Tomorrow's Professor Msg. #114 LET ME EDUTAIN YOU

Folks:

Concern about the criteria students use to evaluate a professors’ teaching has increased as faculty seek to experiment with new teaching and learning approaches (often faculty evaluations go down with new approaches). Below is an excerpt from an article by Glenn C. Altschuler, of Cornell University that looks at the emphasis many students put on the entertainment abilities of professors. Let me know if you would like an e-mail copy of the entire article.

Regards,

Rick Reis

UP NEXT: The Top 100 News Stories of The 20th Century

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LET ME EDUTAIN YOU

Excerpt from article appearing in The New York Times, Section 4A; Page 50;Column 1; Education Life Supplement Education Life Section, April 4, 1999. Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company. By Glenn C. Altschuler; Glenn C., dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, and the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies, at Cornell University.

Perhaps the most disturbing revelation of student evaluations, however, is the extent to which every class has become a show and every instructor a personality. The liveliness of the lectures, the use of videos and the professor’s ability to draw frequent laughs count more than content.

"The professor knows how to teach in an entertaining way (almost like TV)," concluded one admiring student. "The lectures were informative and, most importantly, entertaining," wrote another. I think the students who suggested a laser light show and a warm-up dance before the lesson were kidding, but these days one can never be sure.

At times, evaluations appear to be the academic analogue to "Rate the Record" on Dick Clark’s old "American Bandstand," in which teen-agers said of every new release, "Good beat, great to dance to, I’d give it a 9." Students are becoming more adjectival than analytical, more inclined to take faculty members’ wardrobes and hairstyles into account when sizing them up as educators.

Many teachers share or give in to the attitudes and behavior I have attributed to students. The evaluation form used by the American studies program at Cornell, for example, asks, "How do you feel about your professor?" - not "What do you think of his/her ideas, organization and methods of presentation?" And, let me confess, I make comments in class about my Gucci ties and diminutive height, and I continue to give my 11-word impersonation of Franklin D. Roosevelt ("Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy"), even though I’m irked that students remember it more than my analysis of the achievements and limitations of the New Deal. I like the applause and the large enrollments, and I’m not above a song and dance to keep ‘em in their seats.

Too many students now choose the pleasurable over the valuable. People who exercise vigorously or learn to play a musical instrument, the economist Robert Frank observed in his most recent book, "Luxury Fever," experience discomfort, and even pain, at first. But if they stick with it, enduring satisfaction, to the point of enjoyment, can ensue. Will students and other smart people learn to exchange the satisfaction of the short run for more hard-won pleasures? If not, what will I do for an encore when more undergraduates conclude, as one already has, "I thought he would be funnier than he was"?