Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!gatech!rayssd!hxe
From: hxe@rayssd.RAY.COM (Heather Emanuel)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Ph.D.'s and Teaching
Message-ID: <1759@rayssd.RAY.COM>
Date: 11 Jan 88 14:11:26 GMT
References: <2144@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> <115@mccc.UUCP> <3469@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu>
Sender: hxe@rayssd.RAY.COM (Heather Emanuel @ Raytheon Company, Portsmouth RI)
Reply-To: hxe@rayssd.RAY.COM (Heather Emanuel)
Organization: Raytheon Company, Portsmouth RI
Lines: 78

In article <3469@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> moreno@umn-cs.UUCP (Andres Moreno) writes:
> ...I must point out that ultimately, the student is responsible
> for his or her own learning. As instructors, we should provide an
> environment that encourages intellectual curiosity. Classes should
> give material not easily accessible to the students either because
> it is too difficult or because it is not readily available in the
> literature. Courses should outline a subject, not cover it
> completely.  Students can and should learn on their own a
> *significant* body of knowledge during their college years.
> Otherwise, we will have produced a crop of college graduates that
> *need* people to teach them everything.

With all due respect to M. Moreno, who is speaking from an idealized
point of view:  Bull.  The salient point in the above paragraph is
that instructors should create an environment that encourages
intellectual curiousity.  If that is accomplished, maybe the rest
will follow.  However, it is THE INSTRUCTOR'S RESPONSIBILITY to
ensure that the students are learning, not the the students'
responsibility to dig whatever useful information they can glean
from what the instructor is throwing their way.

I don't know how many times I have talked with an instructor who
says something like, "But they just won't ask questions!"  Of
*course* they won't ask questions if they haven't got the foggiest
notion what's going on!  If the students in your class are not
asking questions, are not curious or excited about the subject
matter, that's your problem, not theirs.  After all, it's exactly
what you're getting paid to do.

There is an entire body of knowledge, constantly growing, on
Learning Theory.  There are courses on Adult Learning Theory, Child
Learning Theory, Adult Education versus Adult Industrial Training,
and on and on.  Of all the instructors I know -- at all levels and
in all disciplines -- maybe one in fifty has had any education in
these subjects.

> I do not believe that the role of the instructor is to entertain
> the students while at the same time (hopefully) giving them access
> to knowledge. Class attendance should be an active endeavour (with
> the student preparing before going to class).

Why not?  My favorite classes were the ones that were entertaining.
I don't mean that the instructor dressed up like a clown and
juggled, but that the material was presented in a way that made it
seem exciting, that kept me on the edge of my seat waiting for the
`next installment'.  I try to continue that in my teaching today.
Every course should have a different approach depending on what is
being taught, so it would be peripheral to this discussion for me to
say what I do in class, but I take full responsibility for creating
the maximum amount of active learning time (the time when the
instructor is teaching and the students are learning) in every
class.  Of course the students should come to class prepared --
those are the rules and there are very easy ways of enforcing them --
but it's not their fault if the class is a failure.

If you couldn't already guess, this is a real pet peeve of mine.  I
thought it was confined to the areas of adult education and
training, where people who are experts in the subject matter but are
not educators (they are usually pulled from local industry) do the
majority of the training, but I see I was wrong and it is in
colleges too.  (I guess I was lucky to have had real instructors
throughout college.)  What can be done?  Require a minimum amount of
education in education for anyone who professes to be an instructor,
and give more respect to the field of education as a legitimate body
of knowledge, rather than what "those who can't do" do.

--Heather Emanuel
--Supervisor of Training and Development
--Computer Operations
--Raytheon Submarine Signal Division
hxe@rayssd.ray.com
{allegra,cbosgd,gatech,ihnp4,linus,necntc,raybed2,uiucdcs}!rayssd!hxe
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   I don't think my company *has* an opinion, so the ones in this
                  article are obviously my own.
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"It's often said that life is strange, oh yes, but compared to what?"
		-Steve Forbert