RE: Uncl: course/instructor evaluations

["Donald E. Simanek" <dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu>]

On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, Jim Green wrote:

> At 10:21 AM 2/12/98 EST, you wrote:
>
> > I've read the article, which describes how a psychology instructor taught
> > the same course with *everything* the same in two consequtive semesters,
> > except that in the second semester he employed some techniques he learned 
> > in a seminar that involved varying ones tone of voice and using hand
> > gestures to become a more lively speaker.
>
> Somebody please explain to me why this would not make the lecture better and
> the lecturer a better teacher.  The question seems to be somethng like "Just
> because the teacher made the class more interesting and caused the students
> to be more attentive, so what?"

Attentive *to* what? Motivated toward what? There have been experiments
(done usually in psychology courses) in which guest lecturers were rated
by students, the lecturer being introduced as an expert in a particular
field. But in fact the lecturer was a polished actor hired to deliver a
prepared talk which consisted of platitudes, lies, and misinformation, all
delivered in a polished manner. The students rated the guest highly in all
respects, including high ratings for value and relevance of the
information presented. Now I don't think these "one shot" experiments are
more than suggestive of a problem. Also, I can appreciate that in a field
like pscyhology it's often hard to tell whether a lecture is sense or
nonsense. Still, I've seen actual teachers who were shaky on subject
matter, who conducted classes empty of content, with rock bottom grading
standards who consistently rate highly with students.  I've seen
multi-section courses at the college level in which students flock to the
sections of the instructors with a reputation as "easy graders", while
shunning those who actually delivered content and expected the students to
learn something. 

As someone else wisely remarked in this thread, what's the use of
motivation, attitude and good feelings if you haven't acquired skills,
knowledge and intelligence? 

Someone worried about elected people in government who may have been
turned off to science in school. I worry more about elected people in
government who were turned on to science, but given nothing of science but
slogans and "conceptual" platitudes, with no real understanding. I worry
about people being elected by voters whose understanding of science is at
best Aristotelian.

I also am concerned about those very few students who are bright and
capable, and could have become excellent scientists, or anything else they
set their minds to, but were turned off by science teachers who were their
intellectual inferiors, or who pitched their courses at the lowest common
denominator, so these good students majored in something else instead.

> > The result was that his course evaluations showed dramatic change. Maybe not
> > surprising except for two points. a) His changes were on the face of it,
> > superficial. 
>
> Superficial my foot!  These changes were obviously NOT superficial.  The
> kids liked the class better and even paid more attention to the text and
> valued it higher.

But did the students necessarily learn anything?

I have to admit that I've never liked folks who overtly try to motivate
me, and I am positively apathetic to boosterism of all kinds. There seems
to be a mania for "motivational speakers" these days, and even our college
administrators, in their illusive 'wisdom' have been inviting those
snake-oil salesmen to campus, even to speak at commencement exercises. I
first encounted a teacher of that ilk in 8th grade. When he said to our
class "You can do it, if you try," I'd say to myself, "Of course, because
everything you ask us to do is trivial, but I'll be darned if I'll do
*anything* for *you*." I had no respect for that man, partly because his
only academic training was in sociology and physical education. He taught
me a useful lesson, though: Just because a person has a college degree
doesn't guarantee that he's not an idiot. As the years go by I see more
and more examples of that type.

I've always worked harder for those who challenged me, who pointed out my
inadequacies, and who said "That's a shoddy piece of work of which you
should be ashamed." But I only respected them if they themselves were
highly competent, near-perfect, in whatever it was they were asking of me. 

These days it seems to be an axiom that students must be motivated or
entertained before they will learn. Why? More to the point, why do
*teachers* accept this proposition? Some seem to pander to it. I think
those of my generation might agree that this wasn't always so. We didn't
expect anything of value in school to be interesting or fun. We learned
because we knew that it was possible to flunk, and that would be
embarrasing and might have undesirable consequences. We didn't ask for
relevance. We didn't imagine that we were wise enough to know how courses
should be taught. Most of what we were expected to learn was dull and
boring, but we didn't expect it to be otherwise. One did it anyway. Our
parents supported that view. "You will learn, whether you like it or not!"
Our teachers didn't put up with whining or complaints. They didn't "water
it down" just because we found it difficult. Hard academic work
strengthened us, until we took pride in mastering the difficult, and had
comtempt for the trivial. Even in college we knew that we'd have to work
our way through unremitting drudgery (like math courses) to reach that
elusive goal of final understanding when it might all make sense, or at
least when we might know enough to find pleasure in it. Why didn't we
major in something "easier" than physics? Because by that time, for those
of us who were still "making it", those alternatives were unthinkable!

That system turned out some excellent physicists (and I don't claim to be
one of them, for I was only a "B" student). On the whole I don't see the
present educational system doing any better.

But how attitudes have changed over only a few decades!

	-- Donald

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Dr. Donald E. Simanek                            Office: 717-893-2079
Professor of Physics                                FAX: 717-893-2048
Lock Haven University, Lock Haven, PA. 17745
dsimanek@eagle.lhup.edu                 http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek
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