teaching (jim o'connor)

[Barbara Laurence]

I'll tell you something about teaching college students.  Some quarters my
work was really quite good (by my standards).  Other quarters it was
mediocre in one class, good in another.  Etc.  Imagine every combination.
Since coming to the University of California, Santa Cruz, in the late
1970s, before retirement, my work (other profs, too of course) was
evaluated by students, in a not too bad evaluation system.  Every year,
every quarter, every class (undergrad, not grad), the results were the
same:  1/3 said "great course, you changed my life."  1/3 said "it had some
interesting stuff."  1/3 said "Prof. O'C is a propagandist or a bore or
incomprehensible, etc."  These statistical results obtained, I repeat,
independently of my own evaluation of my own work in a particular course
during a particular year.  I add that students were more polarized re:  my
courses than those of other profs.

  I have no idea why this "law of teaching" prevailed.  - Jim O'Connor