It's About Learning

The Ideal Professor vs. The Typical Professor – Faculty Focus | Faculty Focus via kwout

This is a very short blog post that has an excellent table that provides a summary of the results of the survey. It is encouraging to note:

the characteristics these students identified as belonging to those teachers who most effectively taught them were not absent in Typical professors. They just weren’t as pronounced. I take that to mean, if you aspire to be ideal, you don’t have to do new things, just more of those good things you already do.

The numbers reflect the percentage of students who endorsed this characteristic for their Ideal professors and the percentage who said they characterized the Typical professor.

Teaching Characteristic	Ideal	Typical
Professor speaks clearly/not monotone	93	80
Course and daily goals appear on the syllabus	83	52
Students have a voice; input on course policies and procedures	40	7
Professor talks informally with students sometimes	43	15
Professor lectures	78	93
Professor uses discussion	58	37
Professor does in-class activities/demonstrations	57	21
·Uses humor often/occasionally ·Uses humor occasionally only	97	75
·Cheating/plagiarism policy—investigates and resolves incidents ·Do not know what approach is used to deal with academic dishonesty	58	64
Solicits anonymous, written, informal feedback on teaching/course	68	17
·Solicits student feedback two or more times per term ·Never solicits student feedback	72	3

Read the full post…