So, what really makes a good GEES lecturer?

Introduction

The issue of teaching excellence has recently received greater emphasis than, perhaps, it did in preceding years. However, there is still a debate on what ‘excellence’ really means. Lubin and Prosser (1994) define teaching excellence as something which ‘does not imply that good teaching always results in high quality student learning but that it is designed to do so and that it is practised in a way likely to lead to high quality’, whilst the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme defines a large number of characteristics that might be exhibited by an excellent teacher (Gibbs and Habeshaw, 2003). These include an ongoing engagement with the scholarship of learning and teaching, an understanding of how students learn, a promotion of interactivity, and all round enhancement of student learning.

In a bid to recognize the student voice in these definitions, the Higher Education Academy, through their network of Subject Centres, ran a student essay competition, asking students to detail what made a good lecturer and what the best learning experience entailed.

Ramsden (2003), reporting on the Australian experience, suggested that students identified helpful, timely, and extensive feedback, sympathetic staff, good quality explanation, and creating interest and motivation as characteristics of good teaching.However, he also points out that fun and ‘diverting exhibition’ do not guarantee quality learning. These results are echoed by other studies (e.g. Forrester-Jones, 2003; Marentic Pozarnik and Steh, 2004; Nonis & Hudson, 2004), with students also identifying personality traits as important (Brown, 2004).

Devising an analytical framework

There were 19 responses to the request from the GEES Subject Centre for an essay detailing aspects of a good lecturer, with students of both pre and post 1992 universities taking part. There were six essays from Level 1 students, four from Level 2, eight from Level 3, and one Masters student. Thirteen responses came from female students, which might be significant since Santhanam and Hicks (1999) report gender-related differences in responses to teacher evaluation questionnaires. Responses were submitted from across the range of GEES disciplines, with five geology students, eight geographers, three environmental scientists, and three combined majors contributing.

These essays were made anonymous, and then mixed at random and coded. Student responses over the 19 essays varied widely. There were 205codings, each identifying some aspect of teaching, or the teacher, that the students perceived as ‘good’.

Biggs (1999) describes three levels of conception that teachers have about how teaching works, i.e. teaching that focuses on what the teacher is, what the teacher does, or what the student does. For this study, the model was adapted to investigate the conceptions students have of teaching, such that:.

Type I: Focus on what a good lecturer is

These responses were identified as focusing on ‘character traits’ of a good lecturer. Students were all basically equal, and the efficacy of the teacher was based upon the person they were, rather than the things they did. However, the essence of these responses was that students consider teachers as individuals who need to inform them in a manner that makes them sit up and take note.

Type II: Focus on what a good lecturer does

These responses were identified as focusing on characteristics of what went on in or outside of teaching sessions. Again, students were a passive, yet varied, component of the learning experience. However, there was an acknowledgement that, even if teachers did not always feel comfortable with the situation, they realised that classroom tactics facilitated a better learning experience. The onus on delivering this experience was on the lecturer, and the process was very much from the front of the room out to the students. In other words, the responsibility of the teacher was to inform the students, but to do so in a way that captured the attention of more of the class, or to support this process by means of modifying their teaching tactics.

Type III: Focus on what a good lecturer gets students to do

These responses were about the active role that students took within their own learning. These comments recognised that involvement on a level beyond listening and note taking enhanced their learning.

Analysis of student responses

Type I: What a good lecturer is.

In Type I responses students describe the characteristics of a lecturer in terms of the person they are. Of the three types of responses, Type I responses are the second most commonly identified, with 81 responses attributed to this type. However, amongst these are some of the most commonly held beliefs given by students. The three most important characteristics of a good lecturer were defined as:

• Accessible

• Enthusiastic

• Passionate

Allied to these responses are ideas of approachability, humour and fun.

There is a clear sense in these responses that students want to be interested, that teaching staff can be a barrier to this in terms of their individual character, and an acknowledgement that this can often lead to a lack of engagement with the course material. There is also a suggestion that students want to feel that they can engage with staff on a more personal basis, with staff being sensitive of the issues that concern them, or as one student put it ‘Being a human….’.

This suggests, therefore, that students see good teaching as being mainly personality-driven. That if the person is right, the teaching is right, and, by extension, the learning experience is good. It is also clear that this is by no means a minority view.

Overall, these kinds of responses seem to match well with those documented in the previous studies outlined very briefly above.

Type II:What a good lecturer does

The greatest numbers of responses (III) were of this type. However, the variety of response was greater, and the responses were not concentrated on one or two main issues. These responses were typified by descriptions of what happens ‘out front’ in lectures, focusing very much on the mechanics of delivery, and the tactics of teaching.

However, three of the more important characteristics of what a good lecturer does in or out of class were:

• relates theory to real life experiences using, for example, anecdote;

• has good delivery, diction, and pacing, with appropriate handouts, visuals, and web support; and

• has an open door policy in order to deal with students individually

The first characteristic was usually related to identifying real world relevance. Students reported better engagement with the material the less esoteric it became. At the same time, the use of anecdote, allegory, and story telling not only built real world narratives around tricky theoretical concepts, but it, yet again,humanised the lecturer.

The second characteristic was usually employed in conjunction with descriptions of how to make the information easier to follow, and enable them to revise in their own time.

The third characteristic appears to be a plea from students to give them more time, especially on an individual basis, and to understand their realities. Techniques in dealing with students, policies on tutoring and pastoral care, or even taking an interest in them as human beings seem to be an important facet of what a lecturer does.

This characteristic, of course, is set against a number of overlapping issues. Firstly, some staff are happier with this approach than others, and often certain members of staff may be singled out by students or managers to perform pastoral duties. Secondly, this extra-curricular care has to be set against a number of competing agendas, all of which vie for the academic’s time, e.g. research, institutional responsibilities, assessment, and administration.

Type III:What a good lecturer gets us to do

By far the smallest number of responses aligned to this type (13 from the set of 205). There was also one predominant coding that could be placed under this heading, namely fieldwork. Of course, this might well reflect the fact that students were asked to comment on ‘What makes a good lecturer?’ rather than ‘How does your lecturer promote your learning?’

These responses detail student views that acknowledge that better learning is stimulated not by the efforts and personality of an orator, but by someone actively engaged with getting students to think and speak for themselves, building frameworks by which they can do so, and then caring about the answers.

The essence of this ongoing conversation with the student body is carried through in all these responses. Some students argued that small, regular assessments with prompt feedback as near to the time of ‘delivery’ as possible were important. However, students who made Type III responses made comments that suggest that their learning is enriched by beginning to understand learning as a process they are intimately involved with, rather than consumers of lecture material. For instance, formalised reflection was suggested to be a powerful aid to learning by a couple of students.

Similarly, the benefits of fieldwork are greater than bringing the outside inside or making concrete abstract concepts taught in class. What students claim to find in fieldwork is a clear route to the lecturer outside of the strictures of the class or the office. In other words, fieldwork promotes debate and dialogue that more traditional lectures do not. The key issue with work in the field appears to be that the environment is relaxed, informal, and less time-pressured.

Students also report that a good lecturer involves them in the learning process by other means, such as preparation and participation. Again, these students are acknowledging that to learn well, they are not passive viewers of some kind of academic sideshow, but involved integrally with what is going on in class.

Implications of this analysis

Type I Responses

The implications of having students who have a Type I conception of good teaching is that, as a member of teaching staff, this expectation might seem quite burdensome. It is probably easy to be enthusiastic about one’s ‘vanity course’. This might well be based upon areas of research interest, past experience, or even because we enjoy the experience of teaching on that module. However, this prompts the question:What about all those modules we do not have those feelings for? In many, if not all, departments, colleagues have to take on teaching responsibilities which do not fit the characteristics of these perceived ‘vanity courses’.

From a staff development point of view, these types of responses must seem rather discouraging. One essayist went so far as to suggest that a good lecturer is not something which can be produced, but just is. Is, then, the training of teachers in HE likely to produce the desired outcomes?

It is difficult to train or develop enthusiasm, or humour. Lecturers, like students, are human beings blessed with multifarious characteristics, some of which might engage these students, some of which may not. These characteristics are a result of their own personal and academic development, and difficult, if not impossible, to remould. In fact, there would rightly be widespread revulsion at the thought of doing so!

Responses of this type, therefore, suggest that students see themselves as empty vessels, emotionally neutral, ready to be engaged by a ‘performance’ that will in turn stimulate learning. In other words, learning is somehow stimulated by ‘edutainment’! This runs rather counter to the research that has been undertaken on how people learn, the approaches they adopt, and the results that flow from such learning (see summaries in Biggs, 1999 or Ramsden, 2003). Whilst a fun-packed, proselytising lecture may well engage individuals, it is clear that these approaches focus on teaching and delivery rather than learning.

The fact that many students chose to identify Type I responses as important may indicate that their own conceptions of learning are similarly superficial. If sitting up and taking notice promotes memorisation, even memorisation of explanations or staff evaluations of material, then that serves one purpose. However, the question remains; how does such an approach encourage students to make up their own minds, to check their understanding, and to reach their own conclusions.

Type II Responses

There are a number of implications for staff who have a student body that recognises a good lecturer as one who adapts and manages a learning environment for all, and then delivers a multitude of responses to reflect a diverse student body (e.g. Type II). For many colleagues the key issues are, critically, time and personal energy.

From a staff development perspective, it is much easier to deal with these responses than those of Type I, as they reflect both tactics and strategies. These, of course, can be trained and developed, and many PGCert courses for Learning and Teaching in HE focus strongly on a set of ‘survival skills’ that new lecturers might need. Moreover, they can be developed by the individual in response to their own learning experience, trying things that worked for them, or delivering differently things that did not.

These characteristics, then, do not necessarily rest in the individual, but in the expectations and opportunities afforded to the individual by the institution. Policies that can help staff develop web support, provide initial lecturer training in teaching and assessment, and give colleagues the opportunity to investigate and engage with wider good practice will all help. Even so, the time and energy needed to develop such a comprehensive experience for the student must be balanced against competing issues both personally and professionally. It is also clear that these responses still place the onus upon the member of staff. Again, students appear to recognise the experience as being something that they passively engage with, and that the process is made smoother and more interesting with a splash of colour. If this fails, the expectation that they can rely on staff to mop up individual issues outside of class is apparent. One might ask, however, could this actually be done in the sessions by changing our practice to something other than didactic delivery?

Approaches centred upon delivery and information-provision might give students something to cling onto, but how is all this information any different from that contained within libraries or on the Internet? Students report that the information given by teachers is seen as ‘more important’ because staff have gone through the procedure of selecting it themselves (Udall and Wright, 2005). If this is an implicit message we seem to be sending to our students, is it any wonder that many do not engage in study outside of the classroom, and that so many feel that the effective transmission of this information is crucial to their studies?

Perhaps the most important issue all of this raises is one of how individual teachers fit this preparation into their working week. Since the burden still seems to be on teaching staff to produce and provide, is it any wonder that some of us seem shattered or confused about which task takes priority next?

Type III Responses

If it is assumed that Type III responses reflect the experiences of good teaching that these students have, it is, perhaps, rather worrying that these types of response are in a significant minority. Pedagogic research shows that giving students the opportunity to engage in debate, to make sense of their learning and share this with a wider audience, as well as the opportunity to check their understanding in an environment that is forgiving and does not relate to summative assessment, promotes better learning, i.e. a ‘deep’ approach (e.g. Trigwell and Prosser, 1999).

If this is so, and if students reflect the lack of opportunity to do all of these positive things to benefit their learning, this has serious implications for improving the quality of the learning experience in many GEES departments. Moreover, it suggests that even with moves towards the enhancement of quality teaching, many of the messages from research into learning are either not getting through to teachers, or not being translated through into classroom practice.

The key issue here is that students recognise, in quite articulate and powerful ways, the fact that what they do is key to their learning, but that teaching staff facilitate this process. Type I and Type II responses focus on attitudes that say that students are ready to be taught, Type III responses focus on students wanting to learn. By understanding the key drivers towards better learning, and developing our teaching accordingly, we can begin to deliver ‘excellence’ of the form posited by the authors cited in the opening paragraphs of this article.

Surely the message from this analysis is that there is a need to see the problem of enhancing student learning in a different light. Type I and II responses are about doing things better, and sometimes doing more things and being better at them. There is a suggestion that we should be ‘better’ lecturers by changing our attitudes and personality, or give students even more handouts and better web support, or be available to talk over issues whenever possible.

However, Type III responses are often about doing things rather differently; introducing continuous feedback and reflection, promoting debate and discourse, sharing ideas and being interested in student views. The suggestion is that by involving students more in teaching sessions, you might get improved learning. The key question for staff then becomes ‘How do we inculcate an attitude of preparation, participation and engagement in our students?’ Whilst not the theme of this paper, it is clear that this approach requires colleagues to focus on how students learn rather than how they themselves teach.

Finally, one theme seems to be clear throughout all these responses, whatever type they are of. In nearly all of the essays submitted, there is a clear sense that students want lecturers to be ‘human’. This might mean ‘fun and entertaining’ for Type Iresponses,’open to talk after class’ for Type IIs or ‘interested in our views’ for Type III views. Whilst not explicitly stated, one might wonder if this over-riding feeling is predicated upon an experience that runs counter to this wish. Whilst outside of the remit of these essays, and beyond the analysis presented here, it would be interesting to ask ourselves why these barriers might be apparent; is it just in the character of those that teach, is it something in the experiences students have had before or during their tertiary education, or is it the power relationships, real or perceived, that exist between the two groups of people? If this is so, it is, perhaps, sad indeed that our students see some of us as something rather different from what they want; someone they can connect to, learn with, and be inspired by.