Posted on: April 16th, 2009 by Famous Phil

I suppose a good place to introduce this topic is that I am a computer science student at the University at Buffalo going onto my 4th year of studies.  I have formed many opinions of professors which are both good and bad, and I have an idea of who the good professors are and who are bad, but I have rarely asked myself why the professors fall into good / bad on my list… that is until a lecture yesterday by a possible future UB professor.

This person was well dressed and came in to lecture about Graham’s scan algorithm for solving the Convex Hull problem.  Our normal professor went over this algorithm the prior class and this made perfect sense.  Unfortunately, the candidate didn’t make much sense.  Unfortunately, if I didn’t already know the algorithm, and his power point slides would be a start to understanding the algorithm, nothing more.  This candidate had an Asian accent, although I understood what he was saying, I was still clueless, so I don’t blame the accent.

So what do I blame, the excellent slide show, the professor, or the overall teaching style?  I believe that I can blame none of the above, and rather blame the teaching techniques.  I have had many professors here at UB, and the professors that I have always understood use a chalk board and / or overhead projector (for writing).  These professors often set goals for each lecture and end up following through on every goal.  They prepare practical examples and work through them step by step in class.   This is a research university, so theory is a necessary evil in class.  I am the type of person that can understand the theory behind the answer only AFTER I see a practical example specifying a specific case of the theory.  Professors who tend to be good for me always go through an example, then provide the theory and background into why the example worked.

The professors that I rarely (in some cases never) have understood use a PowerPoint slideshow, premade lecture notes, and/or read directly off from a sheet of paper.   I also should add that these professors seem to rely on their notes and just end up reading off the slide, which makes class seem pointless and useless.   I now understand why many students end up not going to class (something that I still do, although it is normally useless).   These professors often forget to include practical examples, and prefer to refer their students to homework assignments that are nearly impossible to complete without first learning a lot of background information on their own.  At first, I didn’t go and learn the background information that these types of professors seem to expect, and this is what I blame many of my first year bad grades on.

There is one professor that has used both of these above methods. This professor has a slight egyptian accent, and this proves to me that accent does not hurt understanding the material.   The professor for the first 5 weeks of class used a projector and a writing tablet to give a lecture with PowerPoint / pdf slides.  He would often write over these slides with his tablet.  Unfortunately, the tablet wasn’t very good at allowing him to write, and this is why his written notes on the tablet were nearly impossible to understand.  I would end up following exactly what he said as he wrote on the slides to get decent notes.   He would also end up reading directly off from the solved example slides (Most of the time, this was the case and he’d never write on these slides).  His slides mostly focused on theory, there may have been a few practical examples.  For this part of the tested class, I did very poorly.  Then he switched to a chalk board (at the suggestion of the class).    The following lectures had many more examples and were much easier to follow.  He always made his thoughts known on each part that he wrote and went from step A to step B … to the final step instead of skipping steps.  I ended up doing much better on the test that focused on this material.

Another similarity that I have noticed (although not as noticable) is that the good professors don’t use the microphone that is provided to them.   I have found that the microphone (even for big 400 person lecture halls) often cancels and turns into white noise, especially in the middle of the lecture hall.   The students who attend lecture halls to learn typically sit in the front row and the people who sit in the back often are there just to be present and end up surfing the internet when they could easily sit in the front of the lecture hall if they wanted to learn (there ARE ALWAYS open seats in the front).  I prefer professors who don’t use a microphone and just speak up a little bit (or keep the same level like many professors that speak up AND have the microphone on).  I do understand that there are a few professors who cannot raise their voice (these are very soft spoken), and for these professors, I have found that the mic does help somewhat but they have to speak very quietly with the mic on.

So, you might ask, what made me write a blog like this, I must be mad at someone who can’t teach (*laughs*).   Well, that isn’t the case at all.  A few weeks ago, I was asked to give a 10 minute lecture on what a Java Constructor is.  I knew a little bit about what I said above (I am a certified peer tutor through the CRLA), but I didn’t give it any thought.  I thought that I would do a practical demonstration directly in a Java environment and play with the code until I ran out of time.  I figured that I would have a lot of thoughts to say during the 10 minute lecture.  I also had sample code written because I was afraid that I couldn’t squeeze enough material into that 10 minutes.  I have to admit that I was very wrong at doing this approach!  I should have either taken a piece of chalk or an empty compiler and worked with that.  I now know for the future to do that if ever asked to again.  I also know that I’m very nervous when I get in front of a group of people who I believe are much smarter than I am, and therefore, I’m sure that nervousness also aided in making me not state what exactly was on my mind.

Although I doubt many of my professors and teachers will see this blog, I really hope that someone who educates reads this blog and picks up some tips that I have found can make or break a good lecture on a good topic!

Tags: comprehension, computer, cons, education, lecture, professor, pros, science, teaching, understanding, university
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