poincaredisk 2 days ago

>That would be a very valuable lab, IF students hadn't been explicitly trained in opposite behaviour for a decade by then.

I teach students sometimes. I briefly considered whenever I should give them such important lesson. Very briefly: my job is to teach students my specialty, not give them life lessons. Why would I deal with potentially angry students for doing something that's not obvious I'm allowed to do? Hell, it's not even obvious it that would be a "good" (career advancing) lesson.

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zdragnar 2 days ago

Being in a professional field means being the expert in the room for your area of responsibility. That means being able to translate information into, and out of, the terms of art in your profession.

This is generally considered a "soft skill", but it really should be a recurring part of any technical curriculum.

There are generalizations of the concept- tailoring your message to your audience in public speaking, or charitable interpretation and seeing from another's perspective in debate, but the narrow case of "interpret these requirements and identify problems with them" is a good way to demonstrate an understanding of the domain.

poincaredisk 2 days ago

I agree, that's a valuable skill. But do I, an expert in a narrow (very far removed from any soft skills) field, am the person who should teach it? When some students raise a complaint, how will I explain to the University management that this twist, even though completely unrelated to what I am supposed to teach, was actually a good idea?

I just say, even with good intentions, the incentives are not aligned with teachers going too far out of line.