I aspire to become a teacher sometime later in my career. I have already had the privilege of taking several classes* in a formal classroom setting and I must say, it feels good to face the other direction of the class; it feels special!
I have attended more than 2500 hours of classes at IIT Madras alone and in the process, I have realized that certain practices of teachers turn off students easily and therefore be best avoided. And this article is about a few of them.
Note that I have intentionally not titled the article How To Be a Good Teacher, because that is an entirely different topic and something that I don't have the experience yet to write about. But the first step to be a good teacher is to not be a bad teacher. And here's how.
When I become a teacher, I would strongly try to follow these points myself, and therefore, I have listed them out in the form of strict instructions to myself. The readers are requested to view them as mere suggestions and make appropriate use of them.
I have attended more than 2500 hours of classes at IIT Madras alone and in the process, I have realized that certain practices of teachers turn off students easily and therefore be best avoided. And this article is about a few of them.
Note that I have intentionally not titled the article How To Be a Good Teacher, because that is an entirely different topic and something that I don't have the experience yet to write about. But the first step to be a good teacher is to not be a bad teacher. And here's how.
When I become a teacher, I would strongly try to follow these points myself, and therefore, I have listed them out in the form of strict instructions to myself. The readers are requested to view them as mere suggestions and make appropriate use of them.
- Don't arrive late for your class. Be present at the scheduled start-time. An occasional delay is acceptable, but on a regular basis, any delay more than 2 minutes reflects very badly on your professional ethics.
- Don't humiliate students in classroom, especially if they arrive late to your class. The late-comer might have arrived after breaking his alarm clock that didn't ring at the right time or after puncturing his cycle on the way or after not getting a piece of (so-called) dosa in mess despite standing in the queue for 15 minutes - don't make him feel worse by humiliating him as soon as he enters the class.
- Don't come unprepared. You may have been teaching the same course for the last 10 years, you might have taught the same topics just a week ago, but do spend some time to prepare every time before coming to a class. You may spend anything between 2 minutes to 2 hours or more, depending on your level of comfort with the topic, structure, content and style of presentation, but never walk into a class hoping for stuff to come out of your mouth all by itself.
- Don't dish out petty rules and regulations. Asking students to switch off cellphones in class is okay, but asking them to stop using cellphones in life is definitely not okay! Don't thrust too many regulations and restrictions on the students. Don't make stupid rules on how they should enter the room, how they should sit, how they should wink or how they should breathe in air. Maintain your sanity, give them their space.
- Don't make a mess on the board. Be neat with your handwriting, be clear with your notations. Use the board well. Don't make spelling mistakes. And for God's sake, please don't spell the title of your course wrong!
- Don't harp on attendance. Your institute may have attendance regulations for students, and as an ethical/law-abiding teacher, you may have no option but to take attendance every class, but never use attendance as a crutch for making students attend your class. If your teaching is not a reason good enough, then your classes don't deserve to be attended anyway.
- Don't bluff. You are not God; you are not omniscient. It is never a shame to say, "I'm not sure of this right now" or "I'll think about it and get back to you in the next class". Never bluff to hide your ignorance; the next-gen students don't take long to figure it out!
- Don't throw high sounding jargon. You know the subject better than the others in the classroom and that is exactly the reason you are there as a teacher; don’t try to prove it. Think at the level of the class while introducing new terms and concepts. Don't show off; don't be rude.
- Don't talk to the walls. Your students sit right in front of you; look at them while you're explaining. Be interactive; don't deliver a monologue. Don't sound monotonous too; modulate your voice well. And please don't talk facing the board.
- Don't stretch your class beyond the scheduled end-time. You may take a couple of minutes more to wind up the last topic you were discussing, but every extra minute beyond that will reduce your popularity by half. And never try to take advantage of your students' respect for you by asking questions like "Can I take 5 more minutes?"; they will always nod their heads in approval just to save you from humiliation (Can you imagine how you would feel if all students answer a unanimous "No" and walk out of the classroom?).
*2 as Summer Research Fellow at IISc, Bangalore (Summer 2010) + 5 as Teaching Assistant for EE6110: Digital Modulation and Coding at IIT Madras (Fall 2010) + 3 as Teaching Assistant of EE6170: Introduction to Wireless and Cellular Communications (Spring 2011). Kudos to the concept of Teaching Assistantship for Dual Degree students at IITs!
(This article of mine will appear in The Last Bencher, a book of memories of the Class of 2011 brought out by IITM's Alumni Affairs Office.)
(This article of mine will appear in The Last Bencher, a book of memories of the Class of 2011 brought out by IITM's Alumni Affairs Office.)
53 comments:
My addons might
1. Dont make dimensional errors like log(r) [Sarathi]
2. Don't read out stuff generally from sheets of paper [Prabhu]
3. Don't shout at a girl "I will come down hard on you" [Prabhu again ;)]
being teacher requires much more than being good at a subject, more in case of enggineering where most of things you teach is boring
don't be a prof if don't know how to talk , or you are just boring guys who can say what he knows in same monologue voice,
have alteration of pitch
have set of joke etc ready , spcly for all 8am classes
@Torpi: True, esp #2 :D
@Phuchu: Completely agree with you, except that engineering has a lot of interesting things too - whether it's mostly boring or interesting actually depends on the individual's interests.
I like the suggestion about keeping a set of jokes ready - I actually did that for a few of my classes. ;) But I guess once you grow in experience as a teacher, you'll acquire a knack of cracking jokes on-the-spot. For e.g., in my department, professors like Prof. Andrew, Bhaskar and others crack a lot of impromptu jokes! :D
well i kinda agree as well as disagree with the line of thinking here. I mean, sure in today's world a teacher should be ready with all the tricks up his sleeve so that he can connect well with students. But then, I think about vedic times when students used to actually make an effort to learn. Today, wherever I see there are students, totally mismatched against their natural interests, just trying to pass through college. And, in the process, which naturally turns to be boring since its born out more due to materialistic desires rather than interests, they never loose a chance to blame professors. Trust me, I'm not undermining the position of a teacher's role here but I strongly feel that students too need to do some introspection. After all we belong to the great land of Ram & krishna and kabir - ' guru gobind dono khade kaake lagun paye , balihari guru aapne gobind diyo bataye.
@Apoorv aka BJ: That's an extremely valid point, and an important one too!
I used to sometimes feel pity on my teachers during my junior college days, when people would be chatting with eachother, throwing chalks at eachother while the class is on, without paying any attention or respect to the teacher standing upfront. But I must admit, the situation in IITs (or atleast IITM) is far far better; there's a larger fraction of students who are motivated to learn the subject and almost everyone maintains decorum in the classroom - the minimum that should be done to respect the presence of a teacher.
But yes, I agree with your point that several students these days just try to somehow pass through college and don't lose a chance to blame their professors. As far as this article is concerned, it's written with the assumption that the students in the class are well-behaved and ready to give you your space as a teacher! :-)
ROFL Max at last comment. Not to mention that every one of them is true. My small addition - Please give a practical application and demo when possible. Can be given as part of the welcome package to every prof! Go Misra! :)
Hm..The article turns out to be a lot different than what people like me were expecting when you discussed it. I suppose you are working first on getting the basics right. Makes sense.
An addition I would like to make, based on what I have observed about popular Profs is "Don't forget the fact that you are trying to engage the whole class." Especially in the graduate level courses, there usually are one or two odd bright ones who are really enthusiastic about the course and know quite some extra stuff. Its not fair to make the class a dialogue between the Prof and the enthu student about latest research, forgetting that there are parts of the class who really want to be motivated for the course but are still looking for reasons to like the course.
Misraji A very well written article! Many many profs will completely fail at "not being a bad teacher" if we are grading based on your rules :)
Point 9 : Brownie points for being a little humorous , throw in a joke or two related to the subject matter. I think its a very easy way to get the attention of students in class and also breaks the ice, making the class more interactive. I have seen this quality in almost all "good" teachers, I've listened to. Also to try and remember at least some of the names of the students in a class.
Enthusiasm of the teacher towards the subject matter is also key. If the teacher himself/herself doesn't seem too interested, why would any student show interest??. It is therefore up to the teacher to try and make a subject seem interesting.
Good that you have submitted this to the Book of Memories. Hopefully some profs will read this and try to mend their ways.
Like Kirtika said, I was expecting something different when I saw the topic. You covered all the usual points. Maybe these are the only points needed to be a good teacher!
@Harish: That's a very good point! If you look at the curriculum of our own Electrical Engineering @ IITM, we have lab courses for most of the core courses we do, and I have always held the opinion that these lab courses should be held along with the corresponding theory course in the same semester (unlike 1 or 2 sems later, as it happens now). This will make sure that we get exposed to the theoretical and practical aspects of the subject simultaneously and hence appreciate them better! I did Digital Communication and its lab counterpart, Advanced Communications Lab 1 in the same semester, and those were two of the best theory/lab courses I have done at IITM (and I'm sure most of my DD Comm classmates hold the same feeling as well).
Vasuki & co. have already proposed this point in the Department Class Committee meeting; I hope it gets implemented soon! We'll need to make minor changes to the experiments in the lab courses to ensure that the lab doesn't run ahead of the theory classes, but it's possible to do it!
@Kirtika: May be you were expecting something on the lines of How To Be a Good Teacher. This article contains only the first step, on how first to not be a bad teacher (as you said, on getting the basics right). :-)
Your suggestion is a very important one, and it would be something that I would include among the top points if ever I write an article on How To Be a Good Teacher. One of my profs, Prof. A N Rajagopalan, had explicitly talked about how he makes a conscious attempt to keep the entire class entertained - to talk about latest papers and practices for the top half of the class and to keep things simple as much as possible for the bottom half. I'm sure several other profs do the same as well!
It's an extremely important point that you made! Thanks. :-)
Some of my addons.
1. Your's is not the only course which the students have taken.
2. Exams are held to find what a student knows about the subject. Its not a medium to prove what you, as a prof know.
@Ketan: Yes, having a touch of humour is very important, and in some cases, I have also found that to be a strong reason why some people look forward to attending classes by a teacher. For example, my Physics teacher in school used to crack so many jokes during class (and yet covered his topics very well) that we never used to miss any of his classes, just for the sheer fun! :-)
And yes, I again agree that a teacher should make his enthusiasm for the subject evident while teaching. This is important to keep in mind especially when someone has been teaching the same course/topics for years together; after teaching the same thing a few times, you tend not to have the same zeal or excitement in teaching it as you do in your first time.
@Manikanta: May be you too were expecting something on the lines of How To Be a Good Teacher! This article contains only a few necessary (by no means, sufficient) conditions for the same. :-)
@Niranjan: I liked your second point. Here is a nice article Getting grades out of the way published in an MIT newsletter which talks about a similar issue (and which I had shared with a few of my profs to check if something similar can be implemented in our department/institute): http://web.mit.edu/fnl/volume/204/winston.html
You might want to have a look at it. :-)
Nice post Misra! :) Prepare for your classes, yep totally true, and also it's terrible when the prof comes and bulbs and is not ready to accept that he bulbed! :D
As for the late-coming thing, or the attendance thing, trust me, more than half the junta do either of the above on purpose. So, I wouldn't blame the profs for getting pissed off at either!
@GV aka Chappli: LOL @ the prof comes and bulbs and is not ready to accept that he bulbed! :D
Reg. late-coming/absenteeism: I agree that some (many?) students do it on purpose, but does humiliating them help in way? The teacher could just mark them absent if they turn up, say, 10-15 minutes late or don't turn up at all - and it would be the student's responsibility to make sure that he stays above the institute attendance limits. From what I have observed, public humiliation only strains the teacher-student relationship (unless the student has a great sense of humour to take it sportingly or is shameless ;-) )
Speaking of Point 6, I am reminded of this Prof. here in Singapore whose interesting ways compelled me to think about what makes a Prof. "magical". Not only does he engage both the extreme ends of the class, he always has a way of going about it that ensures me or anyone else NEVER EVER misses a class, even the early morning ones, even when there are no attendance rules here and all lectures are video-taped. He has his way of making the weak students comfortable in the class by talking about how easy the course is, dropping hints about how to think in an exam and while he does so, he will tactfully drop fodder for people like some of us to ponder upon and attack him with questions after the class.
If a Prof takes interest in you and bugs you to attend his/her classes, it is a good thing to do in my opinion. He has a better idea of the bigger picture as to how useful the course material is. Not all phases of a course are interesting but are nevertheless important. For example, I missed some classes in Networks and Systems course and it took me quite some time to realize its importance and cover up for what I have missed in that course.
Other than the above one, I completely agree with the points that you have put to "not become a bad teacher"
But, it would be much more helpful if you write about "How to be a good teacher", because I feel many of the people who might possibly read your blog already know the points that you have mentioned. It is quite likely that people who aspire to become good teachers from now on, 'are aware of/already have' the above points. It would be much more valuable to give qualities which make you a good teacher. I would strongly urge you to write a blog on "How to become a good teacher". I am quite enthu to read it :)
2nd point specially applies to K Prabhu :D :|..man he was so irritating..
seeing ur 3rd point it seems like u faced such problems while taking classes.. ;) .. now keeping regard of ur 7th point don't be shy... :P
point number 6 is totally acceptable.. I did not like so many classes :( but because of atteandance issues I had to attend... :((
and point number 10 applies to profs like TGV!!!he comes 10 mins before and takes 10 mins more...total of 20 mins more :O :angry...
All in all a good article which should be brought out to our profs (I mean of course no name should be reflected else u r gone ;) )...
Well said
Really good list as far as basics are concerned. Like people have pointed out, none of these will in and of themselves make for an inspirational teacher, but as you said, these would be the basics.
Humour is always a good tool, but I'd hardly say it's essential. Emphasize the vocal modulation/conveying enthu part more and make it a whole point. Matters a lot.
Also, mildly amused at Kirtika being the one to say what she said in her first comment :) . It's true though.
@Kirtika: That's how a good teacher needs to be! BTW, with our experience of observing teachers and their teaching styles, probably we could attempt drafting an article on How To Be a Good Teacher together? :-)
@Uttam bhaina: Na, Point #3 hasn't been inspired by my own teaching experiences - I have spent atleast 3-4 hours for preparing for each of the classes that I have taken so far! :-)
And your comments/expressions reg. the other points made me wink! ;-)
@Rakesh Malladi: Thanks! :-)
@Nikhil: Yes, these are the basics, the first step to being a good teacher, as I mentioned. Think of it - of all the teachers that you've come across in insti so far, how many have got all 10 points right? Not a significant fraction, right?
True, humour is not essential, but is always a great tool to possess - as Ketan pointed out, it's the easiest way of making the class come alive when the going seems to be getting dull and boring.
Adding on what Kirtika has added
I think a good teacher needs to improvise very cleverly ... there are times when the overall energy is very low (Last class of the day,Quiz time etc.) or everyone is distracted (WC matches,saarang time etc.) so rather than paining students if the teacher too joins in the banter it goes a long way in establishing that 'CONNECT' which i feel is the single most important aspect of teaching.
I think if a teacher is able to connect to students at any level u will always enjoy his teaching and his presence
Nice one Misraji :-)
Nice set of DONT's to budding profs (or otherwise)
I think it is important that profs encourage students to ask doubts, or in the context of this post, don't discourage them from asking. A sneer, or a snide comment are enough to ensure no one except the first benchers ask any sort of questions in the class. Specially in graduate level courses, it is very important that rpofs encourage discussions.
Waiting for your article on how to be a good prof. At your own risk, though. You could piss off many a profs with such an article. :P
@Taz: Yes, adapting to the mood of the class and establishing a connect with the students are crucial aspects of a good teacher. But what generally happens is that due to the limited time available for each slot and the large volume of content to cover, profs at insti are more concerned about straightaway putting the content across to the students rather than spending time on finding out their moods and circumstances.
One point that I thought of adding to this article, but didn't (as it was not a necessary condition) was:
Don't start teaching right after entering the class. Spend the first couple of minutes or so to inquire about the mood of the class and the perception about the course thus far, and set up the right atmosphere for the topics that are coming up.
@Symmetry: Well said! Yes, profs should encourage discussions and give every student the liberty to raise doubts in class, however trivial they may be - that will go a long way in making the students actually interested in listening to all that the prof is saying. Sometimes, a light-hearted, humorous dig by a teacher at a doubt raised in class may be perceived negatively by the students, so teachers should be careful to guard against them.
Wow! This comments section is throwing up a lot of useful, interesting suggestions! I am impressed and delighted! :-)
I am saving a copy of this post with all the comments... this will help me next year with how not to be a bad TA :P :D
Misra!! Good post.
To add a few points which I feel are pertinent.
1. Banter with students before starting the class. Talk about a movie, new rules, bad administration, anything under the sun. Trust me, the students you talked to, will pay full attention in class. Be friendly with the students. Smile, when you meet them in corridor or the coffee shop. Discuss about the latest cricket match. Do not ignore them. Don't try to be extremely "cool" and put on an accent, which seems to be the case with many new profs in Elec Department. It will just make the students curse you.
2. I always get a feeling that the professors want to prove that they are more intelligent than the students. I have done many courses in which the professors give problems which can be solved by what I would call as "tricks". These tricks are in no way related to the course, do not conceptually teach you anything. Well, they are just ..there. These tricks, after you see through them just leave you bitter, ruing at the time wasted on it.
For instance, applying say mean-value theorem to calculate something to do with channel capacity for instance, will not conceptually teach you anything. And in a time limited exam, it makes no sense at all to have questions like these. Agreed, you are more intelligent than us. That is the reason we have taken the course. Test us regarding our concepts, not the ability to see through tricks.
@Arun KJ: LOL! :D All the best for your TA duties! :-)
@Arjun Bharadwaj aka Samaadhi aka Boneywasawarriorwayayix (What kind of a nick is that last one? ;-) ): You have very nicely elucidated a couple of points brought out earlier.
#1 was what Rajat intended when he mentioned that profs should establish a connect with the students. And you've nicely described how. Thanks! :-)
#2 was hinted at by Niranjan. Yes, I agree with you on that. Though sometimes, as good engineers, we should be good at finding the shortest/quickest way of reaching solutions and therefore should be good at using tricks, yet it's never something that should be the highlight of any question in a time-limited examination. If a prof wants to test ability to see through tricks, he should make it an unlimited-time exam (bounded by a large upper limit, of course), like how CSR does.
10/10!! Points 1,4,6 and 7 were the best ones. Would love to see you as a Professor well known for his demeanor among students.
For some reason, above points do not seem to be 'the' reasons for students to be turned off from their courses/profs.
Seriously, most of the profs are in time.
Even if they use jargon, it is probably time students started using it too. Hardly does it ever happen that a prof would use jargon to show-off. It would border on stupidity.
Asking for an extra 5 mins seriously need not halve the popularity of a prof. If it does, then he better accept that everyone was pained with the rest of the 50 mins as well!
While it seems true that a prof should not humiliate a student who comes late, from what i have seen, and by personal experience, you end up fearing and the respecting a prof who expects you to be in time (and well obviously follows it up with some awesome teaching too). Each and every prof who is not very strict on late comers ends up seeing a major misuse of the freedom. People will come late. And then they won't come at all. In fact in ED a prof who used to be very strict on attendance earlier gradually relented with some of us and finally never needed to take any attendance. Most of the other 'laissez faire' profs had to go the other way.
@Varun: Thanks. Hopefully, that time would come soon! :-)
@Tarun:
For some reason, above points do not seem to be 'the' reasons for students to be turned off from their courses/profs. Seriously, most of the profs are in time : Have you ever faced a situation when you wake up at 7.45, get ready, skip your breakfast so that you could reach class by 8 only to find that the prof doesn't turn up until 8.25? I have faced it, and it surely did turn me off. I agree that most profs are in time; I am just saying that not being on time regularly reflects very badly on your ethics. :-)
Hardly does it ever happen that a prof would use jargon to show-off. It would border on stupidity. Right, and therefore he shouldn't. And again, it doesn't matter if it happens hardly ever; if ever it happens, it's bad! :-)
I fear you didn't get the spirit of the article.;-) I never meant to say that the points that I listed are things that most profs do; I meant to say that if they do the things that I said they shouldn't, that would be bad.
Reg. the attendance issue, I never said that profs should stop taking attendance. Infact, they should, because the institute has rules that require them to. But harping on attendance to make students attend classes is not a good idea. I'm sure you haven't come across profs who might say things like, "If your attendance falls below 75% on any day of the course, I'll mark you absent for the next day whether you come or not!" ;-) That's not good!
I forgot a couple of points. ELUCIDATE!! Always. Speak clearly. Don't make arbitrary motions and call something trivial, unless it is very obvious. It becomes irritating after a point. Do not go to the other extreme, either. The students are not very stupid.
Do not call a student to the board and quiz him on things done in the last class. You are just humiliating him in front of his peers. If you do so, the students will not be interested in your lectures at all, but will just try to find methods to escape from the humiliation.
Upload the study material(slides, if any) on the net. I know many profs who do not upload the study materials. The rationale is that only those who took down notes in the class deserve to get marks. That is a fallacious argument, because in the end, the student is the loser and it also reflects badly on the teacher.
I would be glad 2 attend one of ur classes mishra sir ;)n decide 2 send my children / grandchildren for d same :P ..... Just kidding , i have full confidence that u would prove 2 b a good teacher...good luck for ur journey :)
Nice post :-). I admit, I was expecting something more critical, but I agree with all the points posed.
Some thoughts: I really agree about the not wasting students time part - things like demanding hand written reports, etc. are just as much of a time waste in this age of digital technology.
I also think professors should not "give up" on the setting and correcting of papers - the exams are more than a grade, they are a feedback mechansim for us; how do we know what we don't know unless it's properly pointed out in the exam?
And I think most importantly, do not make yourself unapproachable; do not make it impossible for students to meet/talk to you. Do not be absolutely disdainful of students (I know a professor who hates BTech students because they don't contribute to anything for him... :-/)
I agree with everything except the punctuality. Considering that many students come close to 15 min late, it's hypocritical to always expect profs to come on time.
@Torpi:Lol
Couldn't agree more with the first and last point ... profs regularly stretching beyond allotted time limit can be very irritating .. and also concentration levels (for me at least) drops exponentially for every minute after xx:50.
my addon
1) Set good question papers (from question paper we can guess amount of time spent on it).Well thought out question paper testing fundamentals rather than trivia/arbit maggu questions is always appreciated.
@Raviteja aka Foil: Your comment had somehow gone into Spam, I have no clue how! :O I just marked it as Not spam, and it's appearing somewhere in between the already existing comments.
What you suggested is a valid point, but quite different from what I intended to say in #6. You meant to say that if a prof feels he's going to cover something extremely crucial in the forthcoming class(es), something that he feels needs to be clearly understood to be able to follow and appreciate the rest of the course, then he may ask his students to make sure that they don't miss the classes that are coming up at any cost. And that is a very good thing, I agree.
But what I meant to say was that its not good if a prof makes his own attendance rules (as I mentioned earlier, something like if your attendance falls below 75% on any day of the course, I'll mark you absent for the next day as well whether you come or not) and uses attendance as a tool for forcing people to come to class - it just means that the prof isn't able to motivate his students with his teaching and his content and is looking for desperate means to make sure he's not teaching an empty class.
And yes, I agree that these are points that almost everyone of us know, but as I asked Nikhil, of all teachers you have come across in insti, what fraction do you think have got all 10 right? Reg. How To Be A Good Teacher, I don't think I have the right experience yet to write an article on it, but looking at some of the comments that people have made above, I'm actually thinking of putting together an article on what we, the students, think a good teacher should be like. :-)
@Arjun aka Samaadhi aka Boneywasawarriorwayayix: Agree with you. Reg. study material, some other times, the rationale is that the study material is not in its best form or is incomplete, and hence the profs hesitate to make it public fearing that people outside his classroom might misjudge him from his incomplete/not-in-the-best-form study material. But otherwise, I agree with you that any study material should be shared with the students for their benefit.
@Amruta: It would be a pleasure and privilege to have you/your children/your grandchildren in my classes. ;-) Thanks for wishing me luck! :-)
Good post. You seem to have put a lot of thought into this.
One request is to mention who exactly inspired each of those points :) . If you dont want to put it here, you can send me a mail :P
@Arun Chaganty aka Slinky: I concur with your opinion on hand-written reports, esp. the ones that have absolutely no creative component. I still don't understand how the Workshop folks made us gain anything or gained anything themselves by making each of us write down 22 pages of Fitting notes by copying from already existing printed material!
Yes, I agree with your points that profs should put in as much effort, if not more, while setting question papers as they do while preparing for classes and that they should make themselves as approachable as possible.
And I couldn't agree more with Do not be absolutely disdainful of students. Someone once went to the extent of telling me I don't trust IIT students when all that I was asking for was permission to use a lab. :-/
@JoJo: Under normal circumstances, only a very few students come that late to class (unless the whole class was held up by the previous slot's prof). In a class of 50, you would find atleast 30-35 who would be seated by the scheduled start-time, and another 5-10 who would walk in within the next 2-3 minutes. Even otherwise, rules as well as ethics require the profs to be on time to class.
@Ninad: Agree with your add-on. You've echoed a point that had earlier been brought up by Niranjan, Samaadhi (Boneywasawarriorwayayix) and Arun Chaganty (Slinky). Thanks. :-)
@Anoosh: Having attended almost exactly the same set of classes as me for 3 consecutive years, I am sure it wouldn't be difficult for you to guess that yourself. In case you can't, feel free to ping me sometime. ;-)
Reading each point this article i had atleast 10 flashbacks from classrooms to support them :) Prabhu is scoring 10/10 according to this criteria :P waiting for your article on "how to be a good teacher"
Some of these profs are like, its an elective (or its a grad course). You are the ones who must put effort. I can only sow u the direction. And in saying so, they actually out peace and ask us to learn some ransom shit all by ourselves and cover it up nicely saying its a proj, hand on etc.
There are still others who say Iam in this for 10 years. Go complain to anyone u want, i dont care.
And worst of all. These profs always say the quality of IITians has decreased,IITians has decreased,IITians has decreased. WTH, by saying that u r not increasing the quality anyways. so shut up
Nice one da!!! Hoping to see u practice what u preach :)
@Sri aka Vinode: How To Be A Good Teacher will take quite some time to come out, but you can find a lot of relevant points on the topic in this comments section alone. :-)
@Arun Srivatsan: It seems like you have come across quite some profs of the other extreme! ;-) Reg. quality of IITians, yes, they may be right, because when the IIT intake has increased so drastically, the quality has to come down similarly - but that's never an excuse for not following good teaching practices!
@Avinash: Thanks! :-) Hopefully, I'll be able to live up to what I have said here. :-)
2500 hours in the classroom!! omg, I did not realise. no thanks for making me face that fact :| :P
Rakesh,
Nice article. wOne more point I wish to add.
Make sure before taking the course you would talk of 5 new concepts which students would not have known.
By this enthusiasm of students will arose to come to class
@Pushakarini aka strawberrymargaritas: Even I hadn't expected the number to be so huge till I sat down and estimated it myself! ;-)
@Viswanath: Good point.:-) May be in the first class of the course, the prof could say something like, "By the end of the course, you'll know these 5 things/be able to answer these 5 questions", just to make the students excited about the course. For example, if it's a Wireless Communications course, one example could be like, "By the end of the course, you would know what exactly happens after you dial a number on your mobile phone and before the recipient gets a call from you".
An Imp Characteristic of an excellent teacher is to allow students to understand certain difficult topics in a different way than normal teacher lectures . U may had ur own different way but according to me a fellow classmate teaching me a topic makes me understand in a much better way than a teacher . So a student seminar is much better . And it should not be on a compulsory basis.
Don't help girls too much
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