Improving College Teaching

Abstract

College professors should be interested, con cerned, and informed regarding the learning process. Yet many classes are taught completely by lecture, and there is no feedback from the stu dent. He has no opportunity to ask questions or react to the information presented. Professors are familiar with such phenomena as attention span, and boredom, yet they continue to lecture every day, five days a week. It is an unusual preacher who can keep his congregation interested for more than forty minutes. A college professor who can do the same is similarly unusual. Yet year after year, college professors continue to lecture, boring their poor students to death. Lecturing was customary during the middle ages. Books were rare and knowledge of educational psychology and learning theory was almost non-existent. But it is hardly laudatory that many professors today teach in exactly the same way their predecessors taught in medieval Europe. Many students get bored, find little stimulation, drop out of college because they find it offers so little. The usual remark is something like, Well, the student must learn to dig it out on his own, and the responsibility for his learning rests with the student not the professor. Taken literally, there would mean there is no need for professors, just reading assignments, standardized tests at in tervals, and electronic machines to give grades. In many instances, the student would probably do just as well as now. But wherein lies the profes sors' responsibility? His responsibility should be: To stimulate interest and intellectual curiosity among his students regarding his subject matter. This does not occur when the professor has no knowledge of the student's questions or interest, and where the student has no opportunity to bring up questions. To be a resource person who knows his subject thoroughly and can fill in the blank spots in the students limited background.