<p>Hunt, I think you have drawn the wrong conclusion, to say that the student who complains about an incomprehensible instructor won’t be believed. I mentioned a professor in my department who was replaced part way through the semester (fairly early on). When students complained, the department chairperson went to a lecture, listened to it, and replaced the faculty member in charge of the course before the next lecture.</p>
<p>It is possible that in the case of a professor who spoke accented English, but who was actually comprehensible, the department chairperson might sit in on a lecture, but then suggest that the students learn to deal with the accent. On the other hand, if the accent truly made it difficult for a beginning student to understand the subject, the professor would most likely be reassigned.</p>
<p>Would I believe a student who said that he/she “hadn’t understood a word” all semester, but only mentioned that “fact” after the final exam? My first reaction would be to think that this was an unscientific exaggeration. Really? Not a single word? If I did believe the student’s statement taken literally, frankly I would wonder what he/she had been doing all semester. How did the student expect to learn anything from the professor? Why didn’t the student comment to someone in a position of responsibility, in a time frame when something could be done about it? </p>
<p>Also, with regard to sorghum’s comments, I agree that publications outweigh conference presentations (to a significant extent), when it comes to tenure decisions, at least in our department. However, when interviews are being conducted to hire a new faculty member, each candidate has to present 2 to 2.5 hours of formal seminars, and then answer questions from the audience for another half hour, and meet for half-hour interviews with about 15 faculty members. In addition, we take the faculty candidates to 4 meals, typically, during which there is conversation. This means that each applicant has spoken for at least 14 hours with members of the department, before an offer of a position is extended. If the person is really incomprehensible, there is no way he/she would be hired. </p>
<p>@xiggi, with all due respect to your status as a senior CC member, what I reported was no false rumor about Berkeley class size. Not everyone on CC writes hyperbole or spreads falsehoods. Perhaps the courses are no longer as massive has they were in the early 2000s, but my point was that in the humanities, language issues were not as relevant as they were in the STEM field. Class size, was of greater concern. I was not only a parent of the child who was in the huge class I described, but I witnessed her class myself as we used to meet for lunch on campus right after it ended. </p>
<p>At that point, I held an academic appointment in one of the graduate programs at Berkeley, so had several years to contrast DD’s experience as an undergraduate with my years in graduate education. SOME lower division undergraduate courses at R1s are huge so as to subsidize the highly regarded doctoral programs that have so few students. Some of us on CC are IN the Academy so we know the difference between reality and conjecture/rumor. </p>
<p>N.B.: Three generations of our family members have attended Berkeley, so it is the LAST place I would ever bash. Go Bears!</p>
<p>CS courses have gotten bigger, but that is true at many schools. The introductory CS course for CS majors in the fall term is over 1,000 students at Berkeley, and over 700 students at Stanford* and Harvard. As research universities, evidently they can just add TAs to extend the faculty instructor’s reach.</p>
<p>Laplatinum, I am afraid I was not clear enough in conveying the sarcastic tone of my post. That post was in pure jest. I deliberately added a few lines about TAs and the CCCC to set the tone for the post. For the record, not only do I know your comments were accurate, but I also know that such comment tends to prompt a volley of denials. I have made comments similar to yours in the past, and learned to live with the “it ain’t so” </p>
<p>The above arguments have been expressed in various ways by various posters.</p>
<p>What does the university owe the student? Forty years ago, at my southern state flagship, I couldn’t understand a professor’s Boston accent. I had really only experienced a southern drawl up to that point in time. For a few weeks it sounded to me like he was talking gibberish. Was the university obligated to provide me only professors with southern drawls? </p>
<p>I am sure if I had complained to the department chair, he would have believed that I had difficulty understanding the professor. It is more than likely the whole class was having trouble understanding the professor. But I suspect the chair would have told all of us the benefits outweighed the negatives in this case.</p>
<p>Hunt, I guess the issues are: Complains to whom? and when?</p>
<p>I’m quite skeptical of the OP’s friend’s daughter’s complaint, due to its timing. Oh, hey, the final is over, and I just realized I didn’t understand a word all semester?</p>
<p>A student who complains to someone in a position to do something about the complaint, in a timely manner, might not be believed automatically, but the student should expect some action to check out the basis of the complaint, and a remedy, if appropriate.</p>
<p>Just a comment for parents with students who might encounter this issue: In most universities, it would be better to direct the complaint to the department chair or to the person in the department who has overall administrative responsibility for undergraduate education, rather than to direct it to the student’s academic adviser. The student’s academic adviser most likely will not have the authority to resolve the complaint–other than having the student move to a different section or drop the course. Some advisers will be proactive on the student’s behalf, but they will probably still have to refer it to a person at a higher level, in order to get any real action.</p>
<p>Blossom, your very first post in this thread suggested that the kid should switch sections, not complain. Tell me, if you were the department head, what would you actually do if a student came to see you in the beginning of the semester to complain that a teacher was impossible to understand? Would you check it out, or would you tell him to solve his own problems?</p>
<p>This is part of a larger problem, IMHO. Unlike Elementary and Secondary instructors, professors often have little or no training in how to actually teach. They often know (and love) their subject matter so well that they have difficulty transmitting that information to students. Marry that problem with a thick accent and it can be extremely difficult for students to gain knowledge at the pace required in college.</p>
<p>This problem is exacerbated when the student is taking a course outside of his or her preferred area of study. Try taking a Math course when you are not a ‘Math person’. Bad enough by itself, now add in a TA who does not speak clear English AND has had no training in educating and it becomes nightmarish. Students often simply result to reading the text and trying to help each other cobble together the lecture from how they all understood it.</p>
<p>Hunt: While I don’t know how Blossom (if department chair) would respond if a student came to her to complain a teacher was impossible to understand, I do know quite a few department chairs and believe I have a pretty good idea how they would respond. 1) Someone would be observing that class at its next meeting. 2) Someone would be letting the teacher know at least one student perceived a problem. Even a department chair who cares absolutely nothing about undergraduate education (assuming such Chairs exist) would immediately respond because not to do so puts that person at risk for repercussions later down the line.</p>
<p>Any Chairs reading: if I am off-base please correct me.</p>
<p>ETA: and as luvthej said upthread, it is to the department’s advantage to have their classes both full and popular. </p>
<p>Hunt, as I’ve said up-thread- my own kids did not have this problem. But they had other problems, and I was singularly impressed with how attentive every member of the managerial hierarchy was in fixing a problem. Individual professors may not be incented to worry about the “fee paying customers” but the administration sure is!</p>
<p>If the fix is as easy as switching to another section, then I’d be pissed off at one of my kids who didn’t see that as a quick work-around. But even if/when it involves taking the matter up the line, the idea that an applied math major would daydream through a class critical to his or her academic program because the professor was impossible to understand strikes me as being irresponsible in the extreme.</p>
<p>And as I said- complaining does not mean kvetching to your roommate or your friends. Complaining means making an appointment with the department chair, the Dean of students, the provost, your academic advisor, etc.</p>
<p>I’m seeing this as part of a larger problem, Torveaux- parents who don’t empower their kids to fix a problem when it comes up, and prefer to find someone to blame. In my own experience, my kids universities employed the good, the lazy, the fantastic and the horrible. But why take a class with horrible when you can have great? And who sits day after day in a lecture hall with someone where you don’t understand a single word??? This is what I’m finding hard to believe.</p>
<p>But sure, go ahead and believe that the systemic problem is that hordes of foreigners have invaded our universities and our kids are being held hostage.</p>
<p>Though I do think it has to do with parents and then students taking responsibility for their own education.</p>
<p>I would actually like to address the larger problem that sometimes even elementary and secondary teachers aren’t successful teachers, in spite of instruction in that area. We got into this recently on a thread about high school busy work projects. When I didn’t like how the high school classes were being taught, I complained. And it got results. Once, during the first few weeks of school, I brought in all the handouts from a history class to discuss with the head of that department. She was horrified and wondered why no one had ever brought this to her attention before. The teacher had been there only a few years and was not tenured. The head of the dept wanted to know if other parents were aware of the situation and if I could round them up to complain so that the teacher not be made a permanent member of the staff. I tried. Everyone was willing to complain, just not to anyone where the complaints had a positive impact. The teacher was tenured. However, my kid was out of that class immediately after the meeting with the department head.</p>
<p>In this case parents didn’t want to complain too much because all the students were getting good grades and that was what was most important. In the case of the OP, complaints begin when grades aren’t so great. I have no idea if there is a connection or not.</p>
<p>@blossom - I guess you must have always had things work out when you complain to authorities. Sometimes, it just labels the kid as a complainer and it can hurt them in other classes. In my kids’ cases, I expect them to either buck up and do well despite the instructor or to take it up with someone. I learned the hard way 30+ years ago that there are ways to address things. We didn’t have the convenience of email and as a 1st generation student, I had no one around me that knew anything about how things worked.</p>
<p>This has nothing specifically to do with foreigners. I have had many professors who were awesome that happened to be transplanted to the US. There are also plenty of native English speakers who cannot speak clearly enough and should not be in front of a class. The problem is with communication. The root problem is that instructors/professors are not held to a standard in terms of ability to educate OR ability to communicate.</p>
<p>Go ahead and put up the paper tiger so you can argue against it.</p>
<p>Also, the administration should have people auditing all of these classes to check for issues such as these. (especially with instructors who are new to their university)</p>
<p>Not specifically related to accents - just bad teaching skills…</p>
<p>Both kiddles have experienced ‘teachers’ who were undoubtedly very smart in their own heads but were unable to transfer this smartness to a black board or verbal explanation. I think I mentioned this in a prior post - S is currently struggling with this situation. A second in a series weeder class prof is just not getting the message across. When the vast majority of the class is unable to finish a midterm, and the subsequent result of grading on a curve makes a 54/100 grade to a 98.6% - something is wrong. When S voiced his concerns to the department head (well ahead of the midterm), he was heard because he is an excellent student. He was also told that his input would most likely not have any effect on the current term - to which he responded - hopefully it will help the next set of students. </p>
<p>Lesson, if you’re doing well in a course, if your name is already known in the department you may just be heard and taken seriously. Part two of the lesson…change takes time …and you may not be the recipient of any benfits which come from your reporting the problem. </p>
<p>As PhD students, they were probably TAs (and should have been in TA training).</p>
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<p>That may be more due to making a test that was too hard, which can happen in classes with good instructors (i.e. not necessarily due to teaching quality). Indeed, the “good but hard” teacher is well known in both high school and college, and probably attracts the stronger students willing to take up the challenge and learn more, but deters the weaker students.</p>
<p>I am pretty sure this already happens. A senior faculty member I know has the responsibility of visiting courses taught by new faculty several times during the semester, discussing the visits with the teacher, and filing reports. It is one of many responsibilities this faculty member has which don’t count as classroom hours logged. Although I would argue he is helping teach the new teacher. And because he is such an experienced and excellent teacher himself, it is possible his time is perhaps better spent in this way than taking on another class himself. He can’t teach all the classes himself forever.</p>
<p>Okay. The first time my kid got one of these low grades he called in tears, sure he was flunking out, and my husband and I concluded science really wasn’t going to be his career after all. Low and behold - A+ in class.</p>
<p>I don’t really understand what is going on when this happens but think it may have something to do with trying to raise the ceiling really high so the professor can understand exactly where the students stand with regard to the material… maybe like what is going on when a language professor gives a sight reading passage as part of an exam.? Although the passage was never read in class, students are expected to have learned “enough” to do something with the passage. If they can’t, the class may be in trouble. Mere memorization and regurgitation is not the point of the class.</p>
<p>I would be really interested and appreciative if someone would please explain the philosophy behind this type of exam. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>At my spouse’s research university, tenure and promotion (from assoc to full) all require written reviews of teaching by a more senior member of the department. Starting from the days as a TA in grad school through tenure review and promotion, effectiveness in the classroom/seminar/lecture hall is part of the job. </p>
<p>Training in Ed schools doesn’t always translate into more teaching effectiveness in the classroom. </p>
<p>The worst instructors I’ve had were all Ed school graduates whereas the best instructors I’ve had were PhDs with no ed school/K-12 teacher training whatsoever. </p>
<p>When I discussed this experience with friends who are/were K-12 teachers with ed school training ranging from undergrad certification programs to M.Eds from top 3 programs, it didn’t come as a surprise to them as most felt what they were taught in their teacher training programs was extremely rudimentary at best and often too far removed from the classroom to be applicable once they started teaching. </p>
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<p>Incidentally, the increasing prevalence of arts & crafty oriented busywork projects sounds like one of those “out-of-touch with the classroom” ideas du jour my ed school/teacher friends bemoaned when discussing their ed school experiences and finding very little of what was taught was applicable once they started teaching. </p>