Robust approach needed to monitor teachers
The main performance indicator in the evaluation of universities has been the quality of research, with little if any attention given to the quality of teaching. Those of us teaching at university have been called “lecturers”, distinguishing us from teachers, with the implication that unlike teachers we work at a distance from the students. We had no training whatsoever in communicating with students. Our research competence was assumed to provide the proper grounding for lecturing and directing seminars. There was a strong belief that in a climate of research and lecturing students learn by osmosis.
Lecturing is best described as talking in other people’s sleep. I have spent many an hour standing before students inhaling the perfume of my own ideas. I had a dramatic awakening once when a student approached me, after what I thought was a mind-blowing lecture. Instead of meeting my expectation of congratulations on my illuminating ideas she confidently declared: “Well Philip, you will have to admit that was a load of crap.” I realised that my two feet were habitually firmly planted in the air. I was lecturing to myself. I have spent some years as external examiner to other institutions. The main complaint from students when interviewed was the appalling quality of feedback. Some 90% of the comments provided by lecturers were negative, with very few attempts to provide indications of how to improve. Feedback tended to be crushing, demotivating and not significantly diagnostic.
