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Comment by trentmb | Hacker News Reader

It always blew me away at how few of my peers would take advantage of feedback.

Whenever a paper was assigned, I always started it that same day, finished later in the week, and then sent it to the professor for their thoughts.

I’d address the professors concerns, follow up on their suggestions and-surprise!-did well.

Everyone else seemed to wait until the last minute, stress out, spend the same amount of time as me writing, just to end up with a worse grade and feedback too late to be useful.

This wasn't limited to my English/Rhetoric courses- I've come to the conclusion that none of my professors actually slept given how quickly and frequently they'd respond to e-mails.

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From my experience in school, no one told me this was something that was useful, expected, or even allowed.

If I could have done this, I probably would have. But no one told me of the possibility. I'm sure many other students were even less aware than I was.

Absolutely. I think many students, after having gone through the school system for over a decade, have a certain perspective on 'classes', 'homework', 'teachers', and so on that doesn't encourage asking questions or actively participating in class.

For many this changes for the better over time, but then I've met plenty of college students (and coworkers) who were still stuck in that mindset.

Personally, I was lucky to only have have missed most of primary, middle- and high school (home-schooled), so I didn't have a very established or negative view of what 'studying' was like. But even for me it took about a year to realize that I was paying the teachers (via loan), so I better make sure to make use of them, that teachers are just people and most of them love it when you show initiative and inquisitiveness, and so on.

Yeah, this goes very much against the expectation of other graded assignments, which is to assess your understanding of the material.

Consider the same workflow for a test. Would you expect to be able to give it to the professor beforehand so they can let you know which answers are wrong and then you have an opportunity to correct them before it gets graded?

As a former TA, I can tell you that I got so few requests for help that it wouldn't have taken much to respond to everyone.

As a hiring manager who assigns a case study as a core component of the interview process, I can tell you that how an interviewee engages during the case study process predicts about 80% of the quality of the case study -- ie. do they ask clarifying questions about the prompt, do they ask about the expected format/level of effort, do they submit something for feedback before coming in, etc.

As someone who spent a lot of time in academia and did some teaching of my own, your professors must have loved you. It was always so gratifying when somebody actually cared. Emailing and asking for feedback? That's awesome!

> Whenever a paper was assigned, I always started it that same day, finished later in the week, and then sent it to the professor for their thoughts.

As a teacher, I would not respond to the early submission of an assignment like that. If you had specific questions or clarifications, I would be willing to answer. However I would not give you "multiple bites at the apple", so to speak, in terms of grading. It's simply not fair to the rest of the class.

That having been said, being in CS, I didn't tend to give assignments like that. I would give a programming assignment, start the automated tester, and everybody had 2 weeks to get the tester to give them a green light. During that 2 weeks, I would freely answer questions, and, generally, I would go over publicly during the beginning of the next class and questions asked privately that were particularly insightful or useful. That way everybody benefits from all of the questions.

I have two primary concerns when teaching a class: 1) getting the information across and 2) treating everybody in the class fairly. Everything else flows from that.

This was my experience as well. You don't want to give any student an advantage. This extends to when a student brings you a proof and wants to know if the proof works. You can't actually tell them, because that would leak information about the correct solution. So in some classes, any discussion of the assignment (beyond asking if something in the assignment is a typo or not) is forbidden.

> "multiple bites at the apple", so to speak, in terms of grading. It's simply not fair to the rest of the class.

Isn't it? If everyone has equal opportunity, how is it unfair if some don't take advantage of that opportunity? I can see a distinction with, say, paid outside tutors, as not everyone can afford to use their services.

Rather than unfair, I say that it detracts from one of the (implicit, and not always acknowledged) goals of schools: certification.

Teaching clearly benefits from the rapid feedback. Certification, on the other hand, is harmed by the ability to redo, because it also becomes a measurement of diligence and conscientiousness as well as skill. Even so, the consumers of grades (employers and graduate programs) are looking for diligence and conscientiousness, perhaps even more so than demonstrated skill.

Some of my most outstanding writing and editing experiences in college were in several courses (History, Philosophy) that the the students would make five copies of their draft papers, and professors organized us to regularly comment on five of our peer classmate's draft papers, prior to our final version, and for each of us to accordingly revise our work, before handing the papers in in.

Likewise for a several courses, in which short papers were handed in for professor comments, and the opportunity for revision the following week.

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