By Benjamin Passty, PhD

I never look forward to giving exams. I suspect most professors share this view. We enjoy the activity of teaching, the performance, the chance to explain our insights to our charges every day in the classroom; nevertheless, something about judging these same students seems a little unfair.

In a lecture setting, I feel as though I have complete control: The outline for the day, what goes on the board, even funny anecdotes are all things I can select, and over time–with experience–my ability to select the proper ones has almost become razor sharp. When it comes time to give an exam, I feel more like I create a monster that I then have to send out into the wild, with the students’ own inquiries representing my only opportunity to clarify and help them.

The biggest problems occur at the end of exams. Some students continue working after time is called. Others take advantage of the TA’s being distracted by those students turning in their work in order to cheat as well. The last five minutes are inevitably a zoo. For a long time, I was convinced there must be a way to regain calm and control.

As far as dealing with those last few minutes of an exam, I think I’ve found a method that works quite well: I give students extra credit for submitting their exams early.

by Michael J. Sharp

I spot a back-row vantage point in my classroom from which I can critique today’s round of student speeches. I wade passed the already glazed-over eyes, ready my trusty stopwatch, pile my speech-critique sheets on the desk, and place my two blue Precise V7 Pilot Rolling Ball pens atop the pile. It’s the sixth week of the quarter and the last day of the second round of these speeches. I teach two sections of this course, which means a total of approximately 50 students: And folks, that’s a lot of speeches to sit through. I breathe deliberately, not so much out of anxiety or exhaustion but because I know what to expect spanning the next eighty minutes—not to mention the same thing all over again in the second section meeting later today. It’s going to be a long, long Thursday, and I know it.

For some insight about college teaching v. indoctrination, please read Mark Bauerlin’s post, “Gerald Graff, The MLA, and Radical Teachers,” found in the June 18, 2009 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

by Tom Haines, MM

Our students come to our universities hoping to find something they can find nowhere else. They come to us with highly integrated life experiences that have already colored their worlds for better and for worse. Now, with neo-millennial students staring back at us with their expansive world views and expectations—our currently compressed classroom schedules put the highest priority on our in-class face time together. Each time we set foot in our classrooms, our students assess our relevance via their worldview (again for better or for worse.) These days, knowledge for knowledge sake seems out of date. Students know that with little or no effort they can obtain facts and figures online. If they get the notion that attending class has little effect on extending their knowledge base and has only a slight effect on their grades—then what’s the point? To satisfy their curiosity about their world, they’re just as likely to stay home and online. So what is it that they truly seek?

Students seek authentic, shared experiences. They inherently know when they have it even if they cannot tell us exactly what it is.

Reading and commenting to ProfPost should feel as if you’re mixing at a colorful party attended by intriguing and annoying guests—we hope you’ll listen, laugh, get irritated, speak up, and head home talking about it.

ProfPost is designed specifically for professors and is managed through the University of Cincinnati’s Center for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning— ProfPost provides a forum for stimulating debates that we hope will continue to nag our readers and our contributors and disturb our set notions about teaching and learning. You should expect posts on this site to relate broadly to teaching and learning (even if we sometimes have to paint that definition with a wide brush).

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Naming ProfPost proved an unexpectedly difficult exercise in probing our focus—Eruditio, the Latin word for “learning,” was high on our list, but its connotation seems too stuffy and, well, erudite. We still like ProfTalk, and we vacillated between that and ProfPost until the very last minute…however, we finally decided that ProfTalk implies stream-of-consciousness ramblings we want to avoid here; instead, the content you’ll find on this site are definitely “posts”— rooted, purposeful, and thoughtful expressions that take a stance. Finally, we want ProfPost to carry the feel and the smell of the historical word “post” as a way to get the latest news.

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