<p>What BCEagle91 says is quite right–I just think that students should be more proactive in complaining about subpar teaching, whether it’s difficulty in understanding the teacher, or other problems. I recall that for the same class where I had an incomprehensible TA, the textbook was terrible–it had been written by the department head (or at least some bigwig). At the time, I didn’t complain about that, either–but I should have. My parents were paying good money for me to take that class, and it was pretty much wasted.</p>
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<p>You don’t really know whether or not people are like this as a TA but you may very well have to deal with various attitudes and political situations at work. College can be a pretty challenging place. You may have to deal with roommates that are inconsiderate or a bad housing environment or a stolen laptop or backpack.</p>
<p>The bad language thing need not be a huge deal for the student that figures out a way around the obstacle.</p>
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<p>The problem with course evaluations is that it happens at the end of the course where complaining about it won’t benefit the students doing the evaluations. That’s why RMP is popular - you can find something out about the professor before taking the course. Of course there are lots of cases where the student doesn’t have a choice in the professor.</p>
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<p>The O’Neil Library at Boston College typically has a number of college textbooks related to courses taught there. They are generally not current (if they are, they are for in-library-use only) so they can be borrowed. If you have a bad textbook, you can certainly go to the library to look for others that cover the same material and you may find something that presents better coverage.</p>
<p>If you have the resources, you could always just buy another textbook on the same subject after looking at reviews on Amazon.com. College textbooks, especially those that aren’t the current edition, can be quite cheap on the second-hand market.</p>
<p>There are a lot of course videos around today put out by top-notch universities. One could also just review lectures from MIT, Yale, Berkeley, etc.</p>
<p>One course at my son’s school is actually composed of video lectures from another university. You watch the videos, work on a project and see the professor once a week.</p>
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<p>I’d take the online ratings and comments about Profs from sites like ratemyprofessor.com or even school based sites like culpa.info with a large barrel of salt. </p>
<p>Most of the students on those sites tend to be embittered types who have an axe to grind due to self-inflicted mediocre/failing grades…and often complain about irrelevant things such as the Prof/TA’s height, being ugly(especially with female Profs), fashion sense/lack thereof, etc. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly…with the Profs who I’ve had as a student or have known…including sitting in on their classes…what their online reviews show is often at great odds…sometimes even completely polar opposite to how they are in class…including issues of communication skills and foreign accents or the lack thereof. I’ve even seen racist comments…including the assumption “foreign accents” with a few Profs I know which doesn’t actually exist…and is derived from the Prof’s having a “foreign look”. </p>
<p>More importantly, what many students…especially those who tend to latch on “foreign accents” IME consider “good teaching” is Prof/TA who gives the minimal amount of work, expects little/no rigor, doesn’t seriously challenge students about preconceived notions/positions they take in class discussion, and extremely easygoing about deadlines/incompletes.</p>
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<p>Fair point. The different priority placed upon the quality of undergraduate instruction by research universities and LACs is part of an overall difference in institutional culture. I agree that students are responsible for their own learning, but that doesn’t mean that the professor is relieved from the responsibility of being effective. </p>
<p>I’m rather surprised by the apparent willingness of students and parents to accept poor teaching performance on the grounds of cultural tolerance. University teachers are professionals, and should be held to professional standards. The international faculty I know would not want to be held to a different (lower) standard because they have accents.</p>
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<p>Just look for the objective comments.</p>
<p>We’ve hired many former professors and they agree with many of the comments written about themselves. Sure, you can toss out the chaff but you can certainly get an idea of what a professor is like from RMP.</p>
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<p>Good students will figure out how to work around these kinds of problems. Many parents have the same issue at work.</p>
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<p>The university that my son went to was quite inexpensive and has had to deal with state budget cuts for the last five years. At the end of the day, a professor has a certain amount of time to do research and teach and you can’t get blood from a stone. At some level (with state universities), students get what the taxpayers pay for.</p>
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<p>Exactly. Better to learn how to do this in college rather than in the workplace. Two fresh college grads at one workplace who were unwilling to realize/adapt to the reality of having “foreign accented” co-workers and were extremely clueless about it learned that lesson in the harshest manner when their supervisor told them off before firing them on the spot. </p>
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<p>Unfortunately, many who want stellar grades without much/any effort or otherwise want to effectively coast through their undergrad and their enabling parents tend to have markedly different ideas of what constitutes “professional standards”.</p>
<p>^That’s sadly true, but I guess I expect a professor to more than just a facilitator of a self-taught tutorial.</p>
<p>I wonder if there is a divergent opinion about this subject that corresponds with the amount of tuition paid. If I were receiving a full-ride education, I might be less inclined to demand a better product; on the other hand, if I were paying $55K per year, I’d be pretty upset to be expected to waste time trying to understand a prof and then teach myself the subject after paying about $4,750 to get credit for that class.</p>
<p>People are being paid to tolerate the people they work with. Some students (or their parents) are paying a small fortune to be taught something.</p>
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<p>Therefore students are paying a small fortune to be taught to tolerate
the people that they will eventually work for.</p>
<p>One of the most important things that college should teach students is
how to learn on your own. Someone may help or facilitate or answer
questions but the primary work is the students. Our current work
environment is like this - you may be given a project where you have
to come up to speed on it on your own. You may or may not have someone
available for answering questions. You might have to learn some tool
or technology from web sites, forums, asking around, reading books,
etc.</p>
<p>How much of effective teaching comes from verbal communication? While talking is the most visible aspect of teaching, in sciences one learns about concepts through examples, problems, demonstrations. It is also often true students don’t understand intricate scientific concepts however well articulated. Good teaching involves more than talking. There are course plans, layouts of the material, development of each class that influences teaching however invisible they are. Homework, tests, grading are also important tools for teaching. Dwelling exclusively on verbal communication makes me wonder if parents understand that teaching is a lot more than just talking.</p>
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<p>This is both generational and how you view higher education as a service.</p>
<p>Some of my public magnet high school teachers would have had a field day with the above. Back in my high school years in the early-mid '90s…they’d go on long rants about how “college is for those who are for independent self-starters” and “not for those who want to be spoon-fed”. </p>
<p>A few of those teachers who attended college in the 50’s and '60s never tired of reminding us 12-14 year old HS kids of this…sometimes on a daily basis. As far as they were concerned…if you can’t adapt to the Prof’s teaching style, greater expectations that most of the responsibility for one’s learning is on the student, and need to be catered to…you weren’t mature/ready enough for college. </p>
<p>Another is whether you view a college education is that of the “I pays my money and gets my product/service” or whether it is more of a gym membership model where you’re paying for an opportunity…but the onus is mainly on the user to make the most of that opportunity…even if it is paid. </p>
<p>Most of those in the older generation I’ve encountered…even those who were full-pay tended to take the latter view, IME.</p>
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<p>Certainly teaching is more than just talking. I agree that all the things you mentioned (planning units, demonstrations, feedback on written work etc. ) are extremely important, as are checking for understanding and knowing how your students are coming along (and caring about it). To me, all of these fall under the category of “communication.”</p>
<p>^Aren’t we speaking of verbal communication here? Other communications aren’t subject to “accent” and not hard-to-understand, I’d hope.</p>
<p>Cobrat,
Why bother requiring class time at all? Why not just charge students for the syllabus and grading their exams?</p>
<p>Iglooo #56: Initially, yes, but then the discussion morphed into the issue of how much students should be expected to teach themselves. The reasons given for making students put up with instructors with poor English language skills can be applied to just about any professorial deficiency. Where does one draw the line?</p>
<p>I also think part of the problem with "accent’ is that many of the foreign-born instructors, as I pointed out before, are graduate students with no pedagogical training and no experience of US educational culture. US students expect more interaction, more explanation, and yes, perhaps, more handholding than students in many other cultures. There are countries where professors are like gods and never questioned, or where the professors just lecture and the students go off and teach themselves. That’s not the norm here. It’s partly an accent issue and partly a culture clash.</p>
<p>If the only problem is an accent, then that’s pretty easy to get used to after a class or two.</p>
<p>If it’s that the teacher doesn’t have the vocabulary to talk about something in English or can’t understand students when they ask questions or can’t write cogent English on assignments/tests, then there’s a real communication problem.</p>
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<p>Great analogy.</p>