University professors should have to learn how to teach
Sun, 2007-11-04 04:09
#1
University professors should have to learn how to teach
Sun, 2007-11-04 04:09
#2
I wanted to make this a more generic thread about the appallingly poor teaching you often get in universities, and not just about this particular article that I'll post here:
[url=http://www.thestar.com/GTA/Education/article/273356]The Art of (Not) Lecturing[/url]
quote:
Here in the most daunting teaching venue in the country – a three-tiered, chandeliered hall of 1,500 seats booked with classes from Monday to Friday – the cut and thrust of the Q and A survives against tough odds.If it can make it here, it can make it anywhere – which is good, because it's the intellectual cut and thrust that opens the brain to deep learning, says Nobel laureate Carl Wieman, Canada's new guru of science teaching. Wieman, who runs a think-tank on teaching science at the University of British Columbia, was flown here recently to help 500 U of T and York professors rethink how they teach.
His message? Don't drone. Get students talking and guessing and arguing. Our short-term memory can only process four ideas at a time, he warns, so don't try to cram whole chapters into an hour. In a nutshell: reduce the load; stimulate the brain.
"I can't imagine a three-hour lecture, personally, but getting students to flex their brains during class rather than just sit there passively is exactly what we want to see," Wieman said in an interview.
It's that interaction – the answering and arguing and persuading – that stimulates protein in the brain, which in turn helps anchor ideas into long-term memory, he says.
His new think-tank – the $2 million-a-year Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative – will work with science professors in several UBC departments over the next five years to start applying fresh research on how people learn. The focus will be on delivering less content and giving more time for students to debate with each other about ideas.
Wieman's message is something students have complained about for generations.
How many times have you sat through an extremely boring lecture where the professor has droned on and on without a break, or lectured in a scattered way with no visual aids, no handouts and no notes, making it impossible to pay attention, much less organize their thoughts coherently into notes that you can learn from later?
And then, of course, if you ask them for some structure or, god forbid, some visual aids or notes, they talk about how they refuse to "spoonfeed". It's like they take pride in their shitty teaching style.
Not only that, but teaching like that is a way of ensuring that people with learning disabilities or who have different learning styles fail. It's discriminatory. I think that people who earn a shitload of money should have to do their jobs well, or at least make an effort at teaching effectively. They should lose their jobs if they don't. There aren't too many other jobs where you can do a pisspoor job and then shit all over your clients when they give you the feedback that you're not effectively delivering the service they need - and then wear it as a badge of pride.
[ 04 November 2007: Message edited by: Michelle ]
Sun, 2007-11-04 06:04
#3
Le T
I think it should be noted that although there are many bad university teachers, the majority of the bad ones tend to be older, whiter, men who have tenure.
What is lacking in most of the bad lectures that I can remember is any relevance to the life experiences of the students. There is also the presumption that the students know nothing about the topic and what they might know is irrelevant to the conversation anyways.
Sun, 2007-11-04 07:40
#4
Strangely enough, I didn't notice that when I was in university. My experience was that there was maybe only one older, white, male professor who taught badly - the others had learned from experience to give their class handouts or use visual aids. Almost all of the professors I have had who were really shoddy at teaching or pompous were younger, more inexperienced, and had less of a grasp on their topic, making their lack of preparation and teaching aids even more of a difficult thing. I haven't had a lot of really bad professors, mind you - but the ones I've had didn't all fall into any gender or age categories.
Sun, 2007-11-04 07:51
#5
I had excellent teachers, and I loved all my classes (I know, really it's true). The subjects were interesting, there was always debate, students were asked and encouraged to participate. Could be it is because I went to U of T's Scarborough campus and the classes are smaller.
Sun, 2007-11-04 08:02
#6
Most of my classes were great too. I don't want it to sound like I'm saying all my profs sucked or anything. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img] Just a few personally, and heard about a few more through the grapevine, that's all.
One thing I found is that they usually put their good teachers onto the gigantic first-year survey courses. Which made it a shock in second and third year when I was hit with a couple of professors who could put sleeping pill companies out of business, or refused to be even slightly organized when giving lectures, and refused to outline some main points as well.
Sun, 2007-11-04 08:30
#7
quote:
Originally posted by Stargazer:
[b]I had excellent teachers, and I loved all my classes (I know, really it's true). The subjects were interesting, there was always debate, students were asked and encouraged to participate. Could be it is because I went to U of T's Scarborough campus and the classes are smaller.[/b]
I think it might be because you genuinely liked sociology.
That's probably more important than anything... A lot of people in my experience who don't like the teachers are in the wrong program, and a lot of people who idol worship their teachers are groupies for the discipline. The bias you have coming in comes a long way.
Sun, 2007-11-04 08:45
#8
Absolutely. I had a real love for the subjects, no doubt about it and that definitely helped. Even stats - I loved working for hours on complex problems. I do think smaller classes has a lot to do with it as well - less likely to fade into anonymity.
Sun, 2007-11-04 12:49
#9
M. Spector
[url=http://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2007-09-14/opinions/who-teaches-teache... should be mandatory for university teachers[/url]
Sun, 2007-11-04 19:27
#10
i liked most of my professors at York University..
Sun, 2007-11-04 20:25
#11
Sven
The very best professors that I had (the three at the top of my list) were great teachers but didn't publish much. I had a law professor that was regularly voted as "best teacher" who, after graduating from Yale Law School in the 1960s, published a total of zero papers.
I had a history professor who was never made a full professor (presumably, at least in part, because he never published anything) but he was well-known among history students as being among the best teachers. He retired a year or two ago and I wrote him a note to tell him about being at a party a year earlier where I was talking with several people who had, coincidentally, taken courses from him at different times in the prof's career and all had glowing comments about him.
Mon, 2007-11-05 13:30
#12
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:
[b]The very best professors that I had (the three at the top of my list) were great teachers but didn't publish much. I had a law professor that was regularly voted as "best teacher" who, after graduating from Yale Law School in the 1960s, published a total of zero papers.I had a history professor who was never made a full professor (presumably, at least in part, because he never published anything) but he was well-known among history students as being among the best teachers. He retired a year or two ago and I wrote him a note to tell him about being at a party a year earlier where I was talking with several people who had, coincidentally, taken courses from him at different times in the prof's career and all had glowing comments about him.[/b]
I've noticed that too - that the better professors in uni tend to be the ones that aren't as focussed on the "publish or perish" rat-race. The problem there is that oftentimes, as you say, they tend to get denied tenure so they can't continue to motivate and inspire people.
Science education especially needs people who can teach well, because the popular perception of science professors as being boring drones needs to be counteracted at every step.
Mon, 2007-11-05 14:17
#13
Of course, I am one of those brilliant lecturers every undergraduate loves!
I should point out that undergraduate teaching constitutes about 25% of my job. Here is the breakdown: 40% research. 40% teaching, undergrad and grad. 20% service: serving on graduate admissions committees, helping evaluate scholarship applications, serving on search committees, serving on tenure committees, etc.
The 40% teaching conists of the following: three term-length undergraduate courses, one term-length graduate course, serving on graduate area committees, serving on graduate dissertation committees, supervising dissertations, etc. I would estimate a breakdown of perhaps 25% undergraduate teaching and 15% graduate teaching.
I should also point out that the higher up you go, the more it matters to have a top researcher teaching your classes. It does not matter so much to have a top researcher when it comes to Intro to Calculus, or Intro to Logic. But it really matters for graduate classes: it makes a huge difference to be taught by someone who is both engaged with and contributing to the latest work in the field. My most intense and interesting graduate courses were taught by people who were top researchers: we frequently got to see them work out their next book right before our very eyes. In some cases, we got to participate directly in the book's development: we used to count it as a matter of pride for some comment we made in a grad seminar to be footnoted in the book. (Thank goodness for small victories.) When it comes to upper-level undergraduate classes, the advantages of being taught by top researchers is somewhere in between that of introductory undergrad classes and grad classes. Even in upper level undergraduate classes, I try to involve students in my research, by sharing with them what I am working on, maybe even reading a paper or two of mine. If I were not somewhat involved in research, this experience would not be available to them.
Mon, 2007-11-05 14:21
#14
quote:
Originally posted by Sven:
[b]I had a history professor who was never made a full professor (presumably, at least in part, because he never published anything) but he was well-known among history students as being among the best teachers.[/b]
At the University of Toronto, if you have not published anything, then you have neglected fully 40% of your job -- this would be just as bad as putting no effort into teaching. Of course, different institutions have different mandates, so I am making no claims about your professor.
Mon, 2007-11-05 14:44
#15
quote:
Science education especially needs people who can teach well, because the popular perception of science professors as being boring drones needs to be counteracted at every step.
But on the other hand, it's a lot to ask from an individual, if we add "infotainment" to the mix of required talents.
No, I've never been to university. But I know [i]of[/i] university, as Bart Simpson would say.
I remember getting excited because a teacher at my daughter's elementary school decided to tackle astronomy for the kids. Imagine my disappointment when their homework included a list of impossible to pronounce names of Greek astronomers and others, with little background.
All the wonder of the universe with the wonder strangled out of it.
At that age, and in high school, kids need the weird and sensational back ground as a place to hang their hats on-- like Tycho Brache having no nose. Or Kepler's mom being a science fiction writer and on the Inquisition's most wanted list.
There's lots of colour and wonder to science education, that's for sure.
But I think its place is more properly in the elementary schools and high schools, where sadly it seems to be absent.
I would think by the time someone gets to university, it's time they got used to getting the info, and conjuring their own wonder to go along with it.
[ 05 November 2007: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]