On Fri, Aug 10, 2001 at 01:09:38PM +1200, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> "Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus" <schwa at cc.gatech.edu> replied my points:
> 	> An important problem is that tertiary-level lecturers are not trained
> 	
> 	I'm not sure what you mean by tertiary-level lecturers.  The two
> 	lecturers I have in mind taught mid- and upper-level CS classes, and
> 	were both tenured professors.
> 	
> "Tertiary" means "after primary and secondary".  That is, Community Colleges,
> Polytechnics, Universities, TAFEs, any kind of institutional formal
> education you get after school, really.
> 

I was aware of the dictionary meaning of the term, but I assumed that you meant
"lecturers who are not professors" instead of the meaning above.

> 	Of course, that's not to say that they had any training about how to
> 	educate.  Most CS professors probably don't.
> 	
> No.  Most lecturers (in this country, "professor" is a very advanced
> job description indeed, professors don't actually get to talk to God,
> but they do get to talk with His representative on earth, the
> Vice-Chancellor) in *all* subjects don't.  CS, EE, physics, chemistry,
> you name it.  Oh, many tertiary institutes have an education department or
> something that runs several 2-hour sessions on this topic and that, and
> some of them are very helpful (like dealing with students from another
> culture, or how to use some courseware system, or whatever), but it's
> like giving a starving man a jelly-baby.  One exception is music: a
> colleague here who has been a professional musician keeps on about how
> musicians have a much better idea how to go about teaching, and he informs
> me that it is possible to actually obtain a PhD in music teaching (AND be
> a really good music teacher afterwards).
> 
> 	I appreciate your point that aggression will be met with
> 	defensiveness, and will be counter-productive in cases where the
> 	lecturer wants to improve.  However, in those cases where the lecturer
> 	does not care, I reserve the right to take pleasure in my petulance,
> 	since I've been denied the opportunity to take pleasure in what I
> 	learn from the professor.
> 	
> Fair enough.  To be honest, I've come across one tenured lecturer who
> I would not have enjoyed studying under, but thankfully, that was not in
> this country.  This University, and many others, have a system of class
> representatives, and regular consultative meetings between the head of
> department (and selected others) and class representatives.  If one
> student is unhappy, chances are others are too.  Inform the class
> representative, and they can pass it on, and then the department will find
> out that there is a problem.  Even if a lecturer is tenured, the head of
> department can still talk to them about unsatisfactory behaviour, and
> while the job can't be taken away there _are_ boring jobs they can be
> "promoted" to, and they can certainly be put onto other papers where they
> will do less harm.

If it works as you describe, that sounds better than our system.
Students had been begging for years to have one of the professors
relieved of teaching duties.  I have not met one student from my
school who thought that he did a satisfactory job of teaching the
course.  Apparently, he's much better with the grad students, but now
that I'm one of them, I'm not there anymore.

Enough chit-chat; time for some serious Squeaking :-)
Joshua