Professors’ Perspective: Starting the Class Well

With the high price of education, the experience of taking a course can be greatly improved with a well-organized classroom environment that is also fun to learn in. From the professor’s perspective, here are some ways to make that happen:

· A professor needs to understand that students coming into the class may view the person as a complete stranger. That initial class is a great chance to get to know the students and let them know the experience you bring to the subject matter. This can make all the difference in the student deciding to stay in your course, or either choosing another section or another course all together
· A professor has to be interested in getting to know their students just as much as the students need to know about him or her. Creating these bonds with students makes a huge difference in student success down the road. Richard E. Lyons from his website and books linked to www.developfaculty.com, recommends creating a student profile on each student so you can get to understand the experience they also bring to the subject matter, as well as the special talents they have
· Early in the course, a professor should have an informal class evaluation so they can get to know if their teaching style is effective for the classroom environment. One of the methods that is often used in teaching is the “stop, start and continue” exercise given in class anonymously. A professor will ask all of the students to write down what they would like him or her to stop doing, what they would like the professor to start doing and also what they would like the professor to continue doing. This is a great way to find out if a professor is on the right track
· If it is an English writing class, especially in first year, it may be a good idea to ask the students to do a non-graded writing sample as their first assignment. This way, a professor can identify any writing problems in a student before those same problems affect their marks on graded assignments
· There is a movement in education known as “the art of not lecturing” and many professors are aiming to do just what this adage says. Getting students involved in discussion and the professor becoming more of a facilitator of the classroom environment, rather than a “sage on the stage” by lecturing for hours suits the sometimes attention-deficient generation we live in where is so much tugging at our concentration. Getting students involved and/or having them do many in-class exercises can do a lot to make sure they do not sit there during a professor’s lectures chatting to their friends on Facebook if there are computers in the classroom

A professor’s task is a challenging one, however with a lot of planning, preparation and thought going into the process of executing the courses they have before them, everything can turn out to be a win-win situation for everyone involved.

A professor should not be seen as the enemy, rather as part of the learning team towards the success of their students.

Professors’ Perspective: Student Evaluations

Students get a chance to voice their opinions about their professors by evaluating them in class. For new professors, this can make the difference between continuing with their career, or their career cut short.

It is only fair that students have an opportunity to evaluate the performance of their professors, considering that for the whole semester, the professor has been evaluating them. Some of the things professors are evaluated on include:

· Did the professor start and end the class on time?
· Did the professor return assignments in a reasonable length of time?
· Did the professor seem knowledgeable about their subject matter?
· Was the classroom environment suitable for the needs of the course? (This is more an evaluation of the school’s resources than the professor, however sometimes the professor influence the decision of the classroom the course is held in)
· Did the professor provide enough information about assignments required for the class?
· Did the professor make himself or herself available for consultation outside of classroom hours?
· Did the professor encourage classroom discussion?
· Does the professor answer questions in a timely and knowledgeable way?

These are just a few of the questions that are asked of students in order to evaluate their professor or instructor. Some professors do not take the student evaluations seriously, however many professors use these evaluations to improve their teaching skills.

Other ways a professor can improve their teaching skills is to videotape their presence in front of the class. This may help them to hone in on some of their strengths and weaknesses while they are facilitating the classroom environment.

There are many ways to improve one’s teaching methods that are even available online. A site such as www.developfaculty.com has a “Tip of the Week” section for professors that will help them to get the best student evaluations they can. As well, there are many books associated with that site that can help new professors strengthen their skills, as well as old professors learn some new tricks.

Professors’ Perspective: Marking and Grading

Unless the course material is something like math, marking and grading can be an extremely subjective topic. Here are some tips from a professors’ perspective on how you can best improve your grades:

· If there is a particular style guide that your professor would like you to use, try to read and understand that style guide thoroughly. Your professor will probably be using it to judge your work, this will help you to follow the style he or she likes
· Ask your professor if they are willing to review your assignments before you hand them in. If they agree, this will help you to get the highest marks you can
· If your professor will not agree to review your work before submission, there are writing centres on most campuses that can help you to improve your writing and catch flaws or errors in your assignments
· Before you hand in assignments, make sure you read your work out loud to catch any errors you may have made – this will greatly improve the flow and the quality of your work – plus, make sure that you have not made any typos
· It is also a good idea to get someone else to read your work as well. There is that old saying that “two eyes are better than one.”

If at any time you are unsure of a mark you have received and would like to question your professor about it, feel free to do so – these are your rights as a student. Professors are not perfect and they make mistakes too. Marking and grading is a difficult thing to do and sometimes there is always that margin of error where a professor gets an assignment and does not really know what mark or grade to put on it.

One foolproof way to make sure you get the best grades you can is making sure your work is clear and simple. If you try to sound smart – you are probably shooting yourself in the foot and actually damaging the kind of mark you could get. If you keep your writing plain, simple, clear and something that anyone could understand – you will make sure you are communicating your ideas clearly. This is what makes the difference between an A+ and a B-.

Plus, if you are proud of the work you have done – your professor will be too.

Professor’s Perspective: Teaching in the summer

Some professors work through the fall and the winter just waiting for their time off in the summer. Other professors really enjoy teaching in the summer.

For those professors who teach in the summer, this could provide a tremendous opportunity.

If it is your first time teaching, the summer time may a good time to get used to your new work environment, get to know your colleagues and enjoy your time with your students in better weather. Teaching in the summer is an advantage for many new professors, as well as students, because worries about needing to cancel a class due to weather conditions are minimized.

The weather may even be so lovely that you can choose to change the classroom environment to outdoors in a quad, go on field trips and feel more encouraged to hang around the campus to get to know the school community better.

The summer is also a great time to get part-time or adjunct work with a college or university. You may have a more flexible work schedule and be able to devote a few hours to a course here or there.

Students can be at an advantage by taking summer school. Professors tend to be more relaxed and in a better state of mind than other times of the year. This may also translate into the kind of grades you would receive. As well, for students, it helps to get some of those extra credits or missed credits to either help you stay on course with your studies, or advance further so you would have more time for things like work and internships later on.

For professors who are fully established with the institution or institutions they work for…summer time is a great one to teach at your best. Usually with a lighter course load, there is more opportunity to either focus on the courses you have to teach, and/or to work on other projects that are important to you. These could be projects around the home, research, writing and projects related to work. You just may find that a project you start in the summer is something that you will carry with you throughout the year.

Private Versus Public Education

In many countries, the public education system can seem so under-funded that when it comes to primary and secondary schooling – there seems to be no other choice but to put your child through private school. Here are some things to consider about a public school you may want to put your child into.

If the school you are looking at does not have these things, you may want to consider sending your child to private school:

· Does the school have a strong second language-learning program, such as French that is highly regarded in Canada, or Spanish that is highly regarded in the United States?
· What are the test scores coming from the current students of the school?
· What is the physical education system like at the school?
· Does the school offer a travel club so your child may experience educational and supervised trips at a reduced cost?
· What is the quality of the reading materials at the school?
· What tend to be the percentage of students from the school that go onto post-secondary education?
· Does the school have a fine arts and music program?

There may be a number of other things that you would want from your school and make sure you have it. If not, perhaps private school may be the best thing for you.

Working From Home as a Professor

Professors that work in traditional settings sometimes need to work from home. Also there are professors that are teaching online education courses that also need to work from home. Here are some ways you can make sure you get your work done.

The key is keeping distractions to a minimum. You may want to start with making sure you are not in a room where a television set is so you become distracted with an engaging program that may be on air. If the space you live in is rather large, you can always keep the television on in another room for when you take breaks.

Try to make sure you have call display on your home office telephone. This will make sure that you can answer important calls, plus avoid unimportant calls that may be from people such as telemarketers for example. This will also help to keep your productivity high.

Make sure you keep a clean and organized space. This will help you to get the most work done. As well, to guard against any technical difficulties on the job, you may want to invest in an external hard drive so you can transfer documents from your desktop and/or laptop just in case your computer may crash. You can also e-mail important documents to yourself where you can have the opportunity to create virtual storage space of your files.

Keeping Your Office at Home and Work Organized

A professor needs to have an office that is organized to stay on top of all the work you need to do.

One way of making sure you keep your office at work organized is to make sure you do keep a lot of papers and assignments hanging around. Take the time to neatly organize these assignments and file them away. One way you can avoid dealing with paper at all is to maintain a paper-free assignment policy with your students. If you use e-mail to have students send you their assignments and mark it using tools in Microsoft Word, this will make sure that you do not have a lot of paper to deal with in your work.

Another way to make sure you are keeping your work environment organized is to make sure your keyboard is clean, as well as the telephone and anything else you may share with other professors. Even if you do not share these facilities, it is still a good idea to keep them clean.

At home, make sure you empty out your waste basket and give a good sweep to the floor of your home office. It is ideal to have home office space, or to at least designate an area as your work space. Make sure you keep all documents organized and file – it is extremely useful to have a filing system and cabinet in your home office, as well as something like this at work.