As practical advice, do this: stay in the class, document everything, and keep your head down for that A/B grade. Pick those hills before you go dying on them. After you’re finished, and have that class passed, keep documentation of your passing work. Bundle up the course documentation with some sort of cover letter, and go meet discreetly with the department head.
As for basic professional standards for the collegiate classroom, complete syllabuses are a must, and moreover usually there is a standard core content set for each course - significant deviation from said core content is a problem if you can document it.
As for PowerPoint in the classroom, it does get used. Personally, I do use PowerPoint, but I do so in usually complete violation of the usual PP style guidelines. Edward Tufte does a great riff on the abuses of and by PowerPoint. PP is basically a slide presenter - the abuse of PP is in the use of informatically damaged slides. PP can be great when you’re teaching something like a sequential process: overview, step 1, step 2, … - the abuse is in forcing other types of content into that format. The abuse is also in presenting ideas for the sake of presenting them - inane non-content yields inane presentations, regardless of application. I also use extensive web-based material in my courses, and the vast majority of that is not PP.
A cardinal distinction in pedagogical quality is the extent to which the instructor “owns” the subject matter. In general instructors with good-to-excellent grasp of their subject matter do more with respect to producing their own content (to the extent allowed by their departments). To some extent, heavy reliance on other people’s material can be a sign of poor subject matter control; or perhaps a matter of poor work ethic.
I have the flexibility in my adjunct environment to not track my students as if they were third graders - the only requests that I get for reports on that are from the student-athlete advisors. One reason that some instructors are careful about attendance is to defuse complaining students - students with low attendance patterns have less credibility in making complaints.
As a scientist working in biology, which has a lot of visual data, I love PowerPoint for presentations. You can redesign your slides in seconds whenever you have new data or need to fit a longer/shorter alloted time or what have you. The problem is when people put in a lot of slides with no actual informational content…
Drop the course. Any biology teacher that does not “believe” in evolution is not a teacher you want to be taught by.
As I’m sure you aware, evolution is supported by so much data that it is as close to being a solid fact as anything could be. Scientists may argue about HOW it happens, but there is no questioning that it does.
PharmBoy, **WhyNot **cannot drop the course, as she explained.
I agree with cerberus. See if you can complain to the department head and get switched to another teacher. Is it possible the real instructor couldn’t make it the first day and this guy was subbing?
The important fact of that demonstration is that the bowling ball must only be released and not pushed.
If as the quote states a park guide gives it a shove, the child probably won’t be returning to “Creationist Amusement Park”.
I expect that’s just sloppy reporting. Actually, doing it out of doors is a bit of a gamble - a sudden gust of wind could bring it back to a point beyond where it started.
Unfortunately I’m guessing that WhyNot has to take this particular Saturday class for personal reasons and her options are pretty limited. There probably aren’t any other teachers to switch to. It’s a completely shitty position to be in but not that unusual even at large universities, especially for mature students who tend to have other commitments.
The poster clearly stated that she can’t afford to drop the course - she can certainly play along, get the grade, and then demonstrate the problem with full documentation.
Yeah, it sucks. I remember a teacher where I went to college who’s class I dropped and took a 8-12 Saturday morning class to avoid. He was that bad. I’d recommend switching teachers or sections or whatever first, and just gritting your teeth and wading through it second. Challenging the teacher on his personal beliefs are way down on the list, and are generally a good way to be put on his shit list.
Now, if he starts teaching you his personal beliefs as fact and expecting you to learn them rather than actual science, that’s different. That’s time to go to the department head, ombudsman, etc. If he starts making claims you know are bullpaddies, ask him for the evidence to back those claims up. That’s usually a good start.
If enough people complain, they may do something. I took a computer programming certificate program in a trade school a few years back. The guy who was initially teaching us one of the courses was terrible; completely unintelligible (very thick accent), disorganized, and (apparently) not as knowledgeable as he needed to be, since he generally couldn’t answer questions. About 8 of us (from a class of 22 or so) went to see one of the school’s administrators to discuss this. A week later, we had a new teacher who filled in until one of the other regular teachers finished a course.
I felt bad for the first teacher, but I wasn’t learning anything and we didn’t really have time to spend trying to decipher what he wanted and what he was telling us.
Thanks, cerberus. That’s pretty much my plan, with a question, not confrontation or accusation, if he makes a really ludicrous comment again. I’m still hoping he was just really really unprepared for the first day and things will get better this week.
If not, I may just have to get really, really drunk at the Dopefest this Saturday after class.
If it makes you feel any better I once had a professor for my Radio/Television Broadcast classes that on the first day of class I asked if it would be possible to do something (at this point I don’t even remember what I asked him) and his response was, “All things are possible for those who love the Lord and read their bible. Do you love the Lord?”
I am totally going to use that response the next time a student asks me, “Would it be possible to turn in my paper a day later than the deadline?” Mwahaha.
It’s hard to tell from the OP if the instructor was challenged at all during the first class. I’d guess that there is a chance that the instructor did this on purpose to see if he could generate some class discussion or gauge the ability of the class.
I could lean this way more if he had provided a syllabus. Really, no syllabus for the first meeting of a class that meets for 6 hours? Where you won’t see the students for a week? Red flag.
