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What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

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Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#11
post #4

Here's the take-away quotation for me: The better the professors were, as measured by their students' grades in later classes, the lower their ratings from students. "If you make your students do well in their academic career, you get worse evaluations from your students," Pellizzari said. Students, by and large, don't enjoy learning from a taskmaster, even if it does them some good.

I don't think that applies at the college/university level. Evaluations are at the end of the course and you will know if you have learned a lot. The problem is profs just reading the textbook or parts of the textbook in a powerpoint, without challenging students.

Based on my experience at University great teachers who push and challenge students are generally disliked by the large group of students that don't particularly want to be pushed or challenged.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#12
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that applies at the college/university level. Evaluations are at the end of the course and you will know if you have learned a lot. The problem is profs just reading the textbook or parts of the textbook in a powerpoint, without challenging students.

Even at the college/university level I have seen students complaining about professors that were fairly good, sometimes just because the grading was a bit tough.

Would that be a majority though?

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#13
post #9
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that applies at the college/university level. Evaluations are at the end of the course and you will know if you have learned a lot. The problem is profs just reading the textbook or parts of the textbook in a powerpoint, without challenging students.

By the end of the course they'd only know they've got an exam to pass and they'll hate it. Students should not have any say in anything related to their courses, professors, marking, workload and such.

No say at all? Not even trigger a review?

Profs that consistently get poor reviews are getting them for a reason.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#14
post #5

Everyone would get an "A"?

You can still not learn very much and still get a good grade. Students are attending to learn and will give negative reviews when they are not learning as much as they expected they would learn.

Students are attending to learn

Depends very much on the course. A lot courses are attended by a lot of students who just need the course to fulfill some requirement and want nothing more than to get a pass with as little work as possible.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#15
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that applies at the college/university level. Evaluations are at the end of the course and you will know if you have learned a lot. The problem is profs just reading the textbook or parts of the textbook in a powerpoint, without challenging students.

Even at the college/university level I have seen students complaining about professors that were fairly good, sometimes just because the grading was a bit tough.

Well those might be legitimate complaints. Professor is fine but his grading is too tough.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#16
This would not work, often students perceive strict professors has being bad because they give too much work load or are too strict. It also goes against excellent researchers who are contributing a lot to science but are not great teachers. Often these are "forced" to teach by their university because otherwise they don't get grants.

I am not in academia, but in retrospective some of my greatest professors where very hard to deal teachers with huge fail rates. Most students hated them.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#17
How will we know that student ire will be directed at the right individuals? What are the right individuals anyhow? At my department in my beloved state school there are three full professors, each with no grants, paid USD 120000 for doing no research and giving one bad lecture per semester. Then there are several lecturers who are paid USD 40000, doing a better job at lecturing, and more lecturing altogether. We also have half a dozen assistant professors, who are struggling to bring in grant money and altogether doing an admirable job.

The great majority of the students doesn't know how the sausage is made and should well keep out of personnel decisions. They don't even know what the sausage is!

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#18
post #4

Here's the take-away quotation for me: The better the professors were, as measured by their students' grades in later classes, the lower their ratings from students. "If you make your students do well in their academic career, you get worse evaluations from your students," Pellizzari said. Students, by and large, don't enjoy learning from a taskmaster, even if it does them some good.

I don't think that applies at the college/university level. Evaluations are at the end of the course and you will know if you have learned a lot. The problem is profs just reading the textbook or parts of the textbook in a powerpoint, without challenging students.

The quote is about a pair of university courses.

Students, and probably just people in general, are really bad at knowing what they have learned.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#20
Terrible idea. I went to a school where students had no problems calling mommy and daddy and the parents had quite the culture of bringing lawyers against the university.

The university had a rule of never taking these things to court, so they would always settle. Even when it was stupid things like students violating an attendance policy, failing their class because of it, and then getting off scott free beacuse their parents called a lawyer.

Disgusting practice.

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