I could have written most of what you did! Only the proportion is much higher who feel "The professor should show us how to do the problems instead of making us figure them out." Probably I should give them the "college is not high school" talk on Monday.
When I was an undergrad, I was always annoyed when an upper-division math class with 7 students in it was done as a 65-minute chalk-talk in the definition-theorem-proof-theorem-proof style. I didn't mind when my upper division English classes were large lectures, though, since I'm terrible at keeping up with the reading.
I had to laugh about lecturing too little because that's always the comment I get in my upper-division courses, too. (In my intro class I get told I lecture too much, but until this year it's been a 70 person class, so unfortunately they were stuck with lecture). I'm not sure it's so much about "I paid the tuition" as much as it is, "well, the teacher is the expert, and the other students don't know any more than I do, so how am I supposed to learn from all this student yammering? tell me what I'm supposed to know!"
I did have that reaction to one course (the only one taught by a grad student - oh, my snobbery), but generally discussion classes (and discussing) were my thing - I thought sitting and listening to lecture was like being back in high school. Of course, it was a small college that really emphasized seminar-style learning.
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On the other hand, one of my most esteemed grad school professors told us that when she was in college she actively resented being made to contribute - she wanted to be able to sit and listen and go away and think about it and absorb it on her own.
Me, I'd have never remembered anything if I didn't talk about it. So I make my students talk all the time. Of course, I make them work in groups a lot, too, which I absolutely hated as a student, so I guess I would have rated myself only so-so.
Did I sleep-write this? I believe that students must be fully engaged with the material, working with it, struggling and discussing, in order for real learning to take place. Like you, I use a combination of lecture and discussion - and this semester I'm moving some of the discussion to an online format to ensure that we have the opportunity to hear from all students. Gave it a trial run last semester but am still tweaking stuff...
I never spoke as an undergrad - I was very shy. I hated discussion classes, period. I didn't mind listening to other students, but was petrified to speak. I'm not sure how I would feel about my own classes.
I do agree with you, wholeheartedly, that students need to be engaged in order to learn. However, to look at it from their naive perspective (as I think most have not been taught to be self-learners until college, if it even happens there) learning is sitting and listening. This is what they're taught, explicitly and implicitly, through so many of their formative experiences. What's the first thing you learn in elementary school? To sit in rows, staring forward, quietly, listening to the teacher. We don't do a good job of integrating student discussion/knowledge at those levels (which can readily be done, but we'd have to change the teacher:student ratio, especially for the young'uns) and we don't phase it in well during jr high and high school when, developmentally, the whole class should be able to have a worthwhile discussion.
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I often try to start the semester by defining learning for them. Explicity. And addressing their former experiences and talking about what we will do in this class and why. Showing them that it is both the content and how you integrate it personally and use it that is important. That if you you can't communicate about your interpretation of it with others, you're not really knowing it.
You sound like a teacher I would have liked. I'd have been scared at first, perhaps, but as I learned the ropes of the classroom culture I wouldn't have wanted to miss anything.
I hated lectures as an undergrad and didn't attend them. I figured, I can read the book, form my own ideas, and voila, and for the most part I found that to be true. Now I teach at a school where half our courses are lectures, and I hate it, so I work my ass off to try to come up with creative assignments that will make a virtue of the people in the room: collaborative projects with group presentations on material that supplements the syllabus, etc. Some students resist the hell out of this, but most of them think it is fun and my evals are pretty strong.
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I am the kind of professor I would have wanted in that I try to be transparent; to explain my pedagogy as I practice it; to respond to student comments and expectations and shape the course around that; to let students talk; to encourage individuation and get students to think about and develop their own critical framework. I am not the professor I would have wanted in that I am really demanding that students spend quite a bit of time outside of class working on projects that parallel or supplement the stuff on the syllabus. I try to accomodate the students who, like me, hate group work and prefer to be lazy but being very clear about what I expect, how to do it (including how to make group work fair and educational), and why.
I agree with y'all...
The best reason for discussion in education comes from Socrates - It is only in dialog that we ever really learn . If we do not challenge claims and beliefs, then we run the risk of accepting a lie or heresay as truth. But through the process of discussion, we learn things and go places that monologues cannot venture.
I'm more or less of the same mind as you and the rest of the commnenters: I mix up some lecture and some discussion. Like PowerProf, I'm also experimenting with moving some of the discussion into a virtual environment, both to expand the discussion outside of the physical and temporal constraints of the classroom and to give the shy but thoughtful students a framework in which to contribute (hoping that they'll gain some confidence in those discussion and then join in more inside the classroom too). These days, though, I'm mostly teaching composition courses, so I don't really lecture at all.
I try very hard to be the kind of professor I loved in college, which was much like what bitchphd wanted: I explain my pedagogy, I try to remove myself from whatever pedestal they expect me to be on as an expert,
and I try to shape my courses as much as I can around my students' needs and desires. Of course, all of that is often exasparating for my students, who seem to often want everything set in stone on day one. Many of my students would prefer that I tell them what it is they're supposed to know rather than encouraging them to figure out how to figure out ideas--a much messier proposition.
So, yeah, I think I am the kind of professor I would have wanted, but the problem is that I was a really good student who loved classes and, when I could cobble together enough money to pay tuition without working two jobs, I was really self-motivated. I often worry that my pedagogy is too much aimed at something like a "talented tenth" of students.
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