Well it can't be worse than A&P last year (the first year of the Extension School having it). We only had a few pages assigned from the book, every quiz (the ones at the end of each lecture) and exam had mistakes, and this was something we got from her the first class:
Student: "Can you please explain this more in depth?"
Lecturer: "No. It's not my field. I don't know anything about it."
S: "But it's going to be on the exam?"
L: "Yes. Just because I don't know it doesn't mean you don't have to."
I think close to 50 people dropped the course that night.
Yikes! Last year was actually not the first year they've had it, but presumably the first year with her. I took it in 2003 but dropped it because I was working full-time and had no pressing reason for taking it. (I was working at Harvard and could take classes for free.) I believe they have revamped the curriculum some, and it didn't have a lab before, not that our lab is that intensive.
The mistakes on quizzes and exams continue, though... I have probably had her regrade 3 or 4 of my quizzes. On the quiz before last, she used a question - word for word, with the exact same answer options - from the book, but decided her answer to it was right and the book was wrong, so she changed the answer. (She had confused "caudal" with "inferior" when it came to the brain itself.) I put the right answer and it was marked wrong. The thing is, with these, if you bring it to her attention, she'll regrade it, but she won't widely announce that she made a mistake and regrade everyone. (It's also frustrating that people benefited from it when they didn't know the right answer.)
Half the lab questions are a little too vague. In one, she asks for the bones which make up the hard palate. But if you just put "maxilla" for one, it's marked wrong. She wants the palatine process of the maxilla. I said, "but that's not the name of a bone. If you'd asked for the specific part of the bone, I would have put that. But you asked for the name of the bone, and the bone is maxilla." She said, "but this is the answer I expected." I said, but we couldn't know you expect that because you didn't ask for it. She repeated, "that is the answer I expected." (In fact, I had specifically chosen not to write that, because she only asked for the bone name, and sometimes if you don't follow the directions exactly, you'll also get points off.)
I think I'm learning a lot, mainly because of the book. This year we have a custom Harvard edition, which is three different books in one. It's over 1000 pages long, and we have to read the entire book over the course of the two semesters. I've noticed, though, that there are conflicts between what she says and what the books says... in terminology, in how things are categorized, etc.. And if you answer something based on the book, you will very well get it wrong. She doesn't seem to know what the book says.
) but I didn't get to demonstrate what I knew! I can only hope the studying pays off on the final, but it's doubtful, since she'll have to cover all the new stuff, too.
