Those who can...
I studied engineering at uni, and many of the lecturers were people who had moved into academia after a career actually doing what they were now teaching. Sounds like a good idea? Unfortunately not always. Some of them may have been world-class experts in their field, but being able to do something, and being able to successfully convey it to others, are two entirely different skills.

The worst of them all taught statistics. Now I'd studied statistics at A level, so went along to the first lecture comfortable in the knowledge that this module would be a breeze.

I staggered out an hour later, with my head full of confusion. When I went in I could have written an essay on the different kinds of average; after his "explanation" I was no longer sure I even understood what a plain old mean actually was. Far from imparting knowledge into the students, the oaf at the blackboard actually had the ability to suck knowledge out of their heads; he had invented anti-teaching.

I did not attend another of his lectures. I achieved one of the highest scores in the exam - not difficult, because no-one else had learnt anything.

I bet he had tenure, too...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 7 Sep 2012, 12:04, 5 replies)

Rather common in universities, I'm afraid
The emphasis these days is on having a good research portfolio that the uni can brag about. Great if you're also able to impart your knowledge to undergrads. Not so good if you're only interested in your research and couldn't give a bugger about the poor sods paying for the rest of their lives.

And if you're someone who teaches, enjoys teaching, worries about their students and so on, the likelihood is you simply won't have the time to devote to your research. Bang goes tenure or promotion.

There ought to be a happy medium...but even that Acorah bloke looks miserable.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Fri 7 Sep 2012, 13:14, closed)

Yes and no.
We've just gone through a couple of years living in terror of the NSS; research has taken a real battering as a result, and we're going to get thumped in the REF because the decent researchers have left or would leave if they could, and the teaching load has increased.

Is it a bad thing that we've been emphasising teaching over research? Well, maybe not bad, but not wholly good, either. After all, the whole point of a University is that it's a place for scholarship - that is, in practice, research. Without that, we'd be glorified sixth-form colleges - as some universities pretty much are anyway. And that doesn't have to be at the expense of UG, either: the sector as a whole seems to have fallen for thinking of UGs as people to be taught, rather than as people who're there to learn. UGs are not different from us; they're junior scholars. If you think of them like that, then the teaching/ research distinction can be, to some extent, blurred. The two don't have to be antagonistic.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 7 Sep 2012, 14:25, closed)

The other side of that coin
is that researchers have to think of undergraduates as junior scholars as well, and see involving them as a central part of research role. Unfortunately that just doesn't happen in far too many cases - researchers see teaching, like public engagement, as far below their dignity.
(ubergeekian, Fri 7 Sep 2012, 15:23, closed)

Well, yes -
but it doesn't follow from that that UGs have a central part in the research mission of the University. I mean: there's a range of things that they have to learn. But my point is that you don't have to see that as spoonfeeding: it's perfectly possible for them to be given reading lists, and assignments, be told to go and work stuff out for themselves.

That's how a substantial part of my UG career worked - and this was only in the mid-'90s, at a provincial postwar university: so it's not even as if I'm from the Oxbridge elite. In essence, I was told during freshers' week, "Hello: you're giving a paper to the seminar group next week. This is what it's on. 15 minutes or so should do it. Here's some suggested reading. Give it to me the day before, so I can get the discussion afterwards moving. No idea what the topic's about? If you knew this stuff already, there'd be no point in teaching it. And you've got a whole week. Now: off you trot..."

Probably about half my UG courses were modelled in that way.

And it was terrifying. But, in retrospect, it was a great way to run a course. We weren't taught except by doing it: by playing the role of scholars-in-the-making. Some of the other courses I did were, admittedly, more conventional, with lectures and more structured seminars. But they were never as good.

I've tried to introduce UG courses of my own on something approaching that model, and pretty much been laughed at, on the grounds that the students wouldn't accept it: they want more contact hours than that'd generate. Because, as I said, we live in terror of the NSS and the expectations of undergraduates about what they think university is all about.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 7 Sep 2012, 16:16, closed)

sounds like a whole load of "look how fucking brilliant i am"

( The Doveston haunted by the memory of his own amnesia, Fri 7 Sep 2012, 15:54, closed)