Every semester, in an attempt to learn my students’ names and a bit about them, I ask my students to fill out a student information form with a few questions. This semester I added the question: “What do you think makes a professor effective?”
The vast majority of the responses fell into one of the four categories below (listed in order, from most to least responses):
- Real world experience/real world examples
- Fairness in grading
- Clarity in teaching
- Approachability and accessibility
I am teaching over 100 total students (undergraduate and MBA) this semester, and nearly every student mentioned something that would fall into at least one of those four categories.
Perhaps these responses do not surprise readers, and they were not incredibly surprising to me. The ordering, however, was a bit surprising, and I am not sure I would have expected to see “approachability” in the responses as much as I did. In any event, the responses were helpful in confirming that my time “staying current,” meeting with local attorneys/business people, and consulting is well spent – at least in the eyes of my students.
Is there anything in the students’ responses that is surprising to readers? Is there anything missing from the list? (There were plenty of other answers but most of the repeated answers fell into one of the four categories.)