1. Lecturers do not learn how to use the LT equipment like the video projector, particularly when they use laptops to show CD-ROM films. They should do some homework first.
   
2. The use of IT is fine, but not over-use. Showing computing codes on the laptop is fine on a one-to-one basis, but not (during computer lectures) when it is projected on the screen where I can’t even see the cursor and the codes.
   
3. Downloading of notes from websites is unnecessary, time consuming and costly, especially when the lecturer puts all the notes on the website and refuses to print other notes. And with no highlights and important points, the website layout is nothing to crow about.
   
4. The pronunciation and language abilities of lecturers should be improved.

—Ling Kheng Aik, Jony
Mechanical & Production Engineering, Year 2

Good teaching is when teachers facilitate identification and internalisation of facts or theories. Simply displaying other people’s research findings or statements will only help in increasing the store of knowledge in our brains but not inspire real interest in the topic or subject.

—Anonymous, Arts & Social Sciences, Year 3

Lecturers are sometimes asked to lecture on subjects that they have no experience in teaching. They thus cannot anticipate the likely areas of difficulty and fail to prepare relevant examples that will clarify such misunderstandings.

—Anonymous, Electrical Engineering, Year 3

1. Ever since BIZAD decided to conduct Chinese MBA courses, it made economic sense to employ lecturers and tutors from China. I understand that the Chinese lecturers know their area of specialisation thoroughly. Some of them write very well too. However, the level of English pronunciation for some of them is very inaccurate. Due to their poor English, some resort to reading from the textbook word by word! Some don’t even bother to prepare course materials but simply use the textbook (Prentice Hall or McGraw Hill) PowerPoint slides.
   
2. Some lecturers do not bother to change course materials. For group projects or assignments, they simply recycle the previous semester’s topic and use old case studies. But students can simply use the Internet and Digital Library to find out what exactly happened in the past and complete the problem definition and recommendation of the case without learning. Some students even borrow case reports from their friends who were in the previous semester’s class and ‘improve’ on their work.
   
3. Teachers should build rapport and motivate students. Unfortunately, some tutors do not even bother to hang around slightly longer to get to know students after classes, during breaks, or at other opportunities. Given a chance, they rush back to their offices immediately.
   
4. When the class is huge, you usually get a coordinator and a few tutors to assist the coordinator. However, some coordinators and tutors seem to give conflicting instructions. Some tutors even openly criticise the coordinator’s teaching method and style during tutorials and mass lectures! This lowers students’ morale.

—Anonymous, Business Administration, Year 3

A bad teacher is one who fails to inspire his students to love or at least gain a passing interest in the subject. A teacher can give me a 1000-page lecture material and tell me that studying it will help me pass an exam, but that won’t make him a good teacher. A good teacher provides extra guidance, is willing to listen, and goes the extra mile to make his lesson an hour of learning and inspiration.

Bad teachers are those who make it clear that we students are just an annoyance that they have to live with in order to play in their labs or get a pay check; those who treat the special achievers like gold but ignore the rest of the class; those who give their email address or office location but answer my queries with, “I don’t care. It’s not my problem.” Worst are those who are so caught up in ‘not spoon-feeding’ that they treat students’ questions with suspicion or give guarded, vague answers that leave the students more confused than ever.

In short, bad teachers are educators who make it clear that they have no respect for the people they are supposed to be educating. Underachievers, overachievers, and those in the middle are all people and we have lives outside academia. Sometimes we have problems that prevent us from studying in time for the CA or the tutorial; some of us work; some of us have noisy or broken families. But we are all people who need some respect and feelings of self-worth to survive. So good teachers are those who understand this and are willing to give everyone the respect, understanding, and guidance they deserve.

—Lim Teck Choon, Science, Year 3

1. During lectures, information is disbursed at breakneck speed (presumably to finish the syllabus in time). There is also not much time after lectures to ask questions. Even if there is, there is not enough time to digest the information, so there are seldom questions. Why have a modular system that tends to force us to cram for exams, after which we forget everything, leaving us unprepared for the real world?
   
2. The best time to ask questions would be during lectures or tutorials. Unfortunately during tutorials, we are all given problem sheets to attempt beforehand and the tutors usually have to spend the 45 minutes rushing through the solutions. Solutions are then made available on the IVLE and many students lose the motivation to even attempt the tutorials. Why not have more interactive tutorials and lectures?
   
3. Little effort is made to make the lessons interesting, and more importantly, to make them relate to the real world. Videotapes, slide shows, etc. should be used wherever possible. Jargon should also be avoided.
   
4. Most importantly, it is feared that most lecturers know that the students do not understand, but they do or can do nothing about it.

—Eng Se-Hsieng, Electrical Engineering, Year 2

The most important thing in teaching is communication. The teacher/lecturer should be able to speak clearly, with a sufficiently loud voice, and avoid sounding monotonous. Important points should be stressed upon, and sufficient accentuation is necessary throughout the lecture. Most lecturers, especially in the Mathematics Department, do not follow this style when teaching. Students find it difficult to comprehend anything at all when the lecturer starts to mumble towards the end of sentences. If clarity of speech is improved upon, this will result in a more enthusiastic crowd of students and improve the quality of work students can produce.

—Subramaniam Sutharsan, Science, Year 1

An example of a bad tutor is one who expects everyone to be able to answer his every question after reading his materials. His expectations being too high, he will flare up and pass hurtful remarks about those who are unable to elaborate further on their one-sentence answers, e.g.:“Are you an Arts student? How can you tell me you cannot elaborate?” Worse, he will then ask a better student (in terms of past exam results) and if he/she cannot answer, he will always find some excuse for him/her, e.g.: “You did not read my materials because you were rushing your thesis, right? I know by your standard you can’t be this bad.” He not only shows favouritism, he also humiliates the first student. Is he teaching at all? Did he try to lead his students when they have difficulties grasping complex concepts?

—Anonymous, Arts & Social Sciences, Year 4

I find the computing module I’m taking hard to master. Tutorials are supposed to be for us to try hands-on whatever has been taught in the lecture. But most of the time my tutor simply goes through the questions on his own Excel spreadsheet. When we have queries, he often brushes them aside and asks us to go to the online help instead. Well, I know I can do that; but if I have to rely on it to complete my tutorial, I do not see a need to go for tutorial then.
I understand that he’s trying to make us learn on our own. However, he does not seem to make an effort to help us when we really do not know how to approach the question. When we ask for help, he will not explain to us how to go about doing the question; instead he chides us for not being able to get the answers and insists that we do not have the solution because we did not pay attention to what he taught in class.

—Anonymous, Business Administration, Year 1

‘Bad teaching’ occurs when the teacher appears aloof and detached, when he is interested only in delivering a lecture, and is neither concerned with whether the student understands, nor whether his teaching material is engaging and informative.

—Anonymous, Arts and Social Sciences, Year 1

I feel that the lecturers with a strong PRC accent should attend some English language courses. Their teaching is very hard for us to understand, because we hardly know what they are saying. Furthermore, these lecturers will most probably cause students to doze off in class.

—Wong Yew Hoong, Science, Year 3

A bad lecturer is one who:

1. mumbles to himself without realising no one can hear him clearly (perhaps we can let lecturers go through a shortened version of Tech Comm);
   
2. has a bad command of English;
   
3. comes late regularly.

—Liow Chin Win
Mechanical & Production Engineering, Year 2

Moody tutors force students to guess whether a particular tutor will respond well to their queries, or snap at them for asking seemingly stupid questions, depending on the ‘mood’ of the tutor, which can vary from session to session. Also, tutors who live in mental ivory towers tend to treat students condescendingly, e.g. they laugh condescendingly at the students’ answers, or they actually make insulting remarks—such an attitude is really uncalled for.

—Anonymous, Law, Year 1

1. Very often, there is communication breakdown between students and many foreign lecturers/tutors, particularly those from China and India. Students find it very difficult to comprehend what the lecturers are talking about because of their accent, ambiguous sentence structure, grammatical mistakes, poor fluency of the English language, and habit of speaking too fast and chunking words together monotonously.
   
2. Most of the time, students are taught to accept the curriculum blindly. Lecturers can help to stimulate critical thinking in students by encouraging question-asking rather than avoiding the series of questions posed by inquisitive students.
3. To help students understand the application of a particular concept better, it’s good to relate it to things around us. Then, students will be able to grasp and memorise the concept faster and easier.
   
4. Some lecturers like to give out incomplete lecture notes for students to fill in the blanks during lectures. Although this will help the students to concentrate, too many blanks are actually disruptive, as they have to concentrate on copying chunks of notes from the screen and absorbing what the lecturer is saying at the same time.

—Anonymous, Mechanical Engineering, Year 1

1. Lecture notes with too many grave errors to be corrected.
   
2. Lecture notes not prepared on time such that students get them only after the lecture.
   
3. Ill-organised notes (e.g. no clear topics, new formulas popping out without clear definitions of the parameters).

—Anonymous, Engineering, Year 4

1. Tutors not giving a clear idea about the tutorial answers.
   
2. Tutors who come to class totally unprepared.
   
3. Lecturers going too fast, expecting students to absorb new knowledge by some chance.

—Soh Ying Ying,
Business Administration, Year 2

How can teaching be improved in NUS? The university is where students are taught how to think. It has to create the future; it has to ‘instil’ the element of creativity in the students. The question is: How? Spoon-feeding and giving the student everything do not promote exploration. Why not cut down on the quantity and focus more on the quality? It is not important how much we know but it is important how we know. Why not take away the note giving and start the mind sieving and thinking?

—Anonymous, Engineering, Year 4

Although some lecturers try to be innovative by using high tech teaching, this may not always be feasible. For example, some lecturers try to conduct quizzes on the Intranet. But there are many accompanying problems, e.g. difficulties in logging in, student discussions, etc. At the same time, the students can be blamed for ‘cheating’ on the exam, etc. I hope there will not be any further online tests/quizzes.

—Anonymous, Engineering

Improve the format and user-friendliness of notes prepared by lecturers. For instance, some lecturers seldom take into consideration how students may want to arrange their notes. Thus, they may distribute some supplements to us haphazardly, which makes inclusion not easy and the whole collection of notes disorderly.

—Lim Kar Keat, Science, Year 2

The worst teachers I had were those with absolutely no interest in what they are teaching. Teachers are supposed to teach. Making students do repetitive exercises and spoon-feeding them too much knowledge kills any independent thinking.

—Tan Chui Hua, Arts & Social Science, Year 2

1. Lecturers tend to turn lectures (especially those with text-heavy PowerPoint presentations) into copying sessions. Why not upload the notes on the Net so we can just come to the lecture and listen?
   
2. More could be got out of tutorials if the tutor has skills to start the discussion. Perhaps training to be an effective tutor is required.

—Anonymous, Arts & Social Sciences, Year 1

I am very disappointed with the lecturer of a maths module I tried to do during the special term. On the first day of the lesson, the lecturer changed the venue from LT 24 (the original LT) to LT 23 because the OHP in LT 24 was down. He did not have the initiative to inform those students who might be late. Those of us who were early proceeded to LT 23. Without giving us his name, contact number, email, lesson outline, and the distribution of the percentage between CA and the exams, he immediately started to teach. As he taught, he wrote on transparencies which he did not prepare beforehand. Only in the middle of the lecture did he tell us his name. Throughout the lesson, he did not give us any example to illustrate the theorems, etc. All of us were very busily copying. At the end of the lesson, when we went to ask him about the number of tests and dates, etc., he said that he did not know. At the second lesson, he was late for twenty minutes. I cannot believe that a ‘professional’ teacher can be so disorganised, especially for a special term module when time is so precious.

—Anonymous

Some tutors/lecturers in certain more competitive faculties forget that even within their faculty, there can be different levels of abilities. Some are unforgiving of mistakes—wrong answers at tutorials can invite comments like: “What are you doing here?” Other lecturers haul students up when they fail a test, giving negative feedback like: “If you go on like this I don’t know how you’re going to get your degree.” Ironically, some are from professions in which tact and diplomacy is part of the job! In an already competitive environment, it’s already hard enough to cope with bad grades; uninvited comments like that could destroy one’s confidence.

—Anonymous, Medicine, Year 2