More to teachin' than lecturing...

Tenured faculty at PCC are evaluated only once every three years.   When I was first teaching, I was always fearful about evaluations, knowing that to at least some degree, tenure hinged on favorable feedback.  Now, I look forward to in-class evaluations because I get the chance to learn what my students think about the class, and how I might improve my teaching.  It's a lot easier to take constructive criticism when one's teaching position is secure, I'll say that.

This week, I've been looking over the evaluations that were done last fall (I finally had a chance to sit down with them).  They were mostly laudatory, happily enough.  Many of the criticisms revolved around reading load, and my insistence that grammar and spelling ought to count in history term papers.  One student didn't like the way I dressed, another didn't like the goatee I sport on-and-off, and two complained about the early office hours I have.   

Immodestly, I'll say I'm a very good lecturer.  But there's more to teaching than lecturing, and the only regular and serious criticisms I got this year were that  I spend too much time on lecturing and not enough time leading discussions.  (For the record, my women's studies class -- where discussion is far more frequent -- made no such complaints; these suggestions came from my Western Civ survey courses.)  I note that at Rate my Professors, a number of recent commenters (I do check periodically) praise my lecturing but imply that I ought to employ other methods as well.   

The frustrating thing about this is that years ago, I was accused of having "too much discussion."   When I first started teaching, I was far more worried about monopolizing the classroom.  I invited lots of discussion and questions.  A few students seemed to like it, but I got a great many criticisms about this in the evaluations. (E.G.:  "I paid to learn from my teacher, not from my classmates"; "He spends so much time letting us debate small points he never tells us about the important points we need to cover.")  I began to fall behind badly in some classes.  One year in Western Civ, when I was supposed to reach the Reformation, I barely made it to the barbarian invasions of Rome.  In modern European history, rather than reaching the present, I was lucky to reach the outbreak of World War One.  I was so eager for my students to reflect at length on what we were covering that the material that ought to have come at the end of the course was ignored.

Teaching survey courses is hard.  I'm required to cover everything from Mesopotamia through the Middle Ages in the first half, and the Reformation to the end of the Cold War in the second.   The more class time spent lecturing, the greater the chance that I will meet the parameters of the course stated in the syllabus.  The best solution would be to have four semesters of Western Civ, cutting the amount one has to cover each term by half.   That would help tremendously.

I'll reflect this summer on ways to encourage discussion that don't sacrifice the obligation to cover a vast amount of material in a very short time period.