There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.
How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articulate why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.
There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articular why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.
For the record, I get excellent teaching ratings--4.9/5 in a very demanding environment, and I do it without compromising too much on the rigor of the course. I have to compromise a little bit..a lot of my students can't add and subtract. That is not an exaggeration, and I teach in a school that is way better than the U. of Oregon. OK, now I have my credentials out of the way for our resident teaching guru, I want to say the following.
Talking about absurdly elementary concepts in front of a bunch of hung-over students who are more interested in their next networking (aka drinking) event than your class is way different from giving a talk to a bunch of academics who (1) can add and subtract and (2) are actually interested in the content of your presentation. The former is infinitely more exhausting because it feels like a performance. And it feels like a performance because very few of us are really excited about teaching very basic stuff for the nth time in a row. It was fun when I was an undergrad, but it's not fun now. Mustering enough enthusiasm about this stuff to teach well takes a lot of energy.
An actual academic talk feels engaging by nature and does not take even close to as much energy
The best instructors are able to inspire their students and demand rigor. I'm willing to bet that they are in the minority of highly rated instructors though. There are a lot of faculty who inspire but just deliver a show to their students. Teaching evaluations filled out by students can't let you disentangle between the two.
We should all aspire to be the best teacher we can be, but we can game our evaluations pretty easily. And it is a lot easier to game the evaluations than it is to actually deliver first-rate material. So, they create perverse incentives. Let's just all recognize that.
Precisely, high five for not being a moron.
There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articular why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.
For the record, I get excellent teaching ratings--4.9/5 in a very demanding environment, and I do it without compromising too much on the rigor of the course. I have to compromise a little bit..a lot of my students can't add and subtract. That is not an exaggeration, and I teach in a school that is way better than the U. of Oregon. OK, now I have my credentials out of the way for our resident teaching guru, I want to say the following.
Talking about absurdly elementary concepts in front of a bunch of hung-over students who are more interested in their next networking (aka drinking) event than your class is way different from giving a talk to a bunch of academics who (1) can add and subtract and (2) are actually interested in the content of your presentation. The former is infinitely more exhausting because it feels like a performance. And it feels like a performance because very few of us are really excited about teaching very basic stuff for the nth time in a row. It was fun when I was an undergrad, but it's not fun now. Mustering enough enthusiasm about this stuff to teach well takes a lot of energy.
An actual academic talk feels engaging by nature and does not take even close to as much energy
And you've lost all credibility...
There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articulate why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.
They [standardized exams] are far from perfect for a reason. They don't test the right things like abstract reasoning, understanding the material, etc. It's usually just dumb calculations.
I agree with you here. STEM researchers have realized many of these issues and they design assessments where the distractors are common student misconceptions, gathered from student surveys. For the most famous one, the Force Concept Inventory, I've heard several say that you can't actually teach to it. Indeed students can pass exams, where they do calculations, and not pass assessments like the FCI. For a Harvard instructor's account of this phenomena, see Mazur, "Farewell, Lecture?." Science 323.5910 (2009): 50-51, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/323/5910/50.full.pdf . For a list of these of some of these so-called "concept inventories," see https://www.physport.org/assessments/ , and for a guide to writing them, see Adams and Wieman, "Development and validation of instruments to measure learning of expert‐like thinking," International Journal of Science Education 33.9 (2011): 1289-1312, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500693.2010.512369 .
If I might, one point I'm trying to make here is that other disciplines have thought much more deeply about teaching than we have and we could profit from learning about their work. I'd like our discipline to follow the lead of others and not always be so inward looking, as described by Fourcade et al., "The Superiority of Economists," JEP, 2015, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.29.1.89 . Inward looking makes sense for monetary policy but not for teaching.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I bought Bain’s book because of you. We can do so much better!
There's a difference between between engaging to a crowd of colleagues and appearing engaging to a bunch of idiots.How so? In both you need to be aware of what they can process (much less for students), have a sense of their background knowledge (ditto), and be able to articulate why they should care about a given topic. I actually find the tasks in general pretty similar when you think of it this way.