Do the best professors get the worst ratings (from students)?

garland
Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:04:31 +0000

Of course what you describe does, Mirabile. I used to counsel/advise students at the college I teach at, and one continual complaint was that they had studied, but what was on the test asked questions differently. and of course that’s the difference between memorizing knowledge and understanding how to use it. Again, this is going back to critical thinking and how crucial it is.

I ran a workshop once for nursing students in an intro course on nursing theory and background ideas. What I realized after a while is that many were failing the test because they lacked the ability to read the questions correctly to know what was being asked. And the questions tended to apply theory rather than ask them to spit back memorized definitions. ONce I got them to see that, and worked through actual questions to understand what the task was, they did much better.

As a college instructor, I teach first-year comp. Which might as well be titled “thinking and arguing clearly.” It’s HARD. My evaluations generally say–love the class but she grades really hard.

Yup. And they rise to it. :)