[adminprof]

I'd like to see in a forum for dentists a thread where they offer clever suggestions for how to change software development. Clearly, all these dentists have used plenty of software before.

They would have seemingly great ideas like "programmers should get 10% of their pay docked each time I encounter a bug in a program" or "the real solution is to hire someone to test the program from start to finish before releasing it".

I bet programmers on Hacker News would be livid upon hearing these suggestions, but seem to have no problem announcing their clever solutions about other disciplines (not excluding myself).

[mattwilsonn888]

Terrible analogy. What authority might a team of QA testers have on restructuring the methods for software development? Perhaps not as much as a software developer, but certainly enough to grope at and possibly conceive of new and useful ideas. A student is a QA tester for a classroom, they are not a dentist using a program, they were involved in the entire process and saw basically every mechanism with varying levels of ignorance on motivations.

Comparing a student to an end product consumer of software development is an embarrassingly long stretch - teaching is an art, but its not that complicated nor disconnected from its patrons.

[adminprof]

Students are users of a class, as much as a dentist is a user of a dental software application. Neither were involved in the making of the class or software. Both were delivered the experience as designed by the course staff (instructor and/or TAs), or software team. Both only see the final product after months or years of development, done by specialists trained for many years even before that.

The error you're making is stating that "students are involved in the entire process" which is laughable. Many classes have gone through years of iteration, and even new courses take many months to develop before students set foot in the classroom, not to mention the years of experience and education needed to get the instructor to the point that they can even make a class in several months.

[mattwilsonn888]

The only way you can refute is by being obtuse. QA testers and dentists using software are not the same, not at all - that was the premise for my whole point and you refuted it by pretending I didn't say it.

I assume you are a teacher, so what's truly laughable is that I must explain this to you: teaching students is at least a factor more intimate than delivering a finished piece of software or other commodity to a user - its also a factor less complicated to deliver a MVP. If we are talking textbooks, then you're objections apply - I would hope teaching in your mind occupies a distinct space from textbooks.

Surely many students displeased with instruction will be ignorant with some nuances and limitations of structuring a class, but the gap between good prescription and naive wishes is not a half career's worth of experience when it comes to teaching. I'm sorry to burst your bubble: Teaching is not rocket science, it is not software engineering - the prestige a teacher earns comes from either their qualifications in an advanced field or their effectiveness in imparting knowledge (or perhaps their proclivity to allow cheating depending on how you measure).

There are surely many teachers instructing arithmetic that understand teaching better than doctorate professors. Are you going to tell me that a piece of writing outlining common pitfalls, an earnest reader, and a creative mind really get you no further than a fresh, apathetic track-following graduate when it comes to innovation? Get real.

If teaching is the only thing that makes you good at teaching then I guess we should ignore all sharing of information about it, even from those who are good at it. Well, or we could just ignore your sentiments about who should be allowed to innovate in public.