page 3 of 13 
What Every Instructor Should Know
What Makes a Good Instructor? What Students Tell Us
In a recent Educause article, Mark Morton summarizes his qualitative research of a thousand student comments about the ten best and worst Canadian university instructors listed on ratemyprofessor.com. He found four salient characteristics of a good teacher:
The Fantastic Four
Character - enthusiastic about their topic/discipline, friendly, good sense of humor.
Transmission - gives good lectures, uses good examples and demonstrations, clearly responds to student questions.
Course Design - well-organized course materials, well-prepared instructor, coordination between what is taught and what is tested.
Assessment - instructor grades fairly, provides prompt feedback.
One caveat: Mark Morton indicates that students may value transmission over interaction because they don't fully grasp the benefits of collaborative and interactive learning activities. In a sense, they don't know what they're missing!
What do you think?
Which characteristic received which percentage of citations from the thousand student comments (pull each percent to its proper type).