From A Valentine for CU Professors, in the University of Colorado student newspaper:
… On the second day of biology, my teacher put up a PowerPoint slide that said: “Phylogeny=a hypothesis about the relationships among different groups of organisms.” The next slide was a multiple-choice clicker question: “What is the definition of phylogeny?”
He let us discuss the question with our neighbors, and after we finished voting, he brought up a bar graph that showed the number of people who had voted for each choice. While roughly 150 people had voted correctly, the other 80 people somehow got it wrong.
“Great! You guys always do better than my 12:00 class.” He was proud of himself. “Good job, guys.” Then, instead of explaining phylogenies to the 80 confused people, he quickly moved on to the next topic….
This same thing happens two or three times in each lecture. Thanks for making sure that I’m paying attention, Biology Professor. Without questions like these, I might get distracted and fantasize about killing you for making me buy a $40 clicker so you can penalize me for skipping your awful class that can be learned straight out of the textbook.
February 12th, 2008 at 11:53AM
Seems to me that some of these professors…and I’m thinking particularly about the one who likes the "Grandma’s Trunk" game…might have a great future as kindergarten teachers.
February 13th, 2008 at 7:24AM
I’m guessing that the 80 people who got it wrong were commenting on the pedagogy, not acting on their knowledge of the definition of phylogeny.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:10AM
Seems to me that some of these professors…and I’m thinking particularly about the one who likes the "Grandma’s Trunk" game…might have a great future as kindergarten teachers.
No, because then they would have to know how to teach.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:35AM
Interesting…the writer assumes that the 80 people who got it wrong were confused. I would’ve assumed that they were just not paying attention, and that the professor was pointing that out.