What Is Good Teaching?

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Good teaching involves five basic components.

This column is the first in a series in which Phillip Wankat and Frank Oreovicz, authors of Teaching Engineering (McGraw-Hill, 1993), explore teaching strategies and classroom issues related to engineering education.

The vast majority of professors want to be good teachers. In his book Reflective Faculty Evaluation (JosseyBass, 1993), author John Centra cites a study of 35,000 professors in which 98 percent of them considered being a good teacher an essential goal (we're not sure what's wrong with the other 2 percent). But what is good teaching? Traditional definitions often fall short, neglecting to specify content, ignoring …