Lecturers and lectures

What makes a lecturer good and what makes a lecturer bad? What are the criteria we should use if we were to rate a lecturer?

Whether the lecturer...

1. Makes us sleep?
2. Drones on and on with monotonous accent?
3. Explain the fact like the textbook?
4. Gets thunderous applause after a lecture?
5. Get a lot of questions down the stage after the lecture?
6. Looks vivacious?
7. Makes us interested in reading more about the stuff?
8. Makes us understand the points?
9. Knows what he / she wants us to understand, at all?
10. Prepare good lecture notes?

Well, from the way medicine course is run, we have to learn cross-discipline in the same semester. So there will be cases like we learn physiology in this week but cram in anatomy in the other week. In that context, we are all priviledged to be taught by a lot of famous professors, doctors, researchers in the University of Melbourne. But the thing is, is famous equal to good? Is it that people at the pinnacle of the research career would certainly make a good lecturer?

I doubt so. There was a saying that the more smart or knowledgeable one is, the worse one tends to perform when it comes to explaining and teaching. Well, it’s a rather generalized claim, but I shall say that in some people I have met it’s rather true. I am not sure whether it’s because a smart person can’t explain things in a way so that not-so-smart people like us can understand... I hypothesized that when you are very knowledgeable, that means you must be a rather good learner and therefore you don’t know what it takes to make sense in not-as-smart people.

Always quite true, you know... many teachers/lecturers etc, when it comes to very hard questions they can answer any question in the world you could throw to them; but explain stuff they cannot. Errmm.

Well, to me, lecture hours mean struggling hours. I hate the feeling of not knowing stuff when a person is telling things that I am supposed to learn, and I am there hardly grappling any idea presented on the screen.

Note: Just for the record, I am highly motivated by the anatomy lecture I had today. It’s about the posterior abdominal wall and its related musles like psoas major, psoas minor, illiacus, quadratus lumborum, erector spinae and lattisimus dorsum. Just how good is she? Hmm... imagine having a silent lecture hall for the full hour, making me understand and remembering an anatomy lecture without the need to revise at home, and getting an applaud from the students for every single lecture. She is absolutely fantastic. The other lectures, like the physiology lecture by Professor Trefor Morgan today are also rather clear and concise, but by comparison he just appeared less lively and his monotonous voice can drive the most alert people to their slumberland. :D