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What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

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Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#141

Post by Fomite »

codefisher wrote: post #129

I would like more accountability from professors somehow. Maybe not from student reviews, but at least someone unknown to the professor randomly attend a few classes to check the quality of them. Right now I have a professor that says things during class that are obviously incorrect, and can be verified as incorrect. Her attitude towards students is also disrespectful. But there is nothing we can do about it, no way…

Have you tried to do so? I've seen coherent, well-written letters from a large number of students influence the direction a course took (it was redesigned from the ground up for the next year), and both student and peer evaluations of teaching are definitely a factor in tenure decisions - and depending on the position, may be a major factor.

But I'd start with laying out concrete things, rather than "embarrassed and ashamed".

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#142

Post by xamuel »

kefka wrote: post #134
chasing wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students and professors are not peers.

The professors should be servants, in the same light a server is to a meal. I pay for it, I get it the way I want.

That's not a very realistic view of things. First of all, a professor's job consists of many things, of which teaching is just one. Depending on the institution, your tuition may be a very miniscule portion of the professor's paycheck. Finally, even if they're solely a lecturer and payed entirely from tuition, what you want isn't necessarily what other students want, so unless you've hired the prof as a private tutor...

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#143

Post by Fomite »

kefka wrote: post #134
chasing wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students and professors are not peers.

The professors should be servants, in the same light a server is to a meal. I pay for it, I get it the way I want.

If you go to a state university, odds are your professor is largely paid by the taxpayers, either of the state or the U.S. via the NSF/NIH/DoE etc.

Professors are not your employees, and the notion that you should get your class "the way you want" - especially considering a likely double digit number of students all wanting it their way - is absurd.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#144

Post by yarrel »

kefka wrote: post #134
chasing wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students and professors are not peers.

The professors should be servants, in the same light a server is to a meal. I pay for it, I get it the way I want.

I want higher marks than you.

The professor should clearly give me them.

Well, bring them to me. I can't be bothered actually going to class.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#145

Post by noobermin »

evanpw wrote: post #85
ColinWright wrote: post #2

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.

A lot of students are there to get a degree, not to learn something. Employers don't know or care how much freshman chemistry you remember (unless you're a chemist), but they do care if you didn't finish your degree because you couldn't pass some requirement. I wonder if the the same relationship is true in fields where there is a licensing exam at the end of your degree (like engineering). Or maybe something like a…

Tell me about it. I TA for a physics class for premeds, and while they may find some passing interest in the course, they certainly don't care to learn it...and actually, I agree. May be a general knowledge of physics for someone going into medicine might be somewhat beneficial, but do I really expect my doctor to care about calculating the net force on a spaceship between the earth and the moon? Really?

I'm still at a loss for understanding why physics is required for the MCAT.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#146

Post by penprogg »

cgearhart wrote: post #116
ColinWright wrote: post #2

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.

>> Society should not punish people who kill people like Locascio. Direct quote from a student eval [1] of the hardest professor I've ever had. There are more like it. The professor blew it up and posted it on his bulletin board. It would irreparably damage higher learning to put the livelihood of teachers like this in the hands of kids who can't even legally drink yet. And -- in keeping with the premise of the artic…

The problem with this is that society does not accept failure. Fail a few times in college and your GPA is irreparably damaged, you have to spend extra time (and money, oh god the money) retaking courses you "should" have passed on the first go.

I find myself gaining the most from courses where the professor destroys me. I spend all semester struggling with certain concepts and then at some point towards the end, once I've been exposed to the bigger picture, everything falls together and all the previous material I didn't understand now makes sense. The problem is that I've already been evaluated for the material. If I get a D in a course and retake it and get an A should I still have that D on that record, even though I arguably know the material better than someone who got a B on their first go?

While failure is probably the best way to learn, society conditions people to avoid failure like the plague.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#147

Post by Fomite »

xijuan wrote: post #119

I just wanted to say few things about my experiences on reading students' ratings on ratemyprofressor.com. First, professors who consistently get good ratings are usually very good lecturers. They are not necessarily easy profs. But they do give great lectures and explain things more thoroughly. On the other hand, professors who get consistently low ratings are usually not good. For example, last term, I took a cours…

I have definitely had life-changing professors who taught be extremely valuable lessons who were poorly rated on that site. And one of the worst professors I ever had (like if I build a time machine I'm going back to tell myself not to take his class) was highly rated on that site.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#148

Post by tmerr »

I have finite attention. Attention (time and effort) is probably more important to my learning than the quality of my teacher. Without attention you fail. With infinite attention you get a perfect grade.

When you take a hard course it consumes a disproportionate amount of attention. Even if the teacher is bad at his/her job a harsh grading scheme will drive you to spend hours in the library. You will learn a lot because you are burning valuable attention; attention other classes can not have. So such a class necessarily good? Of course not. Not if the learning benefit is outweighed by learning opportunity cost.

So regarding the finding of the study

    The better the professors were, as measured by their
    students' grades in later classes, the lower their
    ratings from students.
I'm not confident that performance in later classes of the same sequence is a fair measure of learning; what matters to me is performance in ALL later classes. How do evaluations correlate then?

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#149

Post by Fomite »

ohfunkyeah wrote: post #100
kazinator wrote: post #91

Degrees granted from any university that regards students as customers are automatically worthless junk, because they are essentially purchased goods. When a professor is rated low, at least some of that rating has to do with the professor having a high standard in the awarding of grades and passing of students. If students get good grades then no matter how much the lectures suck, or how unavailable that professor i…

Degrees and grades are a big part of the problem because they are treated as currency to get a job. Degrees are like the Microsoft points system. I want a job in field XYZ. Well to get that you have to buy 256 credits. But, but, it looks like the job really only requires 120 credits. Too bad you have to buy 256. Ok, fine... WTF, part of the 120 credits have absolutely no relevance to the thing I want to do. Yeah, wel…

Some of the most valuable things I learned, and have done good things for my career, were in those "unrelated" 120 credits.

Re: What If Students Could Fire Their Professors?

#150

Post by Fomite »

bobochan wrote: post #32

I have had a chance to look at course evaluation data over time and the scary thing about it is how quickly ratings can change from year to year. One year a professor might be considered an absolute rock star with students raving about the course, but a problematic upgrade to a piece of software used in the course can drive students absolutely mad the next year. I'm convinced that there is a group think that occurs v…

The thing that strikes me is how small the sample sizes are - most students really can't be bothered to fill out evaluations, and those who do are probably not an unbiased sample. There's often maybe a handful of evaluations per year for anything but massive lecture classes. It's hard to even make meaningful or realistic estimates of the quality of a teacher from that data.
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