For undergraduate students, how do you measure faculty quality?

College Search & Lists
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<p>For undergraduate students, how do you measure faculty quality? How does one judge one faculty as “top” and another as “mediocre?” Will such characterizations necessarily be true for all, or even most, students? Is there only one institutional model (the academic’s model) that is appropriate for making this judgment? </p>

<p>I don’t mean rankings, eg, NRC, USNWR, Gourman’s, etc. I mean, what do YOU value the faculty for in delivering the academic experience to this undergraduate student? In answering this, try to consider the issue of faculty quality from a variety of perspectives, eg, other academics, prospective employers, alumni, and actual undergraduate students. Are they all going to have the same priorities, needs, interests, value sets, etc? </p>

<p>How one answers these questions likely influences, more than anything else, how you rank colleges and the undergraduate academic experience that they provide.</p>

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<p>off the top of my head…</p>

<p>lecture is primary mode of delivering instruction. limits the amout of time spent on discussion or group projects, doesn’t allow one or a few students to dominate</p>

<p>selects “homework” assignments carefully so they are relevant, helpful, challenging</p>

<p>places lecture notes on web </p>

<p>provides written summaries of important, essential material (on web)</p>

<p>makes it clear what will be covered on exams</p>

<p>explains concepts well, gives examples</p>

<p>high expectations, but not unreasonable</p>

<p>speaks English well</p>

<p>shows how concepts are interrelated</p>

<p>objective, not subjective, grading methods</p>

<p>makes appropriate use of media, like powerpoint, dvds</p>

<p>keeps personal political/moral beliefs and attitudes private. carefully identifies where fact ends and opinion begins</p>

<p>doesn’t move too quickly or too slowly, good pace</p>

<p>syllabus is clear but not overkill with details</p>

<p>friendly attitude toward students, not adversarial</p>

<p>doesn’t go off-topic very much, stays on-task</p>

<p>doesn’t give credit for stupid things like attendance and class participation</p>

<p>incorporates discussion of scholarly methods in the discipline, cutting edge areas of research, discovery, techniques, creativity, etc.</p>

<p>provides opportunities for discussion/questions outside of class, maybe in social situations. maybe office hours</p>

<p>raises interesting questions to pique curiosity</p>

<p>tells an occasional “story”</p>

<p>involves students in his/her own scholarly activity</p>

<p>provides some advice about future careers/graduate education, guidance </p>

<p>shows respect for all students but squelches rudeness like talking in class, reading in class, arriving late, leaving early, surfing the net, text messaging, answering cell phones, cell phones ringing</p>

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<p>Excellent list Collegehelp.</p>

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<p>Some professors are horrible teachers, some professors are excellent teachers, most professors are average teachers…I would classify excellent teachers as those matching criteria collegehelp has suggested. However, how do undergraduate students know what college faculties provide the highest percentage of “excellent” teachers? This is very difficult to measure and quite subjective. </p>

<p>To distinguish and place a line for measuring top faculty, you need to look at factors that are easily identifiable as indicators of quality…in most respects these indicators include: academy membership, Nobel prizes, academic prizes, etc. Too many professors in the U.S. could be labeled as a great teacher, therefore that measure does not “distinguish”.</p>

<p>In all research universities, a tenure-track professor will not achieve tenure only because he/she is a great teacher. Instead, the professor will only achieve tenure from the research and level of contribution to new academic thinking. Top universities aren’t plucking the best teachers, they are plucking the best researchers, who happen to be the leading minds in the academic topics they teach. </p>

<p>I’ll agree that an undergraduate student would want to be taught by a professor who has outstanding teaching ability vs. some *******. However, it is not true that all professors who happen to be distinguished researchers are terrible teachers…IMO, you want both qualities - distinguished leader in their respective field and great teacher. The problem is, identifying great teachers is not as easy because it is more subjective and less visible than contributions to research/academics.</p>

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<p>Research universities basically spend very little effort identifying professors who are good teachers. If you read the back of Nature, you can see that the only qualification for tenure-track positions at places like Harvard or Princeton is a “history of exemplary research and publication.” Nowhere is there any mention of teaching ability, ability to speak English, etc. Therefore, the only thing professors at top universities have in common is that they’re accomplished researchers. It’ll be a hit and miss at every university as to whether your professors are good teachers or not. For example, in the 30+ courses I took at Cornell, I had a couple of duds and only one professor who I felt put no effort into teaching. The rest ranged from satisfactory to amazing. </p>

<p>I think it is far more likely that you’ll hit on good teachers at LAC’s. LAC’s are generally unknown and not prestigous precisely because they don’t place a heavy emphasis on research and innovation. They have no problem with simply regurgitating what is discovered in the labs at Harvard or Cornell. But, for me, I don’t like small classes and, as a science major, I strongly value research opportunities and the connections I am able to make at a research university (I’ve gotten at least one internship solely based on the name of the person who wrote my rec letter). So, I would rather sacrifice a little on the teaching side (I’m a good independent learner anyway) in order to gain more on the research powerhouse side.</p>

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<p>I would rather have a professor who is supportive, available, and excited about teaching and helping students than a noble prize winning one who only teaches because s/he has to.</p>

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<p>Wow. I actually think there are some things on Collegehelps list that are the marks of poor undergraduate teaching.</p>

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<p>Wait. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Is it…“Speaks English well”?</p>

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<p>^ The only thing I didn’t particularly like from the list was…</p>

<p>“places lecture notes on web”</p>

<p>This is good and bad.

  • Good in that it allows students who might miss a class to still have the notes. It also provides a general outline for the student as to what the they need to know.
  • Bad in that many students tend to abuse the profs posting of their notes online by not showing up. Also, when my profs post the notes online, I tend to use their notes as a crutch. I’ve noticed that I don’t pay attention as closely when I have the online notes in front of me. When I literally have to listen to the lectures, figure out the key points and take my own notes, I comprehend the material much better and I tend to do better. </p>

<p>Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer studying notes I’ve taken versus studying my teacher’s notes.</p>

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<p>When I was an undergrad student, I used to try to find professors who taught elective classes with waitlists. Those were always the best professors.</p>

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<p>To expand the discussion a bit and perhaps inspire more to participate, let’s bring the rankings in. </p>

<p>Should the factors that collegehelp and others listed above as representative of a “top” faculty be part of the consideration when one is judging faculty quality for a ranking list? Or should this determination be solely limited to research achievements, publication records, awards within academia, historical reputation, strength of graduate programs, etc. that often aren’t relevant to the undergraduate academic experience? Or is there some other methodology that is better for discerning the differences between a “top” faculty and a “mediocre” faculty? </p>

<p>One request: if possible, please consider a range of perspectives, eg, the academic view, but also the view of the student, the paying family, the alumni, and the prospective employer. Thanks.</p>

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<p>When I say that lecture should be the primary mode for delivering instruction, I had the paying family in mind, as well as the long-term interests of the students. Some discussion is beneficial, especially in seminars and perhaps upper-division courses where knowledgeable undergrads need to develop understanding. But, too much time spent leading discussions or supervising group projects is not the most effective use of tuition dollars. You hardly need a faculty member to do that.</p>

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<p>I wouldn’t take student opinions at face value. Bad students tend to be disgruntled.</p>

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<p>And students with bad experiences tend to post on sites like those more than students with good experiences.</p>

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<p>And once again, we are roped into a discussion of the peer assessment score. The PA score isn’t meant to measure the quality of teaching. It’s meant to measure prestige/reputation, which is strongly correlated with the contributions a university makes to innovation and discovery and very little to do with teaching. You get famous for discovering the cure to cancer. You don’t get famous for talking about the guy that discovered the cure to cancer.</p>

<p>If you want to incorporate an additional teaching aspect, I’m fine with that. The obvious problem is that many of the factors collegehelp listed cannot be assessed in a quantifiable way and many of the factors collegehelp listed can be the hallmark of a good or a bad teacher (depending on people’s personal preferences). Because students’ learning styles vary, it’s hard to determine what makes a good teacher.</p>

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<p>“And students with bad experiences tend to post on sites like those more than students with good experiences.”</p>

<p>True. So those with lots of positive feedback might be worth considering.</p>

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<p>Effective teaching styles are designed for effective learning styles. The term “learning style” implies a style for LEARNING. Learning requires hard work. “Learning styles” that favor minimal pressure, minimal workload, fun at the expense of learning, bull sessions, and so on are not really learning styles at all. Effective teacher’s are not necessarily popular with unmotivated students.</p>

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<p>Norcalguy,
PA score issue or not, I believe that there is a legitimate question about what is important, to different groups of people, about college faculties. But the original question was about what is important to YOU as you evaluate whether a college’s faculty is “top” or “mediocre.” My conclusion is that there are multiple answers to this, even about a single university, depending on which constituency you ask. </p>

<p>I wholeheartedly agree with you and others who might contend that an accurate determination of the teaching quality at ABC University is an impossible task. However, for the student and his/her family who are shelling out the big bucks, sometimes as much as $50k per year, the issue of faculty instruction/stewardship should not be so quickly dismissed. In fact, from the perspective of the student/family, I would argue that the quality of faculty teaching/guidance/mentorship is potentially the central and most consequential element (along with the strength of one’s student peers) of one’s undergraduate academic experience and would certainly go furthest in the student’s judgment about which faculty is “top” and which is not.</p>

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<p>Unfortunately Hawkette, it is impossible to measure the quality of instruction. And even if it were possible, rating the quality of an overall faculty would be as futile as rating the quality of an entire student body. We cannot paint the quality of a university’s faculty, or that of its students, with a broad brush. It is too simplistic and does not being to address the nuances of such a complex entity that is a university.</p>

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<p>Alex,
A big difference in rating faculties and in rating student bodies is that the surveys done to measure these things rely on metrics that are different in nature. Faculty measurements are based on perceptions, hearsay, historical achievement, media coverage, etc. Student body measurements are based on hard numbers like standardized test scores, class ranks, GPAs, etc. Neither is going to be perfect, but I think the student body measurements have a significantly stronger intellectual and factual foundation. </p>

<p>Given your view that rating the quality of overall faculty is futile, why do you support the results of surveys that actually attempt to do this?</p>