Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!dykimber
From: dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Student preparedness
Message-ID: <5013@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 22 Dec 88 08:00:35 GMT
References: <4893@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <6435@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <1988Dec16.153701.8316@cs.rochester.edu> <97@microsoft.UUCP> <502@mccc.UUCP> <9238@ihlpb.ATT.COM> <4992@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <9249@ihlpb.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 62

In article <9249@ihlpb.ATT.COM> nevin1@ihlpb.UUCP (55528-Liber,N.J.) writes:
>In article <4992@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) writes:
>>>[original quotation]
>>It sounds to me like you've confused teaching with lecturing,
>
>I think you are right.  Unfortunately, that experience comes from being
>stuck with many professors who lecture, not teach.  And this is from a
>"we are rated in the top five" university.
>
>>Actors can't answer questions about the material,
>
>Neither could many of my professors.

Whoa!  I certainly hope your school isn't rated in the top five for long, if
the professors can't answer questions about the material!  Well, then again,
I should qualify this.  I count "I don't know" and "let me ask someone about
that" as legitimate answers.  I hope the point you're making is just that
the professors were lousy teachers, not that they didn't know the material.
But then again, as I've said in other postings, I don't think that professors
should always be expected to know everything about everything, even if it is
part of the course material.  It's often impossible, as in survey or
introductory courses.

>I agree with you that there is no substitute for a great teacher (or
>a great lecturer, for the matter).  Unfortunately, most of my college
>professors failed to meet these criterion.  Maybe I got more than my
>fair share of bad teachers (I don't think so, though.  Many of my
>friends around the country feel the same way); I don't know.  It got to
>the point where I was picking electives based on who was teaching the
>course and not based on the subject, because I got tired of wasting my
>time (I tried to take my best professors more than once).  By senior
>year undergrad, I kept wishing that they would publish the list of the
>bottom 25% of the teachers than the top 25%, because I really wanted
>to know who to AVOID.

I don't know, I think that a good teacher is a good thing to have, and it's
definitely true that a bad teacher can hamper learning (or that a good teacher
can improve it, whatever).  But there are other factors that I think go into
learning.  The quality of the other students, the size of the course, and
the quality of the readings come to mind as important factors.  Well, the last
one is really covered under teaching, but...  One professor I've had teach
several if my courses, I've noticed, varies from terrible to fantastic
depending on these factors.  This isn't just day-to-day fluctuation, this is
entire semester observations.  I guess that incompetent teaching is a problem,
but some teachers are, you might say, driven to incompetence by external
factors.  I've had extremely good luck, I think, in getting good teaching
and advising.  Now while it is probably true that princeton is exceptional
among big name schools in terms of attention to education (despite the fact
that many princeton undergrads might dispute this, I think it is certainly
true), I've noticed another factor that I think is telling.  I'm in a very
small department.  Many of my courses have been seminar sized (10-20) or
smaller.  The students taking the courses have been taking them not usually
to fulfil requirements (or they would be much more crowded) or anything like
that, but rather because they're interested.  This is probably not as true in
other departments, where I'm sure it's much more common to find people from
unrelated areas taking upper level courses.  I don't think the result of
getting good teaching is just luck.  While I'm sure that natural teaching
ability is rare and to be valued, I think that a lot of the problem lies in
these uncontrollable external factors such as class size and the interest of
the students.  [note that the preceding has been a caricature to some extent -
I don't want to offend anyone in popular departments]

                                                  -Dan