I am pretty sure G^d created me to teach. I feel blessed to be paid to teach most of my life. My last tour of duty in the USN was teaching NROTC at VMI. I learned then, how much I enjoyed conveying the difficult issues of celestial navigation to novices.
Once I got to Univ. of AL, I learned just how hard it is to teach well. I also learned that teaching poorly is pretty easy and can earn you high marks from students. So, if you care little about how much your students learn, and only focus on popularity, here's how:
1) Be SUPER easy. I was told once, by a university Dean that his college, of all grades given, 96% were A, A- or A+. Wow!
2) Let them out early/cancel class often. I once encountered students streaming into the hall about 20 mins into class commencement time. When I saw it happening again, a few days later, I asked a student, "Are you out of class already?" Yeah, he replied, we never stay more than 25-30 min. The class was 50 mins long.
3) Give good grades to all (see #1).
4) Be personable.
I once had a colleague tell me that he had a 3-hour grad class which he decided to test a bit. He did the 4 things above-- to the extreme. The students learned little, but his student evaluation of instruction was so very high the dean called my friend in to commend him.
We'll talk more about the challenges of good teaching in the next post.
Once I got to Univ. of AL, I learned just how hard it is to teach well. I also learned that teaching poorly is pretty easy and can earn you high marks from students. So, if you care little about how much your students learn, and only focus on popularity, here's how:
1) Be SUPER easy. I was told once, by a university Dean that his college, of all grades given, 96% were A, A- or A+. Wow!
2) Let them out early/cancel class often. I once encountered students streaming into the hall about 20 mins into class commencement time. When I saw it happening again, a few days later, I asked a student, "Are you out of class already?" Yeah, he replied, we never stay more than 25-30 min. The class was 50 mins long.
3) Give good grades to all (see #1).
4) Be personable.
I once had a colleague tell me that he had a 3-hour grad class which he decided to test a bit. He did the 4 things above-- to the extreme. The students learned little, but his student evaluation of instruction was so very high the dean called my friend in to commend him.
We'll talk more about the challenges of good teaching in the next post.
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