What makes a good engineering lecturer? Students\\ put their thoughts in writing

Abstract

This paper describes a student essay competition with the title 'What makes a good engineering lecturer?' run by the Engineering Subject Centre of the UK Higher Education Academy. The competition was intended primarily to provide engineering lecturers with general feedback. The aim of the paper is to make the outcomes of the competition available in a convenient form to those who might be interested -particularly engineering lecturers. The paper describes the competition, sets out the approach used to analyse the essays, presents the content in terms of the main attributes identified, and compares these with published lists of recommended attributes. The paper lets the students speak for themselves through extensive quotation.

A Three-Year Study of the Impact of Instructor Attitude, Enthusiasm, and Teaching Style on Student Learning in a Medicinal Chemistry Course

“…Mastery of the subject in combination with mastery of teaching methodologies are perceived very positively by students and considered as characteristic of the best teachers. 23,35,36 In regard to the questions related to instructor enthusiasm based on the verbal and nonverbal behavior of the instructor (Table 2), the difference in the significantly higher response by the distance students to how vocal delivery, apparent emotion, and level of energy influenced their learning, and how the campus students perceived the hand and body gestures slightly more favorably, is likely related to the classroom environment. Campus students may have been more distracted by the instructor's high volume than by his hand and body ges-tures, which may have been less intimidating or more subtle.…”

One More Way How to Improve the Higher Education Teaching

“…In our research as well as in a research conducted by J. Davies (2006), students reported various qualities -these can be divided into 3 categories: A good teacher should be an expert in his specialization, he/she should have good didactic, pedagogical and presentation skills and he should have certain human qualities (e.g. humour, disponibility, enthusiasm).…”

“…The teachers should possess teaching skills and be able to choose the most suitable teaching method from a variety of teaching tools (also by Labaree, 2000). • Fourth, a charismatic teacher should have a good sense of humour, since students prefer listening to teachers who incorporate humour into the lecture (also by Davies, 2006).…”

“…When we analyse content of all 23 items of the ITCCC the first subscale is an equivalent of what is called expertise by J. Davies (2006) -based on cognitive qualities of teachers. The second subscale contains items corresponding to personal qualities.…”

Engineering Pedagogy Students Attitudes on Teaching Quality

“…Methodologically, we had found our inspiration in essay analyses as performed by Davies (2006) who had used this methodology at the University of Coventry.…”