Campus Confidential Summary

Teachers and professors have limitless possibilities when it comes to styles of teaching. Some believe that lectures are more efficient, while other think hands on activities engage students more, and even some teachers believing that not teaching--ironically--will teach kids more. In the novel, Campus Confidential: How College Works, Or Doesn’t, For Professors, Parents, and Students, written by Jacques Berlinerblau, discusses how lectures are the most common teaching mechanism in college because of the possibility of having over three hundred kids in one class. In the chapter, “Evaluation of teaching and Learning,” in the textbook, Science Teaching Reconsidered: A Handbook, published in 1997, it discusses how gaining regular insight on how

In college, the least common teaching method would be hands on, experiential learning because of the class sizes, costs of all the materials for experiments, and majority of kids can’t learn that way, as college students, being taught with lectures their whole life to make sure they’re ready for college. In the book, Campus Confidential: How College Works, Or Doesn’t, For Professors, Parents, and Students, explains how more often than usual, professors bore their students. “The preparation for teaching HISTO 090, Early Modern Europe, is tedious and always done is haste. The forty assembled students (seventy-five are registered) seem impervious to the charms of the 1540s. They yawn during his lectures. As he rambles on in a monotone, they are obviously messaging one another on their laptops” (Berlinerblau 18). Even though college kids are paying for their education, if the classes bore them, they either don’t show up or they don’t pay attention. During lectures, a lot of kids either fall asleep, start daydreaming, or become completely zombie-like, zoning out the professor and just sitting there and staring-- obviously not listening. While reading the chapter, “Evaluation of Teaching and Learning,” found in the textbook Science Teaching Reconsidered: A Handbook, one can notice that it’s completely for lectures. “They try to anticipate the topics and concepts that will be difficult for their students and to develop teaching strategies that present these topics in ways their students will best understand. These teachers make a special point of becoming familiar with their students' preparation, knowledge, and abilities, and adjust their teaching to maximize the class's learning” (“Evaluation of Teaching and Learning”). The article explains that professors that teach lectures try and anticipate what will be asked to try and plan out answers ahead of time, even