What do students want?

I know what they don't want: I've been reading big stacks of student evaluations, and students state fairly clearly what they don't want. Homework, for instance. Also exams, especially difficult ones. Also reading assignments, writing assignments, math problems, and science labs. They don't like lectures that seem to be "random," although no one offers a really clear explanation of what that means. A truly random lecture would be a sight to behold: you could use a random-number generator linked to an online dictionary to create the text, and then find a similar method to select visual aides online--but if anyone on this campus is doing that type of performance art, I'm certainly not aware of it.

Students are less clear about what they like--at least in the comments they write on course evaluations. You might think students would applaud easy exams, but I've seen many comments in which students show contempt for a class that is perceived as too easy or "too much like high school." Students do express a desire for "good notes," but they tend to characterize notes as something the professor "gives" ("he gave good notes," they write, or "he needs to give better notes"), as if notes could be distributed like chocolates from a box. I suppose the practice of distributing PowerPoint slides contributes to this perception, but somewhere along the line the student needs to put some effort into acquiring information from the course. (I'm always befuddled by students who ask for copies of my lecture notes. You want this little sticky note with three words on it? Or would you like to see the questions scribbled in the margins of my text?)

Students want to be listened to and they want their questions answered, which is a reasonable expectation, but they also want the professor to spend more time explaining difficult concepts, doing problems on the board, providing one-on-one assistance, commenting on homework problems, supervising small-group projects, and (believe it or not) lecturing. "Just stand up and teach the material!" they write, as if lecturing were the only way to teach. In some cases, the best teaching method is to sit down and shut up, but that doesn't necessarily look like teaching, so that's not really what students want.

What do students want? In some cases they're painfully clear: they want Prof Blimp to lose weight, they want Prof Drudge to buy a new sweater, and they want Prof Sunshine to stop smiling so much. I don't find these kinds of comments terribly useful, and neither, I suspect, does anyone else.

Looking at all these evaluations from all sectors of campus has convinced me that students want mutually exclusive things--that is, when they know what they want. Most of them haven't a clue--which puts us all in the same boat, paddling away in random directions and hoping we eventually discover new worlds.