My experience at a Spanish university vs. a Danish university pt.1
I wanted to talk about this because I was very surprised to see such a big difference in how classes are taught, control of attendance, “homework” and how exams work. Note that these are my personal experiences and I’m not claiming that all Spanish universities and teachers at my university work this way.
First, let me start with how classes are taught in the spanish university where I’m currently studying. It is a bit diverse how the professors prefer to teach. In some classes the professor follows strictly the book and goes though the most important parts in class and others don’t use any kind of source of the material that they teach in class.
For me being used to always having a book or texts to follow and having it clear from the professors what part of the book or which texts they will go though in the next class. I find it very curious that when I ask a professor here, who strictly follows the book, what to read exactly they don’t give the students a guideline of what to prepare for in the upcoming classes. This makes it hard for me to study well and i feel like i come unprepared to class.
The biggest surprise I’ve had in a class, which is also the reason I decided to write about this, is that a teacher purposely deletes notes from the PowerPoint they give from the class to the students. So let’s say that we start a new subject and the teacher publishes the PowerPoint of the subject to a intranet called Virtual Campus. Going through the same slides as the teacher you will notice that the teacher has purposely deleted content on every slide in the PowerPoint that you have downloaded to your computer.
This knocked me away! I understand the logic behind it, that the presentation in the class has the full content and therefore the students are more likely to being attentive and making notes. But for this me goes against what at teacher is supposed to do. A teacher is supposed to help and guide without giving the answers to the students. If a student for a reason is not able to attend class, how is this student able to study properly for the subject when the class is not following a book or texts? this truly is a mystery for me and I can’t understand how this is appropriate in an institution of higher education.