Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!princeton!mccc!pjh
From: pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Ph.D.'s and Teaching
Message-ID: <135@mccc.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jan 88 15:28:26 GMT
References: <2144@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU> <115@mccc.UUCP> <3469@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> <429@sdcc15.UUCP> <261@tmsoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: pjh@mccc.UUCP (Peter J. Holsberg)
Organization: Mercer College, Trenton, NJ
Lines: 29

In article <261@tmsoft.UUCP> mason@tmsoft.UUCP (Dave Mason) writes:
>I thought I'd throw my $.02 worth into this discussion.  It turns out
>I'm a good, but not great, teacher.  

Dave, from what you wrote, I'd say "better than good".  Clearly there is a 
need for an instructor to cover the "advertised" material and to help
students reach the advertised goals of the course, but so much more 
important is the goal of getting them to think, or as you put it, "build
the correct models".

>  I frequently am in the situation where there are no questions, but I'm
>sure it's because no one has a clue what's going on.  
>My usual response is to say something like: "If you have a
>question, ask it cuz there's probably several other people who have the
>same question, and are just too shy to ask."  This usually gets a
>question, which leads to another & we make some progress. 
>
Another thing you might do is pick a student and ask him a question about
something you mentioned in the simplest part of the class meeting.

But it sounds to me like you are doing a very very good job.

Can your faculty specify class/lab size?  Lucky!

-- 
Peter Holsberg                  UUCP: {rutgers!}princeton!mccc!pjh
Technology Division             CompuServe: 70240,334
Mercer College                  GEnie: PJHOLSBERG
Trenton, NJ 08690               Voice: 1-609-586-4800