What the Best College Teachers Do

To Bain, education entails more than examining students at the conclusion of a course. While exams allow instructors and students to measure understanding, they often encourage strategic learning instead of deep learning. Bain’s subjects adjusted exams to reflect their instruction, “to help students learn nor just to rate and rank their efforts” (151). They facilitated learning development and took a learning-centered approach, in which they treated exams as data that tracks students’ growth—not a holistic review of students. Grading becomes communicative (sharing students’ progress) rather than punitive (deducting points for late work, etc.). The best teachers help students meet deadlines and goals within a course’s structure. They learn about their students to do so effectively: For example, some of Bain’s subjects gave pre-tests at the beginning of a course to calculate student interests, while others simply spoke with students before and after classes. They also collected anonymous feedback mid-course to determine necessary changes to their classes and teaching.

Effective teaching includes clarifying student evaluation, to allow students to critique their own learning mentally or in writing “so they can use the standards of the discipline or profession to recognize shortcomings and correct their reasoning as they go” (160).