It’s very odd when you think about how hard we worked in high school, how much we strived for those scholarships and how much money was spent for us to be here, just for most of us to constantly check our phones or watches in class and countdown until we can leave. We sit there, bored half-to-death, thinking to ourselves, “I could be doing so much more right now.”
We, as students, have homework, studying, jobs and other burdens that need doing. Therefore, when we dedicate over an hour of our time to sit in an instructor’s class and hear what they have to say, we feel entitled to receiving the day’s lesson at an efficient pace with little time wasted.
Thus, the reality of teachers intentionally going off-topic for a quick (or, sometimes not so quick) aside becomes a complex discussion. There is a balance needed for straying away from the lecture, and even then it should have some relation to the topics being discussed.
There are definitely more problems than just that in the classroom when it comes to time management: slow speaking styles, spending too much time on a single concept or professors not properly planning out their course schedule for the semester, so they are having to rush everything in the last two weeks. Robert Weissberg from the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal published an article discussing how many professors stop putting in much effort because of tenure. Whatever the reason is, all of these can often be traced back to the professor’s ability to stay on-topic, which means it is often the root of a poor instructor’s teaching flaws.
While some might argue that I am making this seem like a much more common phenomenon than it actually is, the truth is that I’ve already had professors in my four semesters here at NC State with this problem. Oftentimes, my disappointment becomes even worse when I realize that the material for the class is actually interesting and engaging, but it is not being taught properly in the class. It makes me wonder in those instances why that class could not just be taken online where I can learn the material on my own and not worry about being bored to tears in a classroom for over an hour.
This is definitely not me trying to suggest that I would rather take courses online. I would much prefer a classroom setting where I can communicate with my instructors and fellow students with relative ease. And, according to a study conducted by Millennial Branding and Internships.com, I am not the only one. The companies’ found that 78 percent of more than 1,000 students interviewed preferred classroom lectures to online ones. However, if a student constantly runs into poor instructor after poor instructor, it makes sense why they might seek out alternative forms of courses.
An instructor should be able to recognize when they are going too far off course and that they need to return to the course topic. While personal stories and semi-related articles found online can be very interesting, it should not make up a majority of class time. They need to remember that thousands upon thousands of dollars are being paid just for us to be here, and going on and on about old material can quickly make us feel like we are wasting money. A responsible professor should be able to realize that an unrelated conversation has gone on for far too long, and that it is time to return to the topic at hand.
On the other hand, there definitely needs to be some interesting side discussion during class time. The idea of talking for over an hour straight solely about class material with no variance sounds unbearable. A healthy learning environment requires a little bit of deviance so that students don’t fall asleep during long, droning, boring lectures.
Class discussion is one of the best, if not the best, ways to take a break from the lecture. Allowing students to input their thoughts and opinions on new material, and challenging them to think during class, will absolutely help retain their attention in the future. Between the classes I’ve had that were nothing but monotonous lectures and assignments and the classes that allowed for creative thinking and student input, I could tell that both my fellow classmates and myself responded much more to the latter, and got much more out of the class.
In fact, an article published in Inquiry by Dick Wirz emphasizes that one of the worst qualities in poor instructors is “failing to motivate interest in science by establishing its relevance to the students’ lives and interests.” This shows that when professors spend too much time working on little jokes and asides, they take time away from actually making a student care.
I’ve had both kinds of instructors before: the kind that never strays and the kind that does nothing but. However, I prefer the third kind: the kind that has found that necessary balance between business and fun.
