Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Interesting Observation

Today, as I sat in class, I made an interesting observation, that inspired this post. My PhD program is in the College of Technology. My studies are very interdisciplinary. I take a lot of courses in Psychology and Sociology. I was had been wondering if there are differences between graduate students in Liberal Arts, and graduate students in Technology. So the last two weeks of classes, I took it upon myself to do some observations of the two groups.

MY FINDINGS:
YES! There are major differences!
1. The most major difference that I found....Tech students bring computers. Liberal Arts students have paper and pencil! I noticed that the LA students were furiously taking notes. Tech students type away.
2. Tweeting during class in Tech. Granted, Twitter is part of the course requirements....LA, I would never foresee having Twitter be a part of learning.
3. Areas of research. Sure, this is part of being in Tech vs LA. We had to discuss research projects for my Psychology class. I had more questions on how I would execute a project, instruments, methodology, etc. from the LA classmates. Now, my area of research revolves around crimes against children, and this topic ALWAYS gets numerous questions because it definitely has the shock value aspect, however, the type of questioning from the LA students was significantly different than in any Tech classes I have taken.

Those were major differences that I can think of at the moment. It is interesting how we are all aiming for the same goal, yet we are so different. It really is two different worlds between the two colleges!

1 comment:

  1. I notice those and many more differences - remember, I come from liberal arts! And when I taught there, there was tweeting in the classroom, trust me :) But you make some good points. When I have students from all over campus (and the world) in the same class, I have to try hard to build bridges and speak to everyone. That's when I REALLY notice the differences.

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