have paid for it, but that includes all students of the university, regardless of attendance record.
This is just the sort of typical absence of logic which is killing society in general. It stinks of "Let's protect the people because they can't protect themselves". The guy is not so concerned about restricting the University's intellectual property from people who haven't paid for the service as he is about restricting it from people who haven't attended the lecture! Madness. If I can learn from a podcast, what can possibly be wrong with that? How is that different to a student borrowing a book from the library and learning? Are you going to restrict the library books only to those students who swiped their card at the lecture?
YOUR assessments place me as having passed or failed, and if attendance at a lecture is a factor in that assessment, rather than carefully crafted exams and assignments, then that is very sad indeed. By restricting the course content to students who attend lectures, you're saying you want those who don't attend to fail, and therefore attendance is an assessable part of a university student's grade. It basically says that you have no confidence in your assessments to gauge the students' proper marks, so you'd rather go with the assumption that those students who turn up to class are the ones who should get a better mark. It is illogical, and it sucks.
Make no mistake, I have nothing against restricting the content to those who have paid for it, but that includes all students of the university, regardless of attendance record.
