@Alexandre, thanks for this question.

You say, 'Teachers and professors are led to believe that it is some kind of social trend. Why does this happen?'

I think it's a trend when students have become very Materialistic :((

'How to proceed?'

They must learn from Us to value knowledge, to move from Grade motivation to career motivation, and beyond that, to Intrinsic motivation, to enjoy learning for it's own sake, the INTEREST and Enjoyment that learning brings. Do you want to take part in my motivation research? I give you the link.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_someone_have_a_questionnaire_to_measure_students_motivation_for_learning_Science_Who_is_keen_on_a_collaborative_study

The grading systems need to be changed. The final grade should consider examinations, project, ppt test score(for undergraduates).

Examination: 60 %

Project: 20%

PPT Test Score: 20%

You can give them points for home assignments (e.g. writing an essay and presenting it at a seminar, solving a problem sheet...) and give points for these and make them form a considerable part of the total score (e.g. 55% for the exam, 45% for all other assignments). Of course, then reading all these will increase your workload and some students may not like such assignments as they have to work in addition to learning for exams; thus, their evaluation for your course may go down.

If students only learn for exams, they are not probably very interested in what they are studying (e.g. they selected this faculty because friends came here or parents told them to study something...). Some will hopefully get interested in what they are studying, some will quit and some will finish but will not try to get a job in this field.

There is a slow but definite change in our university, towards Continuous Internal Assessment. This helps in keeping students on their toes. This includes, at least three internal tests, projects, seminars and MCQ TESTS. Semester pattern of examinations also helps!

@Alexandre, thanks for this question.

You say, 'Teachers and professors are led to believe that it is some kind of social trend. Why does this happen?'

I think it's a trend when students have become very Materialistic :((

'How to proceed?'

They must learn from Us to value knowledge, to move from Grade motivation to career motivation, and beyond that, to Intrinsic motivation, to enjoy learning for it's own sake, the INTEREST and Enjoyment that learning brings. Do you want to take part in my motivation research? I give you the link.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_someone_have_a_questionnaire_to_measure_students_motivation_for_learning_Science_Who_is_keen_on_a_collaborative_study

Now a days, students study mostly for marks, not for knowledge. This problem is here to stay. Not much can be done about that.

For the (at least) semester wise learning on a topic, Apart from the lectures, a compulsory seminar (on related topic), reviewed (draft, final) reports o nthe seminar topic, and presentation of seminar, Finally in exams not slide wise questions, but how the student can apply one technique thought in one topic/class to other topic//problem. These gives the teacher to measure the student's analytical & observation skills, apart from letting the stuent spend more time on the subject(s), improving his/her report writing & presentation skills.

Drawback: If this is implemented for all semester subjects, it will be a lot of work load assuming atleast the student taken 4-5 subjects per semester.

Every student have his own way to study. Few can grasp or remember quickly and few take time. So it is necessary for teacher to assess the quality of students which he have. Few of them are sharp, few are intermediates and few are less interested.

In my opinion:

1. Make the categories of students according to the skills, grasping power, capabilities and field of interest.

2. Give them task according to the categories (Task should be their point of interest).

3. Merge all the tasks to achieve the same goal.

4. Take the exam for his work only.

5. Than ask each group, to find out the problems which are done by other groups.

6. Now we have to implement the better ideas immediately.

7. Than the teacher have to explain everything in common to all.

8. Final exam after internal assessments.

By doing so, the students which were not serious for the exams, will think their responsibilities and will take participate in the task. To accomplish his task, he will study through out the semester/year and become serious for his study.

" Student will be serious for the studies if the studies will attract his thought." Now it our (teachers') job to attract him by delivering the best suited lectures with the live examples to make the students aware of the subject.

I answer something similar here in RG for another thread:

IMHO and I am neither a teacher nor a professor (i.e. the authority of my statement is rather low), when students find the subject to study uninteresting, in general means, wrong teachers/professors (maybe in the past from elementary school onwards).

For any subject and topic, the teachers and professors are the communicators who must teach this in an accessible, interesting and possibly enjoyable manner.

The other thread was posting specifically on maths, and again teaching maths at elementary school is probably not vocational and just happened through the teaching career...

Whenever you want to transmit knowledge you need some kind of passion which motivates your pupils to interact with the matter...

otherwise they will just be passive elements just fighting to pass the exam and not to learn the matter

Of course nowadays other elements are involved: we have a different scale of values of what is important for life, but this is always a generational trauma: teachers and professors prepare a younger generation and the methods for that are not updated.

I am not blaming the teachers and professors in general or as individuals, but rather the teaching system.

If today e.g. being able to calculate a square root by hand is not important (and this was shocking me when I saw this question several times in RG...), then we must teach different things or in a different way but keep them up-to-date.

Again, I circle back to my original sentence:

teachers and professors must teach this in an accessible, interesting and possibly enjoyable manner and through this spark the flame of passion which motivates your pupils to interact with the matter...

Miranda:

An interesting response. I really see this trend of students becoming too materialistic. perhaps for this consumer society we live.

Yes, we teachers should encourage students to be better. But like everything else, we can not impress everyone. We, in practice, just managing to impress the best. And this question was not presented because the best students.

Tiia.... Great.

However, and cases of mandatory courses, such as electricity or other courses, in areas which do not depend directly these issues. Homework can be copied. And (incredible as it may seem) students deliberately copy.

Obviously they need to be disapproved when they do that. But there would be salvation for these students?

P.S. I know that these students should not be encouraged to continue. I would just like to hear more opinions from colleagues.

In case of written home assignemnts, you can check if they have copied their text from others or not (use plagiarism detecting software or just search the web). You can try to make them work in groups and ask all group members to evaluate other members' workload: this will force everybody to contribute at least a bit. But, anyway, this will still not make all students interested in what they are studying as they have not chosen the right field for themselves: maybe for some, e.g. art would be more suitable.

Give them homework or special assignments and make higher weight of marks for them.

One tactic that I always use is to require homework assignments that require several hours of dedication. Thus, students need to devote to the work to be completed, hindering copies.