Wake me up When the Lecture Ends
Why are Public University Professors Failing to Engage Students?
What is the most memorable part of your college life? The answer is almost always friends, the canteen, or even the hostel life but it is never classes. Why is that? When the primary function of colleges is to provide students with an education, why are teaching and learning always the least memorable part of the students? If one dives deeper into this, most students complain of boring lectures and often boast of sleeping or multi-tasking or even bunking classes. Why have our classrooms become a center for boredom? Why have our public university faculties, despite being academically qualified, failed to ignite the curiosity of learning among the students? It is so because Professors in Public Universities lack adequate communication skills that are required to ignite the curiosity of learning among students, and in order to develop these skills, they need sufficient time and adequate training in contemporary methods of communication to keep students engaged in classrooms?
Classroom engagement of students refers to the degree of interest, curiosity, attention, passion, and optimism that learners show when they are being taught. Some forms of student engagement are intellectual engagement (lessons, assignments, projects), physical engagement (in-class activities), social engagement (peer-learning), and behavioural engagement (cues to redirect attention) (edglossary.org). Learning improves when students are engaged, and learning takes a backseat when students are disengaged, bored, or dispassionate. Studies conducted by the Institute of Education (London) have shown that there is a direct correlation between non-cognitive factors (e.g., engagement) and cognitive learning skills (e.g., improved academic performance) (Gutman and Schoon 2).
Teachers’ communication methods have been noted to influence how the students feel about the learning process as well as their satisfaction and achievement in regard to the class (Ginsberg 1). Teaching is a form of public speaking with a defined objective and a particular target audience. Like public speaking, teacher communication requires effective usage of words, voice modulation, body language, props, and technology to attract students’ attention. For example, clarity, an essential part of communication, is the process by which the teacher can successfully stimulate the desired meaning of course content in the minds of students through the use of appropriately-structured verbal and nonverbal messages. Teacher clarity adds to the ability to kindle student engagement (Ginsberg 2). However, in my opinion, most teachers in public universities are not adept at these. Effective communicators are experts in at least one (if not all) of these communication techniques. But our teachers in public universities are not trained to be effective communicators.
Teaching professionals need adequate training to adopt the above-mentioned classroom engagement methods. To become a professor in a public university in India, you just need to clear an examination that appears to be ineffective in gauging one’s ability to teach in a classroom. To make matters worse, teacher education in India is averse to innovation and experimentation in the use of teaching methods. To engage students in the 21st century, one requires the use of technology. Their experience in using contemporary classroom communication devices is negligible. Until 2017 there was no training that prepared one to become a professor at the university level (CTPTT 2).
“AICTE started developing a teacher training program through which we want our students to understand new ways of teaching and learning.” — Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman of AICTE, said in 2017 while introducing the new curriculum for university-level professors (Singha). There exists a comprehensive training program for an aspiring teacher at the school level like B.Ed. and M.Ed., where one has to undergo several years of theory and practice before they are allowed to teach. But training for university professors in the technical domain only began in India after 2016. Even then, the time spent on training is insufficient. According to the new faculty induction program, a newly inducted faculty must spend 450–480 contact hours in the first term, followed by on-the-job training in the second term (CTPTT 12). A special training for professors based on their years of experience is proposed in the policy document. The effectiveness of this training will have to be analyzed once we have sufficient data.
Having said this, it is also important to keep in mind that no matter how much training you provide the teachers, if they aren’t given sufficient time to prepare for their classes, then it is completely fruitless. Professors are forced to focus more on publishing papers rather than spending the same time preparing for their classes. Since professors are under pressure to publish, they spend less time preparing for classes. An important point to keep in mind is that their promotions and career growth depend primarily on the number of times their paper is published. Every teacher wants promotions in his/her job. If the metrics of promotion are nowhere related to teaching, then the teacher is unlikely to focus on it.
AICTE has mandated teacher training for all new professors and also for the existing ones. But this move is only targeted at professors who teach in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Management). It is a step in the right direction but there’s a long way to go if we want to provide quality education to our students. Another possible step could be to introduce a course on teaching at the masters’ level for those who wish to teach at the university level in the future. This will help minimize the additional training one has to go through for becoming a university-level professor. Realigning the metrics for promotion could give the much-needed nudge for professors to focus on classroom engagement. Proper training of our professors, especially in effective communication and the use of technology, would be the appropriate measure in increasing classroom engagement of students. Only if these measures are undertaken can we hope to impart quality education to our students to enable them to add value to our society.
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Works Cited
Partnership, Great Schools. “Student Engagement Definition.” The Glossary of Education Reform, 18 Feb. 2016, www.edglossary.org/student-engagement/.
Gutman, Leslie Morrison, and Ingrid Schoon. “The impact of non-cognitive skills on outcomes for young people.” Education Endowment Foundation 59.22.2 (2013): 2019.
Ginsberg, Sarah M. “Shared Characteristics of College Faculty Who Are Effective Communicators.” Journal of Effective Teaching 7.2 (2007): 3–20
Singha, Minati. “AICTE to make teachers’ training mandatory for all faculties in technical colleges.” Times of India, 29 August 2017. timesofindia.indiatime.com, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/aicte-to-make-teachers-training-mandatory-for-all-faculties-in-technical-colleges/articleshow/60278822.cms?
Comprehensive Training Policy for Technical Teachers [Draft]. www.aicte-india.org/sites/default/files/Comprehensive%20Training%20Policy%20for%20Technical%20Teachers%20%5BDraft%5D.pdf.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Smith Shah is a Young India Fellow with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Tired of the laws of thermodynamics, he found his calling in public speaking, writing, and teaching. He likes collecting stories from people, places, and postcards. When not making political memes, you will find him watching reruns of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. only for the three hundred and thirty-fourth time.
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