Current Events > I'm taking a class on teaching right now. WTF at college professors

(+) Yeah! (+)

"never just read slides, it's proven that's the worst possible way to learn"

Uh this was 98% of my college experience wtf

Well its the worst way to learn but its the easiest way to teach

The gross majority of college professors don't give a shit about teaching.

They are there to either do their research, or otherwise have the university fund their work.

The "teaching" is just the tradeoff they put up with to get the funding. Hence, it gets the bare minimum they can get away with. Pawn off work on TAs (who equally have a ron of other shit to be getting on with), stand at a podium and read the book they wrote, grade arbitrarily hard to make it look "rigorous," Office hours from 6AM to 7AM Tuesday, by appointment only, may or may not check email.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

The gross majority of college professors don't give a shit about teaching.

They are there to either do their research, or otherwise have the university fund their work.

The "teaching" is just the tradeoff they put up with to get the funding. Hence, it gets the bare minimum they can get away with. Office hours from 6AM to 7AM Tuesday, by appointment only, may or may not check email.

Maybe for undergrad but in grad school all of my professors were accomplished individuals in the field and were actually teaching.

Yes most college professors are garbage.

and usually they read that talking point off of a powerpoint slide!

I am a high school English teacher right now, and I'll tell you students taking notes and PowerPoint is VERY effective at getting the major points across, especially if you quiz them consistently.

Man am I glad that my program is full of professors who actually give a shit.

Also, education classes are complete bullshit and you'll throw all that nonsense out the window when you have an actual classroom. Theory doesn't actually work in practice. Ever.

Relationships with your students is BY FAR the most important part. You get that, you're golden and the job is easy. You don't, and it'll be the most miserable experience possible.

I'm teaching a class for money. Want advice? Find a better profession.

I consider myself very fortunate. I had outstanding professors at both the undergrad and graduate levels. Most, particularly at the grad level, were former professionals who later turned to teaching.

Not every college class I had was like that but a few were and it felt so pointless. You had to buy the $120 book, which was just regurgitated onto Powerpoint slides, which they wanted you to speed write down word for word in about 1 minute per slide, it was ridiculous.

I'll never forget the intro to computer science professor that I had my freshman year. He was a pretty strange guy who wore a Hawaiian shirt, trench coat and scarf every day even when it was really hot outside.

He admitted to our class all the time that he barely knew what he was doing and that he was basically just reading info that he found online the day before. It was really bizarre because he'd been a professor at the school for a few years at that point and still didn't really know anything.

He also encouraged us to cheat on our tests and skip class. One of the girls in our class said that she bumped into him on the train once and he hit on her really creepily. I have no idea how that guy kept his job lol

i've gotten better lectures from those indian dudes on Youtube than my actual teachers who just read the slides while sounding bored out of their minds...

Spiritlittle posted...

I am a high school English teacher right now, and I'll tell you students taking notes and PowerPoint is VERY effective at getting the major points across, especially if you quiz them consistently.

Except they dont retain it after leaving the class

Njolk posted...

Except they dont retain it after leaving the class

This. Most of my high school "learning" was just copying down what was written on the blackboard.

Writing a small novel on each PowerPoint slide and reading everything verbatim is one of the worst ways to get ideas across. Most students aren't gonna pay attention to all that.

Njolk posted...

Except they dont retain it after leaving the class

That's on them, not me. They won't read the assigned readings most of the time anyway. And I don't get paid enough to care.

I know they told you what not to do, but did they tell you what you should do instead?

Esrac posted...

I know they told you what not to do, but did they tell you what you should do instead?

Design it like a documentary. Images, few words, actually lecture instead of read a wall of text. Give frequent pauses and breaks to absorb the material

I'm teaching avalanche science to avalanche control techs, it's literally life and death