One of the perks of being an upperclassman in college is discussion-based classes. No longer does class consist of you and 149 of your closest friends furiously scribbling down the wisdom expounded by your professor. Instead, a group of interested students sit around a table with someone who has dedicated his career to studying a field, an expert who is charged with passing his experience on to you.
Far too frequently, however, it is not the professor so much as the students who are acually teaching the material. You are forced to listen to the student who happens to be doing a “class presentation” that day.
You begin class by listening to one of your peers, who rambles on for 10 minutes, outlining all the main points in an article that everyone already read. The kid next to you falls asleep about halfway through. Just when the pain is about to end, the professor calls on another student to present a different reading. The lesson for us? Professors of seminars and teaching assistants of discussion sections should stop relying so heavily on student presentations and lead class themselves.
The faculty at Georgetown is exceptional to the point that some students get frustrated that their professor has quite literally written the book on the class subject. When students choose to attend Georgetown, they imagine themselves under the tutelage of respected scholars and influential policy-makers, former UN ambassadors, and World Bank executives—professors like Deborah Tannen, Mario Vargas Llosa and George Tenet.
Of course, student participation is valuable and should be encouraged. Active participation is the most effective way to learn—by probing their students with questions, professors push students to think and articulate clear responses. Certain kinds of presentations are vital; speaking in front of an audience is an important skill that students at other universities often lack.
Student presentations that argue a point or explain an idea are great—summaries or regurgitation of material is not. Students pay too high a tuition to sign up for class with Charles King only to get stuck listening to some kid who summed up an article 20 minutes before class started. Instead of opening up class with student presentations, professors should run their own discussions, using their knowledge of teaching and their field to make students think critically.
