Features

Against the backdrop of the “Ask Me” campaign, I always tell my students to ask me anything.

On Mondays, I stand at the front of a classroom.

I explain the week’s readings, and the lessons to draw from them.  

The rest is up to them.  

However often I welcome questions, it is always the same students who actually pose them.  

When I offer to edit their upcoming assignments ahead of time, no one comes forward.

B-.

That letter followed by a tiny hyphen scribbled on the front page of your essay is not a welcome sight after you just spent 10 straight hours sitting sleep-deprived on the fourth floor of the library, buried behind piles of musty, puke-coloured hardcovers.

You’re angry, you’re frustrated, but mostly you feel cheated out of a grade you thought you deserved.

Your professor doesn’t sympathize.

But should they?

The key to being a successful student is a lot more straightforward than one might think, according to Carol Miles.

At its core, a university is an educational institute. To really take advantage of their education, students need great professors to engage their minds and guide their academic and personal growth. But what makes a great professor?

As university has changed over the years, Carleton professors have watched both a change in the nature of teaching and the attitudes of their students.

Brian Mortimer, Carleton University vice-president (academic) described the changes in the classroom from when he began teaching in the early 1980s.

“Now when instructors go to a classroom, their first act is to boot the computer,” he said. “When I was teaching, the innovation was that we could have coloured transparencies for the overhead projector.”