![]() The professor is more thoughtful, concise, and often they structure the information how we should structure it in our own notes. Chalkboard, whiteboard, or iPad, I don't care as long as you write the things we need to write. Not only does this slow down the lecture to a pace one can take notes at, it makes the professor present the information chronologically. I've had professors who encourage people to have the lecture slides open on their laptop, or who will mark up an example problem they clearly copy-pasted from a textbook (giving mere nanoseconds for us pencil and paper-cels to copy it ourselves), or who use structured notes that give an advantage to the iPad kids who can download them.Īlmost all of the best lecturers I've had did something in common - they WROTE everything I need to write. My next gripe is more personal, but I get truly feral when a professor's teaching style implicitly assumes you have an e-writer. Canvas didn't exist 20 years ago, and they somehow figured out how to teach back then. Point blank period, I actually think you're bad at your job. If you aren't able to communicate everything within the 50 to 80 minutes of classroom time the school has allocated you, you have to really rethink your lecturing style. When I need your PowerPoint (or any other material on Canvas) open to do my homework, it makes me want to throw a brick at your car. Sure, there should be communication both ways during a lecture, but when you're constantly saying "is everyone with me?" to a silent audience, something is wrong.Īnd don't give me some horse hockey about looking at the slides after the fact. You should be perceptive of your students' learning speed, and you should design your lectures with pacing in mind. Some professors will foresee this complaint and tell us, "Let me know if I'm going too fast!" Not only does this rarely happen in practice, but in principle, I'm mad at you for putting the onus on me to tell you how to teach. Infuriatingly, the only way I know whether or not this information is necessary to copy is whether the professor gives me enough time to copy it, something I only find out two to 10 minutes later. ![]() When I see a slide packed with content, I can't tell if that complex derivation (hopefully written in LaTeX, although I have suffered through slideshows that have math in standard text boxes) is something I need to copy line-by-line, or if it's just a concept I should be aware of I have no idea with what level of detail I need to reproduce that diagram I have no idea if that definition is something I should copy word-for-word. When my notes are bad, I am not inclined to believe it's my fault. Not to be conceited, but my notes are banging because I've spent the better part of three years learning how to take them. Some of the common slideshow practices that I see, though, make it extremely hard to follow. Note taking is really difficult because you have to listen, write, and synthesize information all while keeping pace and making a well-organized resource for your future self. When I am presented with a poorly-designed, excessively dense slide that a professor writes on (usually in some aesthetically degenerate bright-red OneNote pen), I have no way of knowing what is important to copy. ![]() The core of this issue is an unclear hierarchy of information during lecture, and more often than not this is because of the misuse of PowerPoints. Anecdotally, I'm not alone in this observation - I know many a pupil within and without my major who seem equally confused during lectures, often for reasons that seem extremely fixable. However, I've also had a lot of teachers who, despite their intelligence and kindness, are simply not skilled at explaining new concepts. ![]() To be clear, I'm different.Īt this school, I've had the privilege to take classes with wonderful teachers, skilled lecturers, and generous TAs. Much like someone who says all their exes (or former friends, or former roommates) are psycho, somebody with this kind of universal vitriol for their teachers makes a listener wonder if perhaps they are, in fact, the cause of their own problems. This strawman is a student who seems to always have teachers that are terrible, stupid, and/or mean. I'd like to quickly construct a strawman to make it clear I'm nothing like this hypothetical person. It's downright puzzling to me that adults with Ph.D.s and with years of industry experience still sometimes fail the basic practice of explanation. Later that week, I attended my weekly professional development seminar where we learned about the assertion-evidence format for slideshows, a concept so intuitive the lesson was borderline infantilizing (assertion-evidence literally means you just put a sentence above an image). This week, a professor who will go unnamed made me extremely frustrated with their ineffective use of Microsoft PowerPoint.
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