My name is Meredith Wills. I am a graduate student in the Physics Department at MSU-Bozeman, and a Teaching Assistant for a 100-level Physics core course focusing on astronomy (Physics 101: "Mysteries of the Sky"). I recently read Paul Trout's article "What Students Want: A Meditation on Course Evaluations" in the most recent issue of The Montana Professor, and I was appalled at some of his conclusions. Professor Trout is perfectly right to criticize the state of education in America--the "dumbing down" of the American high school, the problems with grade inflation, etc.--but I found his expectations for "good teaching" fundamentally flawed.

As a hardworking and responsible student, I believe that learning must be a two-fold process. Students must seek to learn and understand a subject, through reading, homework assignments, lectures, and the like. In addition to this, a teacher should act as a guide and filter for the information the students ingest. The key to this process is that it is active. Students can easily learn facts from their books, but they may not necessarily glean understanding. Such a lack of understanding may not reflect the students' interest or intelligence; it may be a product of the nature of the subject matter, the writing style of the text, etc. It is the teacher's responsibility to help the students turn these facts into knowledge--an understanding of the subject matter beyond memorization.

Prof. Trout does not seem to share my opinion on this. In the first section of his paper, he condemns students who find lectures "boring" or "tiresome," implying that good students will learn despite the lack of stimulating lectures. He even states that these bored students are "benighted people who find little pleasure in cultivating their own minds." While I agree that it is not only the professor's, but also the students' duty to "take responsibility for the energy level in the classroom," I think that Prof. Trout is not only ignoring, but in fact justifying a very real problem with the typical college lecture system, and that is that students who are not interested in a subject are less likely to learn it. Oh, they may memorize all of the proper facts, but it is more than likely that they will need the professor's help to develop an understanding. However, Prof. Trout feels that "good teaching" only requires "conveying information." This can be interpreted as standing up in front of a classroom and spewing facts, which the students then dutifully copy into their note books. If this is the case, it is no wonder students find the lectures boring. Interaction with the professor should be more than that. The professor is a window into the subject of study. The image that he/she presents will reflect the students' reaction to the course. If the professor is visibly enthusiastic, the students' attitudes will probably reflect that. However, if the professor does not appear interested in his/her own field of expertise, it is unlikely the students will.

And yet, Prof. Trout finds fault with professors who are able to stimulate interest among their students. He flat out condemns professors who are entertaining, and feels that student evaluations which describe a professor as such must be intimately related to the fact that these professors don't "'bombard' students with information...but give them good standup." I have a serious problem with Prof Trout's implication that a professor cannot be both entertaining and informative. For starters, entertaining professors have one strong advantage when it comes to actual teaching--more students tend to show up to their lectures. Even if Prof. Trout's supposed correlation between entertainment and teaching quality were true, it is likely that these substandard teachers actually manage to "convey [more] information" to their students than excellent but "boring" teachers.

But the fact is, entertaining teachers don't have to be inadequate. In my own undergraduate experience, I found that the teachers who were more entertaining (this was very often equated with "more enthusiastic") were actually able to get their students to work more, participate more, and ultimately learn more. As an example, I can think of a professor I had in a Core course I took on Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire. As an astrophysics major, I had no experience with the period, and I expected a typical "boring" professor who generated facts and not much else. As it turned out, the professor was probably the best I had in college. Professor McCormick was passionate about Charlemagne. Never before had I seen a professor actually jump up and down with excitement during a lecture. He was energetic. He ran around the classroom. He used large gestures and told funny stories. He was, in short, entertaining. Did he skimp on facts? No. I spent every class period writing furiously. Did he go easy on reading or assignments? No. The reading load was heavy, although not excessive, and we were expected to do a 20-page term paper, something that would typically only be assigned in upper-level history courses. But, in spite of the work, every student in that course learned, and learned well. The lecture hall was always packed, and, even though Prof. McCormick ended every lecture early to field questions, he still ran over every day, and none of the students ever left before he was finished.

I don't think Prof. McCormick consciously tried to entertain us. I think he loved his work, and he wanted others to love it as much as he did. I don't think it unreasonable that undergraduates expect the same level of devotion from all their professors. After all, if a teacher is expected to impart knowledge, and a college professor is doing this in his or her field of specialty, it shouldn't be a difficult thing to do.

Prof. Trout may be, justifiably, appalled with the level of education and the attitudes of today's typical college student, but to condemn professors who are able to educate, and then label as inadequate students who have trouble responding to those who cannot, is unacceptable. Prof. Trout needs to re-examine the nature of teaching and the purpose of higher education.

Thank you for letting me express my opinion on this article.

Meredith Wills
Graduate Student, Physics
Montana State University-Bozeman

Response to Meredith Wills

Meredith Wills has not read my essay carefully and has thus badly distorted what I said. Ms. Wills contends that I fault professors who are able to stimulate interest among their students, that I "flat out condemn" professors who are entertaining, and that I imply "a professor cannot be both entertaining and informative." These accusations are absurd. Page 13 of my essay makes clear that I do not "flat out condemn" professors who are entertaining but that I criticize students who always need to be entertained: "Dressing in costume, performing carnival tricks, talking like a frenetic radio DJ is, for professors, a technique. But for the clueless graduates of Ridgemont High, shtick is a value." That is, professors must now resort to these devices in order to teach more effectively. I go on to make the point quite explicitly: "Jokes and humor...are an effective way of dispelling the sleeping sickness threatening to overcome students at any moment" (italics in the original). I make this point a third time on the same page: "professors, especially in the sciences, are required to ladle on the humor and entertainment. And teachers who manage to be funny, passionate, histrionic, and enthusiastic are deeply and sincerely appreciated by today's inattentive, hard-to-motivate, scarcely interested, and easily bored undergraduates."

At the end of this section, however, I do raise the possibility that "good" teaching--the way some students assess it--may now have less to do with conveying information or improving skills than with motivating students to want to learn. By this I mean to say that the needs and shortcomings of today's students may be forcing a radical re-definition of what constitutes "excellent" teaching. The emphasis is shifting towards assessing faculty on their ability to motivate and engage students who have little passion for academic pursuits. It is up to each professional educator, of course, to determine when the need to entertain students in order to teach them something interferes with or diminishes academic rigor and actual instruction. Most of us have learned how to "sugarcoat" material that today's students find increasingly distasteful, perhaps because merely "factual." Eventually, a professor's ability to keep students in class and awake--by whatever means necessary--may be seen as the sufficient indicator of quality instruction. At the endgame of college teaching most professors may have to jump up and down and race around the classroom using large gestures and telling funny stories for damn near the whole period. To Bill and Ted, that will be just "excellent."

After re-re-examining the nature of teaching and the purpose of higher education, I continue to urge my colleagues to resist the best they can the growing pressure to be edutainers, that is, to sacrifice standards and content to appease inattentive and unmotivated students.

Paul Trout
English, Montana State University-Bozeman