I’d like to take this opportunity to give feedback on the feedback that the students gave on their feedback.
With me? No?
The Honours students gave their proposal talks last week. A random panel of academics assessed and made written comments that were passed on to the students on Monday. The students in turn had their own comments about the talks and the feedback process.
They brought up three things:
- They feel rather humiliated if their supervisor ‘answers’ a question for them
This point is completely fair. If a supervisor feels the need to answer a question on behalf of a student, then (assuming the student hasn’t completely frozen) this betrays a lack of confidence in the student, or even the project itself (and I’m not going to expand on that here, he said, darkly).
It’s part of the training: the student must be able to fend for themself, and, ultimately, make mistakes and live with them.
- They feel embarrassed if academics start to ‘squabble’ with each other over issues raised in their presentation
This one is less clear-cut. Rightly or wrongly, academics in seminars will disagree with each other, vocally and at length, while the speaker stands there like a lemon. Often you will find that certain antagonists have hated each other for years, and their feud spills over into public fora.
My advice? Either stand there looking amused or say something like “Maybe you two can talk about this later?” Coming from a student, that would be surprisingly effective.
- They really appreciate it when academics write legibly
Fair cop, guv. In our defence I will say that when you have 7 or 8 talks per session, it’s dark, and there isn’t much room on the form, copperplate can go right out the window.
Besides, would you trust a doctor with legible handwriting?
The other thing I always hated was when they kept at you when it was clear you didnt know the answer to whatever they were asking.
Ask me once, if I dont get it, try to rephrase it. If I still give what you think is the ‘wrong’ answer take it up with me later, dont keep on at me with everyone there.
I always found that this was a good way to separate the academics who work a lot with students vs those that dont.
That’s a fantastic typo, Rebecca – ‘demolarizing’. ‘To lose molarity’.
Ahem. Yes. When I was post-doccing (‘post-docking’?) in Cambridge I used to hate given seminars with the boss present, as he’d always sit there with his head in his hands for the entire talk.
But I’d have been even more offended if he’d stayed away.
s/given/giving/; of course. . .