“Open book, open note” can be deceptive, though. When I registered for my Math class this semester, I saw the note in the campus bookstore “no text for this class.” I about fainted. The instructor permits his students to use a journal-style (remember those composition books from grade school?) notebook during all exams. That means the material must be learned in the class or you find out from someone who actually did attend and then fetch the information yourself from wherever. The key is that the information must be either in your head or in your journal to do well on the exams.
Why’d I about faint? I hate taking notes. Not too happy with homework either.
Many lecture courses in US colleges are completely voluntary. Like a poster already said, I go to lectures where the teacher puts all trying to teach us something, and skip those where the professor doesn’t do any effort.
The Knowledge makes a good speech theory. One of the four speech theories that were taught in my oral communication lecture (which I never skipped!). It assumes that just having the knowledge and telling it is enough to make a good speech. WRONG! Lectures are like speeches, if you want to be good at them you have to prepare them well. Know your audience (in this case college students), take relevant notes (not mindless reading), adjust your vocal abilities (not dull droning), and be respectful (I had a teacher told me I was stupid when I ask her questions…she told the students she wanted us to ask her!!!).
I understand different people like different things and find different types of lecturers more effective than others. That is fine with me, to each his/her own, but it IS the lecturer’s responsibility to make the class interesting to most of the students, after all, he/she wants them to learn, right? That is why he/she became a professor, right?
Yes, I’d say the difference is that most US college courses aren’t lecture-based. My freshman composition classes, for instance, don’t involve more than ten minutes of “teacher talk time” per class meeting; the rest of the time, the students are writing, editing, or discussing. Because the class depends so much on student participation, there has to be an attendance policy – students who don’t show up are hurting their classmates as well as themselves.
My English class, Oral Communication discussion section, and Portuguese class are all like that, but most of my classes are lecture-based with a discussion section once a week. Depending on the subject it can be good or bad…
Ah, the folly of the uninitiated! A lot of professors at universities and colleges aren’t necessarily professors because they want/like to teach. They’ve been given an opportunity to do what they really want to do - research. The prestige, money, satisfaction, etc. they receive accrues from the research they do in their given discipline. At many universities, a professor’s status is maintained by publications and research grants. Teaching (and when I mean teaching, I mean putting a lot of time and effort into making courses interesting) often falls down the list of a professor’s priorities.
It’s not that many professors don’t care about teaching (some don’t care, to be sure). It’s just that with other priorities (research, writing grant proposals, writing research papers, committee work, etc.) taking up so much of the individual’s time, teaching often gets short-shrifted. Luckily, there are special few who, along with the other concerns listed above, do take the time to make there classes interesting and informative.
In my case (I’m a professor at the community college level), I indeed became a professor because I wanted/liked to teach. I put a lot of effort in making my classes as intersting and informative as I possibly can. I still have a lot to learn, though - teaching (that is, teaching well) - is, surprisingly, difficult.
I’m not excusing my fellow professors for their poor teaching abilities. I just wanted to disuade those in thinking that a person necessarily becomes a professor because they like/want to teach, and that professors often don’t have the time/inclination to become better teachers because other matters (like research) are given higher priority.
Actually, I know that. I would just prefer that they would be given the opportunity to do their research without: Boring me to sleep, calling me stupid, and failing to teach me what I need to get to the next level.
Sigh That was the review day for the final…so I just suck it up, happy that I would never see her again (she wouldn’t be there when I had to take the final)…Of course, prior to that, I gave her a bad evaluation. We have to fill those forms every semester with every teacher and TA. I usually give average to professors and above average to TA’s…she got below average or poor, I don’t remember.
I’ve been missing classes this year because of legitimate problems, also, but the difference is that I talk to my professors (when I get the nerves) and try to explain what’s going on and that I’m doing my best at keeping up with all the material out of class. As long as they know that your absences are not motivated by sloth/uninterest like 90% of absences are, I have found them to be more lenient… except, of course, in classes where lectures are pertinent to learning the material- they won’t feel good about failing you, but they will anyway.
That reminds me, do colleges and universities do much with those surveys? I know they’re supposed to affect tenure and such but sometimes I wonder about it. Actually where I went the school for a few years actually gave a grant to have students run their own separate surveys and publish the results.(Needless to say some of the professors didn’t like the results.)
I think this nails the most important thing I learned my freshman year of college. After getting dismal grades on my first two papers (low b, high c) in an American Lit class and getting a similar grade on the draft of a third paper, I finally realized what the professor’s office hours were for. I made an appointment and was blunt: I told him that I didn’t understand what he was looking for in my papers, and could he help me figure out how to improve my third paper before the final draft was due? He talked to me for quite a while and I did much better on the final draft of the paper and on the remaining papers in the class. Learning that professors actually will take the time to help is a valuable lesson.
I think my perspective is different. I just finished my first year of university at the age of 30. I have four children and a husband.
I paid for these classes. For my money, I want to go to every class. I want all the notes. I want assistance with anything I don’t understand. I don’t feel like I have the right to bother the prof with questions if I couldn’t be bothered to show up for the class where he explained it the first time. I expect my prof’s to have a good lesson planned, to be prepared and knowledgable and to show up on time. I expect the same out of me. I need to be prepared for class with all of my relevant supplies, to be prepared to learn and ask questions, and to be there. We work together, I learn what I need to know for the next level of information. Even if the course is not relevant to my major - I was raised to believe that anything you undertake, you do well. When I was in the work force, if I was cleaning toilets, I did the best job I could. If you decide to do something, DO IT WELL!
As a result, my prof’s have been extremely helpful. I managed to miss two midterms last semester with no ill effect on my grades. I worked my butt off and was still having problems with the material, so my prof let me skip them, and transferred the mark from my final over to my missed midterms.
Skipping classes? Why on earth would I put myself into a position where I had to raise my kids, take university classes, have my husband take on more responsibilities because I’m so busy and stressed, just to skip? What is the point? I could still be bartending if I didn’t want to be continuing my education. No one forced me to sign up. I’m an adult. I made the choice, and stuck to it. And I’m doing the best I can.
I wish more students would do this. I’m an English tutor, and so many people come to me and say “I don’t know what’s wrong, I always get low grades in this class. Will you help me?” Well, I do the best I can and help them develop their content and ideas, but I always ask them if they ever talked to their prof about it, and they always say no.
Yes, going to the professor’s office hours really helps. Of course, it must be a professor willing to attend students during the office hours, again there are some that do not want to be bothered. I try to go to those that want students to go to their office hours…it always helps.
About the evaluations: I think once the person is tenured, nothing short of dying will keep the person from the tenure, but if someone wants to advance, they might look the evaluations and see how well he/she is teaching. Oh, and the evaluations are published for students to check out which professors to avoid.
I once passed a class after skipping the midterm and everything after it (including the final) because the professor gave me an incomplete and the registrar turned it into a D- after the fact. I had thought I’d just fail it.
I once got a C- in a class that I didn’t attend after the first two weeks because the registrar’s office lost my drop slip and I never bothered to confirm that I wasn’t in the class any more. Upon learning of this, the professor told me he didn’t think it was fair that my GPA be damaged too much because of this honest mistake (little did he know that the C- barely lowered my GPA at all! I guess the joke was on him :rolleyes: ).
I once got a B- in a class for which I didn’t attend any lectures during the final third of the course. I came to talk to the professor (can’t remember what I told her) and she said if I got a B- or better on the final she’d pass me. I aced the final.
I turned in papers late (or not at all), made up exams, the whole bit. In terms of academic rigor, it all reminded me a lot of high school, except no one was living with their parents, drinking was much more widely accepted, and it was much less important that you go to class. Of course, I ended up getting the boot after two years because I failed too many classes, but that was due more to laziness than anything else (obviously).
Remind me sometime to tell you the story of how my 11th grade honors (!) history teacher gave me an A ‘on trust’ before I had turned in the term paper. Made me feel like a putz for ever turning it in, let me tell you.
My beef isn’t with the students skipping class, it’s with students who skip and expect me to spoon feed them outside of class. (Hell, I skipped all but five classes of poly-sci and still got an A- when I was going to school.) However to address your point about going to maintain grades, the average grade for those who attend most of my classes is about 25 points higher than those who only show up for tests and papers. (That’s about 2 and half letter grades.) I include at least one nugget of important information in every lecture that isn’t in the book.
You did cheat yourself. With the good professors, the students can drive the class. The good students will ask questions and bring up points that will entail furthur discussion. If you ask a professor to look at a topic more indepth most will be happy to. Most would be turning cartwheels because that shows that the students are interested. I never had a professor that I couldn’t get to give us more just by asking a timely question. (When I was a student)
As for your last point, you are correct that we are to blame. It is because we don’t care. We don’t care about the students who skip all of the time. We don’t care about the students who aren’t interested in the subject. We DO care about the students who do come to class. Who do care if they learn. Who do care about the subject. Did you learn more in the classes you were interested in? The one’s you attended? Your GPA for those were not significantly different from the ones you skipped. (According to your post.) But, I bet you learned more because you cared to spend the effort.
I am not the best professor in the world. I keep trying to improve. I study the great professors to become better. I know I have weaknesses. I also know that lecture and discussion becomes better when the students aren’t hostile to the subject.
KarlGrenze,
You should still report the professor for calling you stupid. If not for your sake, but for the sake of others who will follow you in that course. There are no stupid questions, just stupid answers. (Unless of course you were asking the professor out on a date. )
I have only ONE final this semester on the day and time listed on the sheet (Thursday @ 1:00, Wish Me Luck). Everything else was either rescheduled, changed, or didn’t occur.
(((And so far I’ve attempted to go to 6 FORMAL study sessions with TAs. Only three times have they been there.)))
The way I solved problems of class attendance when I was teaching college was to require class participation and attendance as part of the final grade. This was put on the syllabus, in bold print and big font, brought to attention in the first class of the quarter, and emphasized repeatedly when necessary. When participation and attendance count for a significant part of the final grade, and when you have the class attendance carefully documented, there’s not a lot of ammunition a slack student can throw at you when he or she receives low marks due to cutting class.
A lot of professors at universities and colleges aren’t necessarily professors because they want/like to teach. They’ve been given an opportunity to do what they really want to do - research. The prestige, money, satisfaction, etc. they receive accrues from the research they do in their given discipline. At many universities, a professor’s status is maintained by publications and research grants. Teaching (and when I mean teaching, I mean putting a lot of time and effort into making courses interesting) often falls down the list of a professor’s priorities.
I would just prefer that they would be given the opportunity to do their research without: Boring me to sleep, calling me stupid, and failing to teach me what I need to get to the next level.
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