Professors, ideal versus typical

I'd be curious to hear reactions to a survey described by Maryellen Weimer. The survey asked college juniors and seniors to ascribe various characteristics to the "ideal professor" and to their experience of the "typical professor". Results below:

Teaching Characteristic	Ideal	Typical
Professor speaks clearly/not monotone	93	80
Course and daily goals appear on the syllabus	83	52
Students have a voice; input on course policies and procedures	40	7
Professor talks informally with students sometimes	43	15
Professor lectures	78	93
Professor uses discussion	58	37
Professor does in-class activities/demonstrations	57	21
·Uses humor often/occasionally ·Uses humor occasionally only	97	75
·Cheating/plagiarism policy—investigates and resolves incidents ·Do not know what approach is used to deal with academic dishonesty	58	64
Solicits anonymous, written, informal feedback on teaching/course	68	17
·Solicits student feedback two or more times per term ·Never solicits student feedback	72	30

There's a whole lot of interesting stuff here: You could, for instance, use the items with the greatest discrepancies as surrogates for those behaviors that would likely improve your student evaluations. It sounds like students' having a voice on course policies and procedures, soliciting feedback, and talking informally with students are areas where we could perhaps improve.

But... as Weimer notes, the crucial question is whether the students' "ideal professor" is ideal as doing his or her job, to wit, inducing learning:

The question not answered by this research is whether the characteristics identified as ideal have any bearing on student learning. Based on other research, it is probably safe to say that most of the characteristics don’t cause learning but they may make it a more likely outcome of a classroom experience.

Reference: Epting, L. K., Zinn, T. E., Buskist, C. and Buskist, W. (2004). Students perspectives on the distinction between ideal and typical teachers. Teaching of Psychology, 31 (3), 181-183)