A civil engineer and a mechanical engineer are studying for a structural class. The civil engineer says, “What’s torque?” The mechanical engineer says, ” Just a moment….” Then there was the time that my math professor advised me never to put DesCartes before De Horse. My biology professor once gave me the lowdown on how to tell the difference between guys and girls. He told me, “Take their genes down.” And remember, economists can always supply it on demand.
You’ve been in the situation before. The professor thinks he has this fantastic joke that will make the class roar. Then the joke is cracked, and, if there were crickets present, you would hear their chirping. In your head, you think, “Oh no. This did NOT just happen.”
Jay Nargundkar wrote in a column last week of eight simple rules for making classes at this university better. Among them was advice to professors to use humor effectively. This could not be overemphasized. Although I cannot speak for everyone at the university, each time a professor cracks another lame joke, I can’t help but think, “He is trying too hard.”
I will be the first to admit it. If lectures are monotonous and dull, I fall asleep. Staying awake in a boring class is not one of my greatest strengths. The most significant problem for students trying to stay awake is the nature of the material.
Granted, not every single class offered at this university piques everyone’s interest. So what can be done to keep the nature of the material from serving as a cure for insomnia? I think that an ability to keep students engaged is crucial. A lot of professors have a tendency to fall back upon methods of teaching that rely on PowerPoint. If the room is not equipped with that technology, many use overhead projectors. Add the darkened room, and a confusing graph on the screen, and we have a recipe for a deep sleep.
So what can we do? Really attempt to encourage different styles of teaching. If the class is small enough, I’ve had professors take the class outside onto the mall. Try to get the back-and-forth of a discussion going. Even in large lecture halls, this is something that can be done, except in math-based classes. Encouraging the discussion of recent developments in the field is also crucial. Show me that there is something more to the graph on the screen, and I am more inclined to pay attention.
I worked for Kaplan last summer. I taught SAT preparation classes. Let me tell you, there is nothing more interesting than SAT preparation. The toughest challenge for me was keeping students involved in the lecture because some of them knew the material, and some of them needed help. I understand the plight of the professor who has a silent classroom that does not volunteer the answer. The important thing is to discuss things that students will find interesting. Sometimes, I taught using the Socratic Method. I called on people randomly and asked them to read a passage aloud loud.
No matter which teaching method is used, some students are going to love it, and some are going to hate it. Ultimately, the goal is not to keep the students happy. The goal is to deliver the material in a format the students will understand and learn from. Pass out handouts that describe some of the most important concepts in your own words. This might help clarify the esoteric language of textbooks.
New and innovative methods of teaching will help keep students interested in the material if the problem really is the nature of the material. I just hope that each time the class participation level drops, we don’t have to hear another one of the jokes that makes me want to head for the hills.
I did hear a joke once. I found it rather funny. It went something along these lines: The parents were very disappointed in the grades their son brought home. “The only consolation I can find in these awful grades,” lamented the father, “is that I know he never cheated during his exams.”
Abhi Chandrasekhara is a sophomore economics and finance major. He can be reached at abhijnya@umd.edu.
