<p>I never really thought about this until my S; a freshman; called home to complain that he had turned in an important assignment in Calculus and not only did he get a failing grade on it the Professor wrote the word Nonsense! on it with an exclamation point, according to my S. I was taken aback a bit; and really didn’t know what to say or do. My S said, for 25,000/year I think I deserve more than Nonsense! I did agree on that part and encouraged him to go to the TA to try and understand what he did wrong (which he did) He also is going to the Math lab almost daily. He has a B average in there right now. I hope after finals he still has the B and we can laugh about it. </p>
<p>Someone that doesn’t let kids flounder. </p>
<p>Supposedly in the 3 months between the end of high school and beginning of college a kid becomes a fully functioning adult capable of making smart decisions. </p>
<p>I don’t want professors to babysit kids but kids need professors that can guide kids through the transition from high school to college.</p>
<p>You have got to be kidding me. Since when in my role as a professor is it implied that I’m at the disposal of your kid 24/7? The age of email and instant gratification has turned many students (and their parents apparently) into selfish individuals, if you ask me. Guess what? My only job is not teaching your kid. Teaching comprises maybe 30% of my responsibilities. These students are adults. If they have a question, they can email me during business hours. I tell my students in my syllabus that emails sent during the week will be answered in 24 hours. Emails after 4pm on Fridays will be answered on Monday morning. I have a family; I have a life. I will not be at the disposal of any student, including your kid, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If they waited until the weekend to do their assignment and just now realized they have a question, that’s their problem, not mine.</p>
<p>Your sense of entitlement is mind boggling.</p>
<p>I think my question is answerable. Professors can run a course in a variety of different ways. They have options. Their primary function is education. If education means transmitting useful knowledge, then which methods are most effective for imparting knowledge to students? Is it better to go for breadth or depth of knowledge? Is it better to focus on critical thinking at the expense of factual knowledge?</p>
<p>Sure, some courses such as seminars and labs have a special purpose and therefore require a special approach but the vast majority of college courses lend themselves to many different approaches. </p>
<p>This question could be answered empirically by measuring how much students learn under different methods (controlling for student ability). I don’t think such a study has been done.</p>
<p>Personally, I think class time should be spent on direct instruction through lecture. The more information presented the better. You can go over problem sets and homework with the TA in a recitation section. Knowledge of facts is the first priority and is a prerequisite for critical thinking and creativity.</p>
<p>Are you a parent? college student? high school student? Do you have a college degree? If so, what did you study? Please tell us so we can decide how best to respond.</p>
<p>As the parent of a college student, I hope he has the opportunity to study with professors who excite and inspire my kid to push boundaries and explore. As a prof, I don’t want to think about my students’ parents. </p>
<p>I think of the professor as more like a tenured Wine Steward, who is expected to grade and criticize your choices.</p>
<p>“A Chilean Merlot, Sir? That may be more suitable for a state school, wouldn’t you agree? I’m giving you a C-”. </p>
<p>My favorite parent was the one, who after his son got an A (his first ever A), offered to buy me a new BMW. It really made me feel sad to have to refuse … 
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<p>Knowledge of facts is low-level learning. It is important to know discipline-specific facts, yes, but it is also important to know what to do with them. Acquisition of fact through memorization should occur outside of class during structured studying. Students should come to class prepared with the facts they need to understand the application and manipulation of concepts. </p>
<p>I actually like a well-done lecture (its current devaluation as a favored pedagogy is unfortunate), but let’s face it, there are many current students who don’t learn a thing by sitting through one. I believe a combination of lecture, discussion, and guided individual and/or small-group activity usually yields the best results for the highest number. We have to work with the students sent to us. These students have approximately a 20-minute attention span and need constant change and stimulation. They are not trained to pay attention to a lecture that lasts 75 minutes. Whether or not we like it, that is not going to change anytime soon.</p>
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I was good with the thread up until here. The students are adults. There is no law saying they have to be in college. They have to decide for themselves that they want to be there and whether they want something more than a 4-year party out of it. It’s up to them to come to class, do their assignments, turn them in, show up to exams, and get help if they need it. </p>
<p>I’m not their mother or their counselor or their therapist. If they want to talk to me, that’s fine, but I would never attempt psychological counseling - I’m not qualified to do that, and there are people available for them who ARE qualified. Some students flounder, go under, and leave. Perhaps they return later in life, when they have grown a bit wiser. Perhaps they pursue other routes. Perhaps college didn’t really suit them. Those things are not up to me. If they are not coming to class, etc. I’m not going out to get them.</p>
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<p>This type of study is a research topic for many different disciplines. Perhaps you need to do a bit of research before pontificating your own uninformed opinion?</p>
<p>Here’s the advice I give all my students…and concerned parents as well. READ THE SYLLABUS. Ask all of these questions (weekend emails, lecture vs. discussion, etc) during the first week of classes while you can still Add/Drop. </p>
<p>Parents have actually “attended” my first class of the semester to be sure I was “good enough” for their kiddos. I tell them the same thing: I cannot make your student learn math, science, or engineering. If I could, I would be a billionaire! They are adults and here of their own free will. My most magnificent lecture will have zero impact if they do not go home and practice, practice, practice before the next lecture. Not just “study” (whatever that means.)</p>
<p>@collegehelp You wrote “Personally, I think class time should be spent on direct instruction through lecture. The more information presented the better. You can go over problem sets and homework with the TA in a recitation section. Knowledge of facts is the first priority and is a prerequisite for critical thinking and creativity…”</p>
<p>What you have described could be accomplished by watching a video of a lecture, or reading a book or an academic article. You don’t need a live lecturer for that. Such a passive learning idea partly accounts for why colleges these days are offering so many courses on-line, with opportunities to communicate with instructors of teaching assistants to address questions but only occasionally allowing students to engage in group work or conversations with their peers.</p>
<p>In my personal experience, the best learning experiences happen when the teachers and students directly engage in a conversation, when sometimes the students take the lead, when issues are perhaps addressed in formal debates, when students are interacting with other students in a less formal way (not necessarily in class), or when teachers are able to directly observe and advise on a student’s ongoing work (in a lab, a studio, a group project, etc.). On the whole such situations occur not in a large lecture in which the professor is teaching or preaching from the front of the class, but in labs, smaller classes, and discussion sections when students and instructors engage in an exchange of ideas, interpretations, questions, and so on.</p>
<p>In addition, the vast majority of jobs and careers require the individual to work effectively and interactively in groups or teams, not as solitary or autonomous machines. Individual students need not only to learn to conduct independent research or creative projects but also to pull their weight and coordinate with others in group activities.</p>
<p>I’m always interested by these discussions of the nature of the relationship of the professor and the student (and in this case, with the parent of the student, who is paying the bills). I do feel that sometimes there is not quite enough realization that the student is, in fact, a customer of the university who is buying a valuable commodity that is provided by employees of the university. While this may only be part of the professor’s responsibility, it is an important part. And while I don’t necessarily think a professor should have to answer e-mails outside of business hours, I do feel that I must point out that most people in professional jobs–those that aren’t hourly wage-based jobs–do generally check e-mail in the evening and on weekends. It’s nice to be able to shut off the e-mail at 5, but people with clients, or patients, or parishioners, can’t necessarily do this. I would assume that professors would typically group themselves with professional workers, as opposed to clock punchers.</p>
<p>Coming back to add – as a professor, I cannot emphasize enough that education is not knowledge of facts. It is the development of critical thinking and writing skills, problem solving, the ability to analyze complex text, to develop arguments. Those are skills which translate across disciplines and across work requirements. Collaboration and project based learning are also important as we rarely work alone. </p>
<p>Many students are highly capable of acquiring and manipulating facts and ideas, or expressing them in writing or designs of some kind. Most of them, however, still benefit from sessions with an educator, even an “interrogator” who critiques their work or asks them to probe further or to take their thinking to a higher level.</p>
<p>I sometimes remind students of how Socratic dialogues worked, as well as the underlying meaning of the word “education.” “Education” etymologically means “leading out” or “drawing out.” A good teacher-interrogator helps the students or participants to find ideas and solutions within themselves. Rather than a teacher stuffing information into the students, the teacher gets students to actively participate in formulating questions and finding answers.</p>
<p>Even large lectures can help this process, especially if the lecturer is stimulating and asks a lot of questions. But opportunities for discussion and dialogue are very important to the educational process. So are what art schools often do when students’ work is subjected to a “crit” by their colleagues.</p>
<p>I think it’s nice for profs to check emails once or twice on the weekend, but not obligatory. They should probably tell students in advance (in the syllabus) if they don’t plan on being available. I confess I don’t always read emails on weekends either. I don’t think it’s a good thing that our society has that expectation, so I like to fight it. OTOH I work evenings all the time.</p>
<p>“And while I don’t necessarily think a professor should have to answer e-mails outside of business hours, I do feel that I must point out that most people in professional jobs–those that aren’t hourly wage-based jobs–do generally check e-mail in the evening and on weekends. It’s nice to be able to shut off the e-mail at 5, but people with clients, or patients, or parishioners, can’t necessarily do this. I would assume that professors would typically group themselves with professional workers, as opposed to clock punchers.”</p>
<p>You said this much more nicely than I would have (surprise, surprise).</p>
<p>It’s absolutely the norm in the professional world to check email at night and the weekends and if it is something that can be handled speedily, they take the darn few minutes and do so. That’s the hallmark of people who take what they do seriously, And that’s the distinction I find between my junior employees who are going to go places, and my junior employees who shut off the world at 4:59 pm on Friday and wouldn’t think to engage until 9:01 am on Monday, even if just a few minutes of attention to something over the weekend would have enabled other people to progress, and would have made everyone way more productive.</p>
<p>My H is on call 24/7/365 for his patients; yes, he has an answering service, but all they do is “protect” his cell phone number. I routinely check email at night, in the morning before I leave for work, and yes, on the weekends, and take care of what needs to be done. That’s called professional client service. And what I do isn’t life-or-death like a doctor. But some attention on the weekends keeps things moving. </p>
<p>No one is suggesting that a professor needs to be on call 24/7; that’s ridiculous, and not what was suggested. However, a prissy “ooooh, it’s the weekend, I can’t possibly engage” isn’t very professional when for the same 20 words, the question could have been answered. It’s an unimpressive work ethic. </p>
<p>And it’s precisely this work ethic that makes those of us in business roll our eyes at how allegedly hard the academic lifestyle is. Really? You people who couldn’t possibly spend a half hour on Saturday morning or Sunday evening answering a few emails would get eaten alive in the real world. This is like when you hear elementary school teachers complain about the handful of times a year they have to stay til 9 pm for parent-teacher conferences. Um, really - in the real world, people work late all the time, it’s just not the big deal you think it is.</p>
<p>“A student is not my customer. I do not respond to student emails over the weekend either, unless I have specifically decided to do so in advance of an important deadline and have let the students know. I do not believe that “professionalism” requires me to be on call 24/7. Who expects that?”</p>
<p>The real world? </p>
<p>I routinely talk to my financial adviser at night or on the weekends - because that’s more convenient for both of us than trying to fit it in 9 - 5. </p>
<p>My spouse had a mammogram machine break down the day after Thanksgiving, when he had a waiting room full of women desiring them - and you’re darn right the mammogram machine salesman got called and needed to figure out a solution ASAP, even though it was likely his day off as it was the day after Tgiving. </p>
<p>And no, doctor answering services aren’t remotely qualified to determine whether a call is “doctor-worthy” or not - their job is simply to locate the doctor and pass on the info, even if it’s a yeast infection or diarrhea at 2 am (not like I haven’t heard those calls, LOL).</p>
<p>“Personally, I think class time should be spent on direct instruction through lecture. The more information presented the better. You can go over problem sets and homework with the TA in a recitation section. Knowledge of facts is the first priority and is a prerequisite for critical thinking and creativity.”</p>
<p>collegehelp, I don’t think you’ve grasped that not everything is STEM. That might work well for certain classes and topics. What are the “problem sets” in art history class or Shakespeare class? In many classes, the learning is precisely through the interaction of the different students and the teacher – not just a bunch of facts. </p>