I took a BizAd module the previous semester in which we were required to produce an essay for which I received a C for my efforts. Nearer the exams, I found out from my class tutor that the course coordinator had marked me down BY 2 GRADES because I did not follow his classification on two aspects of an area on the external environment. The coordinator said in a lecture that we had to follow his classifications DESPITE admitting that the others were correct as well, if not more so, as he was the marker and had the right to determine what goes. My tutor went through my answer with me and narrowed the reason down to this. He also commented that my reasons for writing what I did were right and he could not fault them. But he advised me to avoid seeking redress since it would be a waste of time. Such teaching and grading habits are academically irresponsible, foolish and highly detrimental.

—Yuen Wei Loon, Law, Year 4

The lecturer should try not to be over-defensive simply because he got some lousy comments from the last batch of students that he taught. After all, the majority of the students doing the same module this semester are not the same people as the previous batch and have not ‘complained’ against his methods of teaching. Especially in subjects where there are diverse points of view and a lot of discussion is required for learning to take place, do not get personal and use statements like, “You can waste your life if you want, but don’t waste mine,” which are very hostile and hinder learning.

—Anonymous, Year 1

The lecturer should place himself/herself in the students’ shoes and realise that we are learning certain topics for the first time; therefore, he should learn to communicate with students more effectively.

—Na Kok Peng, Engineering, Year 3

I am studying Information & Communications Management. My computing module tutor is a mainland Chinese. Her command of English is poor; thus, she has great difficulty teaching and explaining things to the class. She is also disorganised and cannot properly allocate the 5% that tutorial participation takes up in our final paper. I think this is detrimental to our performance in the course.

—Anonymous, Arts & Social Sciences, Year 1

In the Departments of Mathematics and Economics, the problem of bad teachers usually boils down to the poor English Language proficiency of expatriate lecturers from other Asian countries. While they may be very knowledgeable, their poor command of English results in their inability to bring their message across efficiently in their lectures, transparencies, and notes. Consequently, students often have problems understanding these lecturers and find difficulties in their learning.

Unfortunately, some lecturers even use Chinese to communicate with their students. A friend of mine actually got back her essay with comments in Chinese written on it by the lecturer! The lecturer also often resorted to using Mandarin to explain things in tutorials.

While I understand the need for foreign lecturers in NUS, can more be done to ensure that our lecturers have a certain level of English language proficiency, since the medium of instruction in NUS is English? NIE requires all its entrants to take an English proficiency test. Why can’t NUS do the same, incorporating a written and spoken test? NUS students are required to pass a QET, otherwise they will be required to take English Communication Skills modules. Why can’t the same apply to our lecturers? If all these are done, both students and lecturers will benefit and the standard of teaching in NUS can also be kept at a high level.

 —Ong Chin Meng, Science, Year 2

1. The knowledge and experience of lecturers in their respective teaching subjects is admired. However, they must remember that when a student contradicts, evaluates, or questions a lecturer’s opinion, they do so out of enthusiasm and interest in the subject. Younger lecturers, although at times more energetic and passionate about their subject matter, also tend to be more defensive in their retorts, which could then squash a student’s enthusiasm in the subject.
   
2. A lecturer’s rapport with his students can affect the students’ interest in the subject, which in turn can affect their performance. To facilitate approachability, lecturers could initiate the relationship first, perhaps reaching out especially to the less extroverted students easily via email. For example, announcements to changes in timetables could be mass mailed to all the students; or on an individual basis, lecturers could encourage, praise, or even admonish one or two students a week. Quickly, an approachable reputation of the lecturer will spread among students.

—Adrian Phua, Arts & Social Sciences, Year 3

1. Reading directly off the OHP screen/transparency: The lecturer doesn’t create any rapport with his students at all, turning them off. We can read the contents of the transparency ourselves, thank you. Look at us, and hold our attention.
   
2. Bad English: No one can understand what the lecturer is saying at all, which is even worse than reading off the OHP screen.
   
3. Unstructured lecturing: This just baffles the students because the lecturer is going through different points all at the same time.
   
4. Going through things that are NOT covered in the textbook, and then NOT allowing students TIME to copy down the information from the transparency.
   
5. Not establishing lecturer’s expectations of students regarding essays: Different lecturers have different exacting standards that they do not reveal BEFORE submission of essays. For example, some lecturers do not like students to define their terms and students are penalised for it, whereas some expect definitions and penalise students who do NOT include these. This is very frustrating for students.
   
6. There ARE tutors who have a higher-than-thou attitude and do not think much of students’ views during tutorials. They shoot down any ideas that are not in accordance with theirs. This merely causes students NOT to speak up.

—Anonymous, Arts & Social Sciences, Year 4

A certain lecturer has the habit of holding the mike and not speaking into it. Moreover, he speaks quite softly, so those at the back are unable to hear him. His notes, in point form, are too brief; and the points do not really link—so we have difficulty in understanding what the notes are about. His written transparencies are also very illegible, making it hard to read what he has written. It appears worse in his webpage when the transparencies are scanned in.

—Anonymous, Science, Year 1

My friends and I went to a lecturer to clarify the problems we had in his subject. To our surprise, he was not willing to help! It was not that we were impolite. He just put on an unfriendly face, rephrased the question and threw it back at us! What’s this? If we knew the answer, we wouldn’t have gone to him! If the lecturer continues to behave in this manner, students will suffer as they will have to turn to other lecturers or tutors for help.

—Anonymous, Science, Year 2

1. A lecturer turning up late and therefore letting us go late.
   
2. A tutor talking more than half the time, so that the students do not get to contribute, then blaming the students for not participating.

—Anonymous, Arts & Social Sciences

2 major components in good teaching are: (1) genuine interest to help students learn, and (2) efficient tools employed. No matter how much effort he puts in (2), if a teacher is not really interested in imparting knowledge (especially true in universities where it is widely rumoured that many lecturers are more concerned about their publications than teaching), it is not unfair to say that bad teaching will be the result.

—Anonymous, Mechanical Engineering, Year 4

Lecturers who flash lengthy transparencies and read off their prepared notes wholesale do not allow students to grasp concepts effectively as the students are busily copying away. It is also hard to concentrate when the lecturer drones on, disregarding the students’ signals of restlessness.

—Anonymous, Arts & Social Sciences, Year 2

Monologues in which the lecturer just speaks and looks at the OHP: One lecturer from last semester did not vary his tone of voice or attempt to engage the lecture group. Approximately 15% of the group was asleep at any one time.

—Jeremy Ang Kay Yong, Science, Year 1

Some bad teaching habits in descending order of severity:

1. Poor articulation/pronunciation and low audibility (probably due to placing mike too far from mouth) that give the student the impression of overall low enthusiasm in teaching.
   
2. Disorganised lecture notes, for example:
   • Poor layout of lecture notes (e.g. chapter headings beginning at the middle of a page, headings not eye-catching, important concepts/formulae not highlighted).
     
   • Lecture notes like rough paper (due to large amount of scribbling here and there, cancellations, arrows pointing here and there).
     
   • Handwriting too small to be legible (especially when pencil-marks turn out too light after photocopying).
     
3. Explaining complicated concepts verbally especially when speech problem is as severe as mentioned above. Better illustration can be achieved with the help of diagrams, charts, etc.
   
4. An overloaded syllabus can cause a lecturer to rush through the copious amount of lecture notes and possibly a fair bit of irrelevant material. Clarity is compromised at the expense of quantity.

—Yeo Theng Hee, Electrical Engineering, Year 3

With so many students subscribing to pagers and mobile phones nowadays, it is inevitable that one will go off during lectures or tutorials. As the noise can distract a class, lecturers should occasionally make it clear that these devices should be switched off or set to a silent mode, thereby implying that failure to do so is wrong.

—Anonymous, Business Administration, Year 1

Bad teaching is said to have occurred if, as a result, students ask too many questions or if students do not ask questions at all. This is bad, as students will finish their course either knowing little and having to think too much, or knowing much and having to think too little. Science will not advance if either case is true.

—Lim Yeow Heng, Science, Year 4

Lecturers always expect a lot from students before they even allow the students to ask a question!

—Jianjun, Business Adminstration, Year 3

1. The use of inappropriate colours or font sizes and untidy handwriting on slides/transparencies leave the students sitting at the back of the lecture theatre straining hard to read.
   
2. Lectures that do not flow: This is caused by inexplicable pauses at inappropriate places.
   
3. Comments like, “This slide is wrong,” leaves much to be desired about the lecturer’s effort in presenting the lecture. Typo errors are not the issue here: whole slides are discarded. Should the mistake not have been spotted earlier?
   
4. Copying for copying’s sake: While copying solutions for examples serves to give the students ‘hands-on’, there is little point in copying definitions or whole paragraphs of text.

—Anonymous, Mechanical Engineering, Year 2

Lecturers who:

1. talk without emphasis at all.
   
2. talk as if reciting text to themselves.
   
3. do not have good eye contact with students.
   
4. fail to highlight the main theme/important point of the lecture.
   
5. talk non-stop without breaks, e.g. through a 2-hour session.
   
6. fail to be concise and give a good summary/overview of the subject.

—Anonymous, Dentistry, Year 1

Lecturers should give detailed lecture notes so that students can follow the lecture, instead of losing focus as a result of having to ponder over a specific point during the lecture due to inadequate lecture notes. Tutors should give detailed solutions to tutorials so that more time can be spent qualitatively on further readings about the modules. If students are left to derive solutions ourselves, how on earth are we supposed to know we are on the right track? I understand you all want us students to learn independently, but if we are not allowed to grasp the basic concepts correctly, we will not be able to meet the objective of learning.

—Anonymous, Science, Year 1

Some lecturers actually read out from transparencies placed on the OHP during lectures. With the encouragement of notepad usage amongst NUS undergraduates, a bored student could simply switch off from his/her lesson and access another learning website on the Internet on his/her notebook or palmtop. If the lecturers do not become accessible facilitators of information, retrieving, and selectively sharing coherent and relevant information from all sources, books, and the Internet, then the way current lecturers teach will only make them dinosaurs in the new Information Age.

—Anonymous, Arts & Social Sciences, Year 2