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Why are tenure-track professors hired on the basis of their research when they spend most of their time teaching?
I was just looking at a different post that cites National Center for Educational Statistics about how professors of all levels spend their time. I am actually doing some research on faculty hiring practices at research universities.
How much time do professors have to do research on their own?
The thrust of the data is that most professors, whether tenure track or non-tenure track spend more than 50% of their time on teaching. I imagine this data is averaged across both research and teaching universities, but still teaching must make up the bulk of time or even professors at research universities--whether that be teaching classes, mentoring grad students, committees, etc.
But at the same time, I know that the hiring criteria for the research universities focuses on publication records with little if any concern about teaching evaluations and such. I am not trying to make a critique or political point, this is just something that I have understood from my interactions with professors and other graduate students.
Now my assumption is that most research university departments get the majority of their money from student tuition. I might be wrong about this, and if I am wrong please let me know. We also know that the ability to do research does not always correlate with teaching ability.
So I want to understand the mechanisms that allow research universities to continue to hire professors who are not necessarily the best teachers? Of course, there are many amazing professors at universities who are excellent teachers. I am not trying to make a blanket statement by any means. I just mean that you would probably get better teachers if the primary hiring criteria was teaching ability, right.
By mechanisms I mean, if student tuition is the main source of money, then why do students keep paying for classes taught by not always the best teachers? Or is there just so much money coming into research universities from grants, etc., that they can afford these large professor salaries despite the loss of undergraduate students? Like how does this actually work?
I imagine part of the answer to this question is associated with the growth in non-tenure-track faculty like adjuncts. That seems like it would solve some problems. But still why can universities who seem to get most of their money from students, get away with paying so little attention to students when it comes to hiring faculty?
Any insights are welcome. Again, if I phrased anything indelicately, please forgive me. I was not trying to cast any aspersions on anyone. Just purely thinking from an economic rationale.

Now my assumption is that most research university departments get the majority of their money from student tuition. I might be wrong about this, and if I am wrong please let me know Your wrong. At least in R1 science/engineering fields in the US it is all about grant income.

@StrongBad that is good to know. So this is a useful explanation for the science and engineering departments. But we see the same situation in humanities, social science, etc., I will see if anyone suggests that those departments also get most of their money from similar sources.

In the humanities at some point during the search candidates will likely need to produce a sample syllabus and past teaching evaluations and the teaching philosophy will actually be considered. My humanities searches also include a teaching demo.

The biggest source of revenue for elite private research schools (excluding the medical school) is from their endowments.  E.g. at Harvard that's 50% of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences revenue as opposed to tuition which is 23% and grants 13%.  Grant income is the plurality for the medical school.  http://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy15harvard_finreport.pdf

Okay cool. So that is a case I had not considered. Yes, private research schools can get money from their endowments. I know that public universities are now trying to develop their own endowment efforts, but public schools are still generally just starting to cultivate those resources.

Worth noting that the trend here for state schools is clearly in the direction of fewer research faculty who do less teaching, with more of the teaching done by non-research faculty.  The superstar researchers bring in grant money and give the school prestige and you keep them happy and productive by having very low teaching loads.  Departments in fields that don't bring in grants never get to hire again.

@I see, so it is like a bifurcation. Once you hit one particular trajectory, it is hard to switch. This is a really helpful observation as it seems consistent with the anecdotal reports I get from other friends, faculty.

@StrongBad It's not that simple. At least in my R1 science/engineering department, there are two orthogonal species of money.  Money to pay regular faculty salaries, staff salaries, TA wages, and basic education infrastructure all comes from a combination of state support (ha ha) and tuition.  On the other hand, RA wages, faculty summer salaries, faculty startup packages, and basic research infrastructure are all paid either directly or indirectly from grant money  Neither species of money can be used for the other's purpose.  Both species of money are essential.

@JeffE Interesting. So as I understand your comment, a department needs both sources of money to support a new professor. So then whichever species is the lowest becomes a limiting factor, right.

@JeffE to quote you tl;dr: Money is fungible I think it is difficult to track things like grant overhead.

@krishnab For public universities, "Allocations from the state" also make up a major part of the budget.

@StrongBad Not only their income, but prestige also comes from reseach. A Nobel laureate professor in STEM makes a school much more prestigious than a good teacher.

@StrongBad General revenue money (state+tuition) is fungible.  Research money much less so.  Exchanging one for the other is nearly impossible.  (In particular, paying regular tenure-track salaries from grant overhead is verboten at my university.)

Where did you get that "more of 50% of time teaching"? Actually the graphs on that page show the opposite.

"Mentoring grad students" should arguably be counted more as research than as teaching. Here is a test I'd propose: if the mentoring gets the mentor on a publication as an author, then it's research - otherwise, it may be teaching (or mentoring sensu strictu, which is something else yet).

@FedericoPoloni I looked at a few places. First, there is that greenish looking table at the very bottom of the post that displays data on NCES survey info. So that shows the percentage of time spent on teaching as above 50% for every category. Also if you look at the response by Franck Dernoncourt, at the top he has a comment that says: "Only 17 percent of the workweek was focused on research and 27 percent of weekend time." But this was based just on a survey at his school. So that is how I derived that conclusion.

Because they don't spend most of their time teaching.  For example, officially the expectation is that I spend half my time on research, a third on teaching, and a sixth on service (e.g. administrative responsibilities).

Okay @Noah, that is great. I see how your job expectation is laid out. Then do most professors in your department get funding through grant money, or is it still through student tuition? I have not been able to find any real good numbers on what percentages of academic faculty salaries are paid from which sources. Thanks for the info.
I ask about grant money because I keep hearing how much harder it is to get grants nowadays. So that is why I am asking how most faculty get their research funded.

It's paid out of the general budget, there's no way to answer that question.

At any rate, in a math department it would be extremely unusual for grant income to come anywhere close to paying for faculty salaries.  But it's still complicated.  Some of our faculty (lecturers) are hired to teach, and they do a lot of teaching, but if we only had lecturers the experience in upper level major classes would be quite different.  Graduate students do a lot of teaching, but need to have an advisor who is primarily a researcher.  Research lends prestige which helps in attracting students and in fundraising.  It's all hard to tease apart.

Okay. I have most experience in the math and social science departments, but from the student side. I am actually working on modelling the faculty hiring process, so teasing apart these factors is what I am trying to understand :). Of course I am working with one of the dean as well as some other faculty members, but this question was just bouncing around in my head for the past couple of days.

Math is a bit weird here in that we're technically a science, but don't have the same equipment budget as a typical science department and so are bringing in way less grant overhead.  In some ways we're more like a Spanish department surviving on teaching a ton of intro level classes for students who aren't our majors.  But you can't have strong science departments without a strong math department, so to some extent science grant income is playing a role.  And we do bring in some grant income.

On the more extreme end, I have 0% teaching obligations.

@NoahSnyder While true, this doesn't really doesn't go far to answer the question.  Do you think when your department hires they give as much consideration to to a candidate's service and teaching combined as they do to their research?  Certainly that isn't my experience, and that imbalance does require some explanation.

One contributing factor is that research ability is much easier(*) to measure than teaching effectiveness.
Beyond some level of basic competence, how effective a professor is with students depend quite a lot on the characteristics of the student body.  A professor can be quite effective with a certain student body but quite inept with another.
Teaching evaluations give very little information about how effective a teacher someone is; they just say how popular a teacher is with their students - which is not the same thing.  Generally, it seems that professors get better evaluations if they spoonfeed material to students and don't make their classes too challenging, telling the students what they need to write on exams rather than getting them to think.
Peer evaluations don't seem too useful either; a peer can only spend so much time observing a class, and the effects of a professor seem to be too subtle to measure over an hour.  Also, just because someone is a good teacher doesn't mean they know what to look for to judge whether other people are good teachers.
Student performance is too variable and dependent on the group of students.  Also, what we would really like to know is whether students develop over the course of their studies the ability to contribute original ideas to complex projects related but not identical to material they should learn.  This is hard to measure within the context of a single course/module.  For example, it happens frequently that a curricular unit is originally introduced (as one of the last in a course/module) to get students to synthesize for themselves various ideas they should learn in a course, an exam item is introduced to test whether students have managed to synthesize all these ideas, but, over time, students and instructors become accustomed to the particular (type of) exam item and this curricular unit becomes teaching students how to do this exam item by rote.  Exam results look better, but learning has been diminished.  (It doesn't help that such an evolution typically improves student evaluations even as it destroys the aim of this curricular unit!)
(*) Maybe it's not actually easier.  However, there is a research community that is willing to volunteer (as reviewers and editors) and able to do this evaluation and report reasonably accurately on it, whereas an institution has to do the work of evaluating teaching effectiveness by itself since it depends much more on local factors.

While I do not think it is the main reason, it is definitely a good point. Also, one is expected to get better in teaching with time, but in research, if you are hopeless in your 30s, no one assume you will be a genius in 20 years just because of experience.

I think this state of affairs may be easier to understand if we look at it in this direction:
University needs good researchers because that is a core part of their mission --> now that we've got these great researchers on board, let's have most of them (but not Fomite!) teach too, since teaching is a core part of the university's mission too, and since a great researcher would understand the material inside and out.
If you go at it like this, great teaching will be icing on the cake, not fundamental from the ground up.
There are smaller "liberal arts" schools that supposedly emphasize great teaching.  (Maybe I've had bad luck, but the ones I visited were disappointing.  My conclusion was, the best thing a student could do, when shopping for a university, is enroll in a large institution and then pick and choose the best instructors.)

Yeah, I see what you are saying. I work at a large public research university as well, but the teaching aspect is just terrible. Especially here in the USA, there costs have been rising and funding falling, so much larger class sizes and fewer teaching assistants, etc. Of course the situation is different at private universities which have more money. But I have never understood why good students come to these universities with such little commitment to teaching. And now of course so many courses are taught by adjunct faculty, so the students don't get to learn from top faculty anyway.

Of course, I can only talk about my own anecdotal experience at my university. My undergrad experience was also at a large public univ and was excellent. But I think that most students would probably gain a lot more from going to smaller universities, especially for learning the fundamentals. So it seems like an unstable system since the students at the big universities probably learn less than students at smaller universities where they get more attention.

You asked many different questions in your question.
I'll only be addressing some of them in my answer.
In my opinion,
the reason why tenure-track professors are hired
on the basis of their research rather than their teaching
is due to the following reasons.
I have ordered the reasons from what I think are
the most important reasons, to the least important reasons:

The professors in an academic department
care about hiring the best researchers
because that would affect their school's research ranking.
For example, in business schools,
there is a ranking of business school research known as
The UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings.
This is an objective and measurable way
to rank business schools in their research,
although you could argue about whether
quality is more important than quantity.
On the other hand,
it is extremely difficult to accurately measure the teaching quality
of a particular academic department.
For example, how do you objectively measure and compare
the teaching experience of say
Harvard Business School versus Stanford Graduate School of Business?
I imagine that if there were a magical way to measure teaching quality,
and schools could be objectively compared on this metric,
schools would try to improve their teaching performance and their ranking.
Finally,
it is not true that the hiring committee does not consider
a job candidate's teaching ability in a hiring decision.
Typically, there is a 1-hour research presentation
as part of the tenure-track hiring process.
In my opinion, the ability of a candidate to explain his/her research clearly
has moderate correlation with the ability of the candidate
to do a "good enough" job of teaching students in a lecture setting.
If a candidate is extremely brilliant,
but shows poor presentation and social skills,
that would definitely count as a negative in deciding to hire this candidate.

I'd like to add a few important points. Tenured positions in many universities are a way to attract well known, accomplished academic staff. Having famous professors increases prestige of the university and makes it attractive to potential students, who in turn are willing to pay higher tuition. That's the business side.
Another important point is that in many fields you have to be a good and active researcher to be a good teacher. For example, in my field of economics, we always have to stay up to date with current research. Things change so quickly that in 10 years the same lesson plan doesn't only become obsolete, it can become plain wrong. That doesn't apply to all fields, but it applies to many. In engineering fields, for example, there is a constant struggle to make things simpler, easier, and more efficient. Being an active researcher shows that the professor is at least aware of the new and better things that are out there.

From the perspective of a smaller school whose faculty do not spend a majority of their time doing research. In no particular order:

Successful researchers have to be current with their field. The world moves pretty fast today, especially in STEM fields. A great teacher who is 5-10 years behind the state of the art is going to be less valuable to our students than a decent teacher who stays on top of things. Even if you only publish once a year or every other year, that still means that you have to bring yourself up to date every 12-24 months. Most people have had the experience of a woefully out of date professor, and it's a horrible experience.
Small research projects create opportunities for students outside the classroom. In particular it creates reasonable undergraduate research experiences, which are vital for students who are considering graduate school. Without these opportunities during the semester our students' only option for an informative research experience would be an REU at another location after their sophomore or junior year.
Our department doesn't have a doctoral program, but we're a part of an R2 school whose administration would like to see more research being done. This creates downward pressure from the administration to hire researchers, and lateral pressure from colleagues to do so. For example, the university tenure guidelines require a reasonable amount of research activity for an R2 institution. Even if our department decided that we all just wanted to be great teachers and forget about research, the university wouldn't approve anyone's tenure case. Not having any tenure-track positions would effectively end our department.
Most Ph.D. holders do not have any formal educational training. We all tend to be mediocre teachers in that respect (especially out of grad school). If your options are between two mediocre teachers, but one of those people has a better research track record, why wouldn't you pick that person?

I will object to your statement, "I know that the hiring criteria for the research universities focuses on publication records with little if any concern about teaching evaluations and such." Universities do not want to hire bad teachers. If you had two otherwise equal candidates for a job, but you knew that the first of them was a bad teacher, you'd offer the job to the second person. Likewise, if you had two otherwise equal candidates and one of them had great evidence of being a great teacher, you'd be inclined towards the great teacher.
However, objective teaching evaluations are hard to get for anybody, and especially for graduate students who have had little teaching experience. It is true that a research-oriented position will more highly value research qualifications, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, teaching-oriented positions aren't given a pass on teaching qualifications. It's becoming more standard as these positions become more common for those who apply for lecturer/teaching oriented positions to be asked to give a sample lecture. For teaching-oriented positions any evidence of good teaching such as past favorable evaluations or teaching grants or awards would be taken into account in the hiring process as well.

I think part of the answer here is that in most fields we just don't need that great teachers. At this age student in a good university are expected to pick up the material themselves, esp nowadays with all the textbooks and supplementary information available. If you need someone who spoon feed you everything you may be not ready for university. So a good average teacher can do most of the work, and his/her research experience, knowledge of the cutting edge techniques of the field is the more important part, that textbook does not contain. Sure, good/ better than average teacher can be helpful, but less harm if they are not, one should be able to make up without them.

Hmm, I hear what you are saying and I agree that good study skills are crucial. But the challenge is that all of these students enter the university at very different levels of ability and skills. I think the biggest predictor in the success of a student in a class is whether that student has been exposed to the material before. In such cases, it is important to have both good teachers as well as available resources and a strong student commitment to learning. Hence teaching still seems to still have a big role.

That is not true. Most material covered in universities are new for the students, and they apparently able (and they should be) master it with little help.


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For interview questions about innovative or engaging teaching, is it OK to say I give lectures in the standard way?
If asked a teaching question in a interview for a math professor position about how you engage students or innovate your teaching, would it look bad if I say I'm just a traditional lecturer, teaching either using the board or slides or both?
This is in fact how most people lecture in my experience, it works fine, and the interviewers probably know this. And students like it, but somehow it feels almost shameful to admit it.
"I engage students by giving clear and insightful explanations of concepts [include some examples], using a standard lecture format with the board or slides."

"it works fine, and the interviewers probably know this. And students like it". Consider that you may be wrong on all of that. It works for some. Some students like it. But many have no experience of anything better.

@Buffy The OP should also consider than their "clear and insightful explanations" may be neither. Who reviewed their lecture slides? Who's sat in on the lecture see and given them honest feedback? From an engineering background, the most important concept isn't covered at uni, and it's "we all get things wrong". The review process ensures we've all got each other's backs, so the end result is better. It may be painful, but it isn't personal.

While I agree with many things said here, a lot of the answers here seem to conflate innovative/engaging teaching with "active learning"/flipped classrooms.  You can spend most of your time lecturing and still be innovative and engaging.

@Graham If it is traditional lecturing I assume there should be no slides to review. A chalk and a blackboard id the traditional (and my favourite) tool. I do start the computer if illustrations in the form of videos or photographs are appropriate.

Also, a blackboard lecture can easilly be more active than a beamer one.

@VladimirF From my time at university 20 years ago, having slides was unusual and "progressive". Not one lecturer could possibly have been described as active, nor as a good educator. Not one lecture was clear or insightful. And not one lecturer cared that that was the case. In the UK there's been a lot of work on standardising and improving primary and secondary education, but university education is mostly characterised by disdain for "new ideas".

Sounds like one of those questions where the expected answer is one you can best learn in a bookshop, memorising the ad stuff written on the back of books titled "innovative teaching" and "lectures 4.0".

In any case, you should be prepared to talk about teaching in a positive way. Whether you teach in an innovative or traditional matter, show your interviewers that you care about teaching, that you put thought into what you do in the classroom, and that you have achieved good results.

How People Learn is a good reference.

When someone asks in an interview, no-matter what the topic, which cutting edge approaches interest you, they are subtly asking three entirely different questions (in order of severity):

Are you even exposed to any of them (which shows an interest in your subject in general)
If yes, do you have an opinion on any of them (which shows leadership, independent thinking)
Can you justify it with evidence (which shows critical thinking, experience etc)

Saying "no" is like answering "no" to all of the above.
Your answer is effectively saying "no I know nothing about that, nor do I care to know or have to justify myself".
Even if the end-message of your answer is that at the end of the day you prefer traditional teaching, your answer will be much better received if it first shows knowledge of all the cutting edge techniques in the field or even some experience in trying to adapt them to your own teaching, which show promise in general and which do not, your personal opinion on what works and what doesn't, why, how it fits your particular style or not and why, how you think students benefit or not, or tend to respond in each, and why you feel that traditional teaching trumps all of the above based on your experience, and critical judgement of the competitor methods.
Contrast that with "no I just teach". Doesn't sound so professional does it?

As for that last sentence, it might be worth juxtaposing "lecturing" and "teaching". The traditional style is really "lecturing", which is one way of teaching but neither the only nor the best way to teach.

Very good answer. My university uses the concept of "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" (SOTL) - when they ask about modern teaching, they don't want to hear that you are indiscriminately using a zoo of fancy techniques in each unit, what they want to see is that you reflect and evaluate your teaching (and are open to the possibility that "how you have been taught" or "how you have always taught" might not be ideal).

Yes, you should be able to discuss a recent SOTL article for your discipline even if you disagree with it.  Also you should be able to discuss how you know whether your own teaching methods are effective (i.e. assessment).   Based on exam questions is not a good answer.

Well, it is good to be honest, of course, but if they are interested in "innovative" teaching methods you aren't helping yourself. If they are asking the question, I'll guess that they are looking for innovation and modern methods of course delivery.
But, rather than being dishonest, I just suggest that you take some time to investigate things like "active learning" and the psychology of learning. Lecture reaches only a portion of your audience.
I suggest a book that might help you think about the issues: The Art of Changing the Brain by James E Zull.
At a more detailed level, things like the flipped classroom are worth investigating.
But not every institution will have these concerns. There are plenty of places where traditional methods of instruction are widely used without issue. This particular place may just be a poor match for your skills.

Please take the discussion about merits and demerits of innovative teaching techniques to this chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment, and please everyone be nice: there's no need to be  offensive when expressing disagreement.

You should, of course, give an honest answer to this question.  If you say that you use active learning in your classes then you're likely to be asked follow-up questions about how you teach- You won't be in a good position to answer those questions.
Some mathematics departments in the US have made significant efforts to change pedagogy and seen good results.  Other departments are still very conservative about this.  If you're being asked about this in an interview, then you can assume that it is something the department is interested in and that you might be expected to adjust your teaching if you're hired.
I've served on a total of five search committees over the past 10 years.  We regularly include this in our prepared set of phone interview questions.  The majority of applicants seem to struggle with the question because they simply aren't familiar with the topic.  Candidates who are knowledgable about the topic (even if they prefer a more traditional style of lecturing) are more likely to be shortlisted for an on-campus interview.
I'd encourage you to spend some time learning about these approaches and experimenting in the classes that you teach.

If asked, you probably don't just want to say, "I don't do that". I've been in roughly similar positions and I sympathize, and agree that the question can be a little silly/boilerplate depending on who is asking it and how. Traditional lectures are perfectly defensible, and it's quite possible that current fads will swing out of favor at some point.
You should prepare some answer which is true and demonstrates that you care about your students and the quality of your teaching. Here's a menu of some possible options. Most will require some future time commitment to your teaching, which is likely what they're looking for.

"I've done research on different pedagogical methods, and I see that methods such as flipped classrooms reduce equity for minority and weaker students. Since I'm committed to equity for those disadvantaged students, I've tailored my methods to increase and improve on my fully guided instruction". This should likely be tailored to the student population in question. E.g., if you're teaching a population of uniformly very well-prepared students, then flipped classrooms might be a good idea; if the students are more disadvantaged then it wouldn't be.
"I keep a comprehensive database of statistics on my lessons and associated outcomes. After each semester I perform an assessment on those and look for opportunities for improvement, editing and updating my lesson plans and homework projects accordingly." Note that data-driven program assessment is a major requirement of accreditation bodies, so saying that you'll be happy to interface and help with that work institutionally is a big plus. (This helped to slot me into head of assessment for my department, which is my primary service work.)
"I can cite my past student evaluations as showing that I'm a very successful teacher. I keep a close eye on those evaluations, and look for particular areas that I can improve. For example, in the past I was getting a lower score in category X, and therefore I took action Y, and now my score in that category is significantly higher." This assumes you have such evaluations available, and you really have an example of a successful response to them, of course.

Those are all some efforts I've made in the past to bolster and support my traditional-based, fully-guided lecturing at U.S. open-admissions community colleges. As a side note, I'll point out that I've regularly had students address me at the end of a semester and ask, "How did you come up with this revolutionary teaching method? I've never seen anyone do it this way!"
In summary: Think in advance about what efforts you're making to improve your teaching on an ongoing basis (and you should have such a process!), and then have an intelligent conversation about those.
(*) More on the referenced recent study critical of flipped classrooms: See Setren, et. al., "Effects of the Flipped Classroom: Evidence from a Randomized Trial", Annenberg Institute at Brown University (2019). Randomized trial conducted at U.S. West Point military academy in math and economics (N = 1328 students). Overview article at Education Week. Recommended reading.

Hmmm. I don't consider giving six year olds access to iPads a positive educational practice, and it certainly isn't what is meant by a "flipped classroom." And "fully guided" doesn't equate to lecture, nor is it an argument against the flipped classroom.

@Buffy: You seem to have misread the linked article. Highlight: "A similar effect has been found for 'flipped' courses, which have students watch lectures at home via technology and use class time for discussion and problem-solving. A flipped college math class resulted in short-term gains for white students, male students, and those who were already strong in math. Others saw no benefit, with the result that performance gaps became wider."

Since that article is so focused on technology in the classroom, I tend to doubt their conclusions about the flipped classroom. If what they studied is also tech-heavy then I find it easy to question the results. It certainly isn't what I mean. Words are easy to misuse. One use of the flipped classroom is that the instructor can focus on those students who need the help most and can even enlist the superstars to help. It isn't about where things happen, but about what happens when people are together.

@Buffy: I asked the author for a citation to the recent study on flipped classrooms, and added that to the bottom of my current answer. Thanks for inquiring about that.

Surely if flipped classrooms actually reduce equity for minority and weaker students, then it is not justified to continue using these techniques on the grounds that the school is already dominated by elite white students. The fact that a school is already grossly unequal is not a reason to continue using methods that entrench it further.

@Bobgom: Good point. I've edited that sentence to focus on the strong/weak distinction, not white/non-white. Hopefully that's more defensible.

The examples you have given are neither innovative nor teaching activities.  They are good things to do.

Sorry, but the paper you cite is badly flawed. It discusses a "model" for a flipped classroom that few who do that would recognize. The experimental methodology is also fatally flawed. Sorry that SE doesn't give me a way to expand these comments fully. But beware.

Most important, the conclusion in the paper that the flipped classroom disadvantages minorities is just a consequence of a poor experimental design. The design itself advantages cultural and economic majority students. The classroom design used in the experiment would be malpractice if extended.

I've given a long form critique of the paper mentioned at the end of this post on Math Educators: https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/a/17665/8756. The question asked there is more specifically about teaching methodology.

@Buffy: I've read your critique and don't find it to be compelling. E.g., the model used (such as watching videos alone) is very standard and matches multiple sources in the bibliography, for example Schaffhauser 2016: "Fifty-five percent of the survey respondents said they are somewhere along the spectrum of flipping all or some of their courses, in which they ask their students to view videos or some other digital matter online before coming to school..."

I find this entire answer objectionable. You start off by dismissing the flipped classroom model as a "fad" that will "swing out of favor", and then cherry-pick studies. The answer reads like you are interested in digging out ways to avoid the technique without having to go to the trouble of actually learnijg about it. You don't have to dig far to find basically everything Buffy said in his critique verified. My top Google result for "flipped classroom best practices" (no quotes) pulls up an article explaining the basics very well, and it echos every one of Buffy's objections to...

... the study you cite without being about the study at all, it's simply a basic overview of the technique.  https://www.hanoverresearch.com/insights-blog/best-practices-for-the-flipped-classroom/. Student and teacher buy-in are central, but so is choosing appropriate lessons.  It further stands to reason that any pedagogical approach you take must be reasonably supported by the other things you do (e.g. group work in class) or they will simply not do as well as they should. If your understanding of the model is fixed at "make them watch videos and don't teach", then you are justified in...

... ignoring the approach. But that's just doing it badly.  Bad enactment doesn't reflect poorly on the model, only on the teacher.

I think it depends on what kind of school you are interviewing at and who the interview is with.
If it is a teaching position, then this answer is not great. You should be honest, but you can add "I'm open to learning more about problem-based teaching or flipped classrooms but I haven't had experience with that kind of teaching yet." Do some research. Do "modern" teaching methods help in your field? Maybe they do.
If this position is a research position with some teaching, then your answer matters less, but probably the same answer as above is a good strategy. Say what you have done, but be excited about learning to improve your teaching.

If they ask the question, the answer is probably important.

If you've considered the other teaching methods out there (such as problem based learning and flipped classrooms) and come to the conclusion that these are not for you or that you believe they are not better than traditional methods, my practical advice on how to answer this specific interview question would be to twist the question and instead answer "How do you keep your students engaged?"
In other words, when teaching in a traditional way, on a whiteboard or giving a lecture, how do you engage your class? How do you make your lectures interesting, exciting and effective at conveying the important concepts?
If you can express that well I think you'll have passed this interview question.

As someone from a humanity's field that uses teaching as an intervention technique I know I would never answer I use the standard way.
Standard way is a meaningless term. Whose standard way?
I had to integrate theory and self to teach or train. I have a toolkit of theories I can choose from depending on the specific circumstances.
I would suggest you include your educational theories that your standard way practise is based on.

In mathematics there is a standard way, to some extent.

Of adult education theory?

Of adult education theory.

There is actual research on even the question of board versus slides. Board is better, possibly because it slows the lecturer down; possibly because  it sometimes models making mistakes as a normal part of work for everyone; possibly because it models an actual process of problem solving.
So if you really want to insist that you "lecture" I think a good answer is to talk about the idea that what you mean by lecture is not that you stand in front of a room reading off of slides (or possibly writing on the board and never looking at students).  If nothing else, most students cannot maintain focus for a full hour so you should talk about how a good lecture will have a break in the action every 15-20 minutes and what you do to make that happen. Again this is about knowing the research on what happens in classrooms.
For example: check understanding  by asking questions (not "do you have any questions?"), have students do a problem, have them write something.
Also you could do exit tickets where you ask students to write something (such as what the most important thing they learned today was or what was confusing)or the definition of a term, collect and review to improve the next class.
Even "standard" lectures can be improved, there is literature on that, and as someone who wants to do well at your work who is also a scholar you should be reviewing that literature just like you do for your research.  That's what they are looking for.
Also, if you don't preface your response with something like "Well,  of course this depends on what the course is, teaching senior math majors  in  a seminar course is going to require a different approach than teaching a course oriented to the general student population." you have missed the boat entirely.

I would keep it simple and not over think the question.  Your prepared answer should touch on:

Differentiated learning -- Customer focused and adaptive.  Every student is different, you know.
Education Technology --  https://edtechmagazine.com/ has lots of buzzwords.
A couple references to new developments in pedagogy and how you are dying to try them out.

Then flip the question back on the interviewer and ask how the institution supports “innovation and engagement” in the classroom.  Listen with rapt attention like on a first date and wait for the offer.
Or
You can do the hard work of self-reflection, discussion and research to become an excellent teacher no matter what process or tools you choose to use.
Good luck

Differentiated learning, if I understand correctly what you are taking about, is highly controversial.  If you want to use it, be prepared with evidence to justify the costs.

No, it is not okay to say you lecture in the traditional way.  There are many high quality experiments showing that a wide variety of teaching methods are better than the traditional way of lecturing.  Further, traditional lecturing disadvantages students who are historically underrepresented.  For example, in my field male students are better prepared to learn from traditional lectures than female students.  If I lecture, it will be harder for female students to learn and many of them will give up.
In short, if you say in an interview you are lecturing in the traditional way, you are saying that you are unethical teacher.  You are saying you use less effective methods.  You are saying you use discriminatory methods.
Also, don't say you use flipped classroom.  That's no longer innovative.  It's cliche.

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text:
possibility of transfer from a fixed-term Lecturer to a continuing appointment
Recently, I have got an Lecturer position in a UK University. However, when I got the offer letter, it said that "The appointment is for a fixed-term of five years, with the possibility of subsequent transfer to a continuing appointment." It seems to me that this is not a permanent position.
I am wondering how much possible one can transfer to a permanent position after five years. Is it suitable for me to ask this kind of questions to my Head of School? Thanks.

If you don't mind me asking: is this one of these positions which starts off as mainly research, with the plan that after five years you become permanent if things have gone satisfactorily? I'm vaguely aware of these existing in my own discipline, but they seem to be a relatively recent development

By way of contrast, the default Lecturer position in my discipline in a UK university has a contract of the form "your continuous employment starts on [this date], and your probationary period will end on [other date]"

Having done some looking around, your position sounds similar to one of these 5-year RCUK fellowships which are intended/hoped to transition into an indefinite (i.e. permanent) position. Could you confirm if your job offer is of this form?

In any case, I find it somewhat surprising that having gone for interview, this was not made clear to you at the time, and you should definitely seek clarification on this from the Head of School at the place which has given you an offer

Downvoting, pending further clarification from the OP about the particular details that would allow one to give a proper answer to the question

I suspect what it means is that if there is a position available you will be welcome to apply for it but you may not get it.
You are certainly entitled to ask the head of school for clarification.

Yes, you should definitely ask the Head of School for clarification of the process.
As an aside, I'm on a similar line at a U.S. school: full-time Lecturer (dedicated service/teaching, no research) with a 5-year clock before being approved for a CCE (Certificate of Continuing Employment, with protections analogous to tenure).
Note: The aside is not meant as a prediction of the OP's UK situation, but only to sketch out a wider universe of possibilities (contrast this example to Mark Joshi's prior answer/suspicion). Thereby highlighting the actual answer: OP must inquire at his local institution.

UK labor law is sufficiently different from US, that I don't think your experience is mm useful here.

I second @StrongBad: this is UK/EU stuff, and the teaching/research/tenure systems are very different

@YemonChoi Is most of the EU that similar to the UK?  I have a little knowledge of the UK system, but I was under the impression that it was fairly different from most of Europe.

My aside was not meant as a prediction of the OP's UK situation. Added a note above to clarify that.

@Kimball It's different, but some of the constraints/opportunities are a consequence of (interpretations of?) EU directives. See the closing para of http://julesandjames.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/what-did-eu-ever-do-for-us.html

@YemonChoi: Thanks for that link. I'll point out that the paragraph you highlight actually does suggest a very similar line in the EU/UK to the one I described above: "The widespread RCUK fellowships (5 years of research which converts to an open-ended lecturer position) were one obvious response to the change in the law."

Daniel, my point was merely that the expectations and norms of UK vs North American academia are very very different, even if the outline of the contracts does look similar. For example, no protections analogous to tenure; far less emphasis on teaching; and so on

On the other hand, your clarification of your answer makes sense

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text:
How to motivate myself to do more than the bare minimum that is required of me?
First, I should assure you this is a question about life in academia.
I am currently studying for a Master's degree in mathematics at a top university. I also have a Master's degree in Artificial Intelligence from another top university.
I get a lot of pleasure when I study and understand new ideas. I won't say studying mathematics is easy but in general I do not encounter significant difficulties to understand theorems and proofs when I sit down and go through them. I have also done a fair amount of research. I am preparing for publication my previous Master's dissertation and my current supervisor wants to take me on for a PhD.
I know I can handle research and I know I can understand thoroughly a subject.  However, I feel extremely superficial. I almost always do the bare minimum. For example, the way I study for an exam involves reading all of the lecture notes to get a feel for the general ideas. Then I understand how these ideas fit together. I go through some of the details and I ensure that in principle I could understand them.
At this point I get in a conflicting state. I feel complacent because I have determined that in principle it is just a matter of time to work out the details and this just feels tedious. When I do try to work out the details I feel extreme repugnance. Forcing myself to do it leads to breakdowns but I've learned to manage that. This struggle continues with the result that I usually get an A or a B or the bare minimum to satisfy my supervisor if I'm working on a research project.
I cannot overcome this dreadful feeling and this issue often stands in the way when I try to develop my own ideas. The first glimpse of understanding the principles of a concept leads to inability to invest any more effort in developing my ideas. Then, I find myself reading some easily digestible article on the internet.
I want to continue doing research and stay in academia. But I often feel helpless. I have tried a lot of schemes to motivate myself, including trying to talk myself into persisting, reading self-help books, and devising an axiomatic system to explain to myself what it means to be interested in something.
There is of course incremental improvement but far from efficiency. I cannot imagine myself doing anything else but research. However, I feel that once I get into pure research and there is no more explicit structure I would get completely lost.
How can I motivate myself to persist in such a situation? How can I overcome such complacency?

Is your problem lack of motivation or procrastination? Either way, it's been covered before. Can you explain how your question is different from those?

Also see strategies to strengthen self-discipline

This might be the more appropriate site for this question: http://productivity.stackexchange.com/

There IS a ProductivitySE? WOW! :D

Thanks for the answers. I will refine the problem a little.

In one of the related questions that was posted, someone suggested jogging. I used to jog and still do somewhat regular exercises. Just to be clear, when it comes to physical exertion, I have no issues. I don't mind putting in long hours. However, the problem is only when I have to exert myself mentally. That's where I feel superficial. Whenever I encounter a fundamental difficulty, I work hard to understand the problem. Once that's cleared, once I know that it is within my reach, however, I find it incredibly difficult to practice the concept or work out tedious details.

Wow.
While I was reading your question, I was thinking "did I just wrote that myself and erased it from my memory"? I just started my PhD in Mathematics, having obtained my Master's Degree last semester..
You pointed several problems we face as students of Mathematics who are trying to become researchers. One of them, which has drawn most of my attention, is this 'repugnance' from the details of something you already been through. I usually deal with this situation as follows: some of those details (in a proof, in a exercise, etc) are either too boring or too hard. If they're too boring, I usually make sure myself that I can remember them should I need them (in a exam, for example). If they're too hard, I usually try to convince myself that it won't be in the exam of the subject I'm studying for (this does not mean that I study only for exams!).
Whenever I am done with some subject, I choose another one to keep studying. As a PhD student I usually feel that there are a lot os subjects I should have mastered and a lot other which I should have some knowledge of. I usually use those 'confliting states' to switch to another subject which I have chosen by myself (not related to the lectures I'm attending). For example, I'm now having Several Variables Holomorphic Functions and Riemannian Geometry courses, but also reading a textbook of Theory of Foliations since I'm sure I'll need it next semester. It's not my priority though.
Now, keep in mind that you're not striving for the minimum at all times. Reaching a PhD course after obtaining your Master's degree is a really big deal. Are you really sure that A's and B's are the minimum that keeps your advisor satisfied? My advisor complimented me on my grades from Master's Degree Courses once, and it was full of B's, two A's and one ugly C!

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How should I control my nervousness, so as not to disturb my presentation on the day of a conference?
My paper is successfully accepted in a very prestigious and reputable conference, to be presented orally in one of the presentation sessions. This is my first time that I am going to give such a talk in a large academic conference. My previous experiences are my presentations for my class projects and my bachelor's and master's thesis presentations. In my previous talks, I had reviewed my presentation slides more than five or six times before the presentation and had a bottle of water beside my laptop, but still I was too nervous.
I am a little nervous about giving a presentation talk in front of a large number of students and professors. I am sure that in the day of the presentation, I will be in trouble and my hands will start shaking and my voice will be vibrating when I am going to talk, because of my stress.
How should I decrease my stress on the day of my paper presentation and better control my nervousness in my presentation? My research paper is perfectly done; I don't want my nervousness ruin my first academic presentation in a conference and the huge research my co-authors and I have done in the research paper.

I think some people are good at verbal communication and some are good at non-verbal communication.

what do you mean by "I was still too nervous"?

@Phil Despite doing lots of things such as preparing so much before my presentation, at the beginning of my presentation I was still nervous, my hands were shaking and my voice was a little unclear...

I suppose I would only consider it to be "too nervous" if it has a significant impact on your ability to communicate the message of the talk. Nevertheless there's some great advice below that will help in any case. Also, if your thesis presentations influenced the outcome of your degrees, you might have experienced a combination of exam nerves AND presentation nerves! At conference, it's people just like you and your supervisors - much less to worry about.

@Phil I really like this part of your comment: "At conference, it's people just like you and your supervisors - much less to worry about."

"I was still nervous", is this a self-assesment or could a trusted person in the audience confirm on this?

@Ghanima It is a self-assessment. However, my advisers told me many times that I was good in my thesis and class project presentations. This is my first time that I want to present my paper in a conference and this worries me more.

Well in this case (and for what it's worth) we can all agree on this: You'll do just fine! There are plenty of answers with things to do and try. Important for you of course is now to figure out what works best for you.

And just keep in mind that these people are not judging you, they are interested in what you have to say. They're on your side.

If your nervousness is really extreme (some people might actually be close to voiding their bowels in such a situation), you might consider medical management.  If you speak to a psychiatrist, they might give you some pills that would mellow you out.  If you go this route, you should practice with them.  You do not want to take them the first time at the conference and pass out or something.

This website proved very helpful for me http://www.presentationzen.com/. One other site is TED, by watching the "best" and "worst" at work, you also pick up on ideas, techniques, tips, and things NOT to do.

Are beta-blockers still used these days or did they fall out of style? That used to be the musician's trick for performance anxiety (where shaky hands were a death sentence). On the non-medicinal side, perhaps you should look up "impostor syndrome" because I detect a hint of it in your description. Nervousness usually stems from lack of confidence, and if you can realize that you're actually good at what you do despite your self-doubt that confidence boost can go a long way. After all, this place wouldn't have accepted you if you stunk :)

It may be painfully apparent to you that your hands and voice are shaking, but unless you call attention to it no one in the audience is likely to notice.  Rehearsal is the key.  I'd recommend joining a Toastmasters group so you can practice your public speaking skills.

The answers to this question should help! What do I need to ensure my presentation will go smoothly?

Nerves take different people in different ways.  I tend to speak too fast if I'm nervous. In that case one thing to practice is not rushing.  When you practice (preferably in front of fellow researchers), think about when you should pause for a good deep breath.  It helps your pacing and gives the audience time to digest.

@EnthusiasticStudent Sounds like you may have performance anxiety. Speak to your doctor about beta-blockers such as propanolol.

I strongly recommend asking your general practitioner for Betablockers, like Propranolol, the wonder-pill of choice for musicians and surgeons around the world. They reduce or even completely remove the classical symptoms of nervousness, like shaking and sweating. Unlike the more known true tranquilizers (Benzodiazepines) they are not addictive and leave your mental power intact. Overcoming your own weaknesses without resorting to "drugs" is a noble goal, but some of us simply have a natural disposition for being nervous that is incompatible with our careers and won't leave us anytime soon (;

About halfway through my very first conference talk, the fire alarm at the conference hotel went off.  Twice.  After that, I figured the worst had probably already happened, and I was a lot less nervous.

I don't want my nervousness ruin my first academic presentation in a conference and the huge research my co-authors and I have done in the research paper.

You being nervous will not ruin your research. Everybody knows that PhD students (or professors!) are often nervous when speaking at big conferences. No sane person will look at you being nervous, and hence deduct that your research has to be somehow faulty. Of course, everybody wants to be perceived "cool" in research talks, and it is certainly easier to do a great conference presentation when one is not too nervous (a little bit of tension helps, though). However, you should never forget that very little actual damage is being done if the audience sees that you are a bit nervous.

How should I decrease my stress on the day of my paper presentation and better control my nervousness in my presentation?

The best remedy for being nervous are (1) knowing your material / presentation really well, and (2) having a lot of practice (not just for this specific presentation, but of presentations in general). You do not sound like you are very experienced giving talks, so some amount of nervousness is not troublesome at all. Prepare your talk early and do at least 2 to 3 test talks in your department, until you have convinced yourself that your talk is good.
You'll probably still be a bit nervous on the big day, but don't be too hard on yourself - a bit shaky hands are not going to be any problem.

Most people in the audience won't even notice typical nerves - a decent proportion of all conference speakers will display nervous habits.  Those that have stood up there themselves may notice, very few will be anything other than sympathetic.

+1 for rationally explaining why OP should be confident. For me, confidence was the most important part. All I would add: Know what you're saying is important and worth others' time and then just focus of how to present your super awesome idea effectively. It's a sort of pride, pride in your product. Once I learned to do this, my fear of public speaking turned into something a lot more like excitement. Admittedly, it's an egotistic view, but accept it for it's practicality.

Remember that the main key players at this conference, liked your idea and accepted your paper. So you are welcome there.
Here what I did and worked for me:

First know your slides very well (material, flow, etc.)

Second, one or two weeks before the conference give the same talk to the research group your supervisor is supervising.

Third, give the same talk to your close friends.

Fourth, the day before the talk give the talk to yourself. Also, make sure you sleep enough hours.
Basically lots of repetition of the same talk.

Fifth, go to the conference, set up your machine earlier if possible, bring your laptop charger, a backup USB, and also email the slides to yourself (for the worst case).

Re point 5: First, read what the conference says and do that. For example you may have to upload onto their system on a schedule.

Despite having given more talks than I can remember, I still get quite nervous, with the nervousness exponentially rising as I come to the last moments before the talk.  I find that, past a certain point, intensive studying and recitation actually make things worse for me.  Once I feel generally comfortable with the material, it's better to take my mind off of things, so that I don't focus on the bad.
So I crack jokes and make conversation.
There's always a little setup period, while you're making sure that your slides are showing right, etc.  During that period, I chat with the audience, saying nothing much of consequence, but just getting myself warmed up.  That way, when I'm ready to start the talk, I'm already feeling conversational and my nervousness has broken.
Edited to add: One more benefit of "warming up the audience" is that some people may start smiling at you.  When I give a talk, I let myself notice the people who are smiling or nodding along.  There's nothing that relaxes me faster than somebody in the audience who is smiling at what I'm saying.

Cracking a joke once lost me a chance at an academic position. It hasn't stopped me though. Who wants to live in London anyway?

I don't think this is good advice. I would not recommend to unexperienced, nervous grad students to 'crack jokes'. Chance are high that nobody will find them funny and it will make everything a notch more awkward.

I think this is a good answer because an "icebreaker" is a good way to get the audience listening and release some nerves.  I am not good at telling jokes, so that would never work for me, but I generally try and loosen my nerves through a relevant quote, some comfortable mannerisms, or a comfortable smile as I introduce my topic.  I also shake my hands (thinking getting water off) before a talk as this gets out initial nerves.  An old english teacher taught me this and it's stuck with me.

Isn't cracking jokes a better choice for a more established researcher than me, as this is my first presentation in a conference? I have seen many older professors who talk to the audience and smile to them and this warms their talk up. Also, I have seen some younger students who smile to the audience and the audience do not find any advantage in smiling them back (I think they thought that the speaker wants to hide his imperfect presentation behind these actions)... I think that the age and reputation of the researcher is important in choosing the way how the speaker warms his talk up.

@EnthusiasticStudent In my opinion, it all depends on your personality.  If you are comfortable with a little bit of humor or small talk, it will work for you.  If not, it won't.  That's why I phrased my answer using "I" rather than "you." As for myself, I started using it as a tactic when I was still quite junior, and found that it worked well for me.

Yes, you are right. Your answers are always perfect. Thank you.

I always try to make my audience laugh a couple of times during a presentation. As you say, I also find that it reduces the tension when I catch a glimpse of a smile among the crowd. It also helps remove solemnity and a possible feeling of doom.

@DaveClarke What was the joke??

@felix Probably started with "How many professors does one need to (...)"

@EnthusiasticStudent "I think they thought that the speaker wants to hide his imperfect presentation behind these actions" You are overthinking this. Your audience is there to hear an interesting research talk (or maybe for the buffet), they are not looking for chances to rip you apart or make fun of you.

@felix: Unfortunately, it wasn't a joke. My laptop crashed while giving a presentation, I told a few jokes to keep the mood light while the laptop rebooted, it ruined my chances of getting a position. It all worked out well in the end.

Would it be helpful during the suggested "warm up" to start with something light-hearted like, "How many of you remember your first talk in front of an audience this big? Okay well at least there's some people in the crowd who know how I feel!" That could easily lead into your introduction about how happy you are to have been selected to present there, and should probably elicit more than a few smiles and some empathy.

@thanby Maybe, though it could also backfire by spotlighting your nervousness.  I personally like to keep as meaningless as possible, often just kind of narrating what I'm doing e.g., "Let's just make sure PowerPoint's my friend today... and it looks like we've evaded the tar-pit of audiovisual problems.  Great, let's get started!"

Well done for getting your paper accepted! I don't think I can add much advice about the talk itself that hasn't already been offered. A few other things I always do:

Visit the room beforehand so that I don't get lost and can visualize the presentation.
Read the instructions on A/V very carefully. If the presentation system is managed, go to the preview room and make sure that my slides look right.
Attend the entire session in which my talk is placed.
Introduce myself to the session chair when I arrive.

I once did a whole conference presentation with my left leg vibrating wildly - it hasn't happened before or since - and nobody seemed to notice!

When I was still new to presenting, I used various theatrical warmup exercises to get ready for big events. The ones that worked best for me were:

Breathing exercises. Controlling my breath focused my attention away from my nervousness.
Clenching and unclenching my fist together with breathing control.

You can find other exercises if you do some google searches for "theatre warmup exercises" or for "public speaking nervousness".

Yes - in fact, when you think of the presentation as a short one-act "play", and consider yourself the actor rather than the researcher, you can distance yourself emotionally more from the situation and perform better. In fact, a little amateur theatre experience may help your presentation skills.

Yes, breathe. It may sound silly if you've not tried conscious breathing, but actually this is the most practical and valuable tip on this page. Practice some deep steady breaths, and do some before your talk, the moment you start, periodically during the talk, and whenever you start to feel nervous or shaky. The breathing physically alters the nervousness in your body. Also, giving yourself momentary breaks for a few breaths to gather your thoughts is very helpful. Learn to be comfortable with pauses. Your audience needs pauses too, to consider and digest your material.

I recommend: practice, practice and practice again. Practice giving the whole talk so many times that you could do it off by heart. It's hard to be both bored and nervous :)

With the new requirement being to not show your boredom in the talk ;)

Practice can include alternate forms. Try casually discussing your presentation with one or a few people, just explaining what you intend to cover, as if asking for their feedback on the material. The goal is to let your presentation sink in deeper so it feels less like a performance. Another form: Go backwards through the presentation; give your final conclusion, then explain the three partway conclusions that led to it, then discuss the evidence that led to each of those, then discuss how you gathered that evidence, then cover the original question or motivation for that investigation.

In my experience it is always the hardest just before the beginning (e.g. when the person before you is about to finish their talk, or when you are walking up, or are just about to introduce yourself), however, once I start talking I usually loosen up considerably and by the end of it, I realize that it is really no big deal. Therefore, I pay the most attention to the details of the introductory few sentences of the presentation. Once that is down, the rest flows naturally. So, my advice is:

before the talk: be clear how to start your talk, practice it, so that the nervousness doesn't hinder you.
at the talk: Take a deep breath, focus on your voice (in order not to squeal, stutter, shout, etc.), introduce yourself and your work in a few sentences.
before the talk: summarize what you are going to talk about and in what order, and here I don't mean learn the whole 15min talk by heart, but a few (I find usually 3-5 enough) guidelines of at most a sentence long defining the most important parts of your work. The most important thing here is that you can develop a narration to connect those guidelines. Here are the slides also of great help.
at the talk: focus on delivering the audience a relaxed version of the paper. You know what you are going to say (the guidelines), just connect them with a story.

This approach deals very good with my nervousness, to the point at which I no longer practice my talks. I make a mental concept of the most important points while preparing the slides and focus on the introduction. Essentially, I just needed a way to overcome the initial anxiousness and start talking, after all, it is my work which I enjoy and love to talk to others about, in that sense a large audience is not that different.

Practice! I used to be very nervous, not so much anymore.
I remember preparing for my first conference talk, and it was nerve-wracking. I rehearsed the poor talk to death. The practice really paid off! The first few minutes were overwhelming - you are trying to grasp the audience, microphone, screen, and everything at the same time. The words were just unconsciously flying out of my mouth during these first few minutes while I was grasping the situation. The talk was good.
Now, I am not so nervous, but I still memorize the opening. It helps me start smoothly until I get into steady pace.

+1 on memorizing the opening. This is exactly what I do to avoid getting nervous. After a good and smooth opening, one gains confidence and it is easier to continue smoothly.

Fun fact: you can trick your body out of a flight-or-flight response by sucking on a mint or hard candy or chewing on some gum. When you're nervous like you are when you're about to give a presentation, your sympathetic nervous system is kicking in--that is, you're basically having a fight-or-flight response. If your body thinks you're eating, it kills the response. It kind of figures, "If I'm eating, there's clearly no real danger; if I'm fleeing a saber-toothed tiger, I'm not going to be munching mammoth jerky while doing it." Chewing gum or sucking on hard candies or mints tricks your body into thinking you're eating, thus your body figures there is no danger and no need to pump you with adrenaline.
Fun little trick I use all the time. Doing so also supposedly increases your mental clarity/concentration...at least according to all my teachers in high school who used to give us hard candies before tests.

It is fascinating, and can also explain stress-eating. I'd be interested to read more about it. Do you happen to have a reference for this?

I voted you up because I empathize with you and completely understand how you feel. I don't have an answer for you but I wanted to write this to let you know that your nerves can't possibly be worse than my nerves. I thought that simply saying this to you might help you. Also, there's at least one great stage actor who suffered from it.

Capua, Michelangelo. Yul Brynner. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2006. (Link)

I simply can't present to large groups of unknowns. I've never been to a psychologist, but I'm certain I'd be diagnosed with "Glossophobia". When you get to my level and you would prefer death to giving the presentation, you are in a world of hurt. Nausea, cold sweats, the shakes...all the norm for me. It has literally prevented my achieving optimum success in life. I have been living with it for about 35 years.

Agree completely with David Rose - would add a few thngs, though.
I'm myself extremely nervous when speaking in public, even a presentation to my close collegues at work gives me sleepless nights.
But - once the talk starts and You are allowed to concentrate on the speech the nervousness generally subsides. Just remember to talk slowly as one tends to speak fast when nervous (to get over with it, I presume) and that makes it hard to follow as a listener, which makes some people increase non-verbal (or even distracting verbal) signs of disattention which in the speaker leads to more nervousness - a vicious circle.
Slow - Loud - Clear
The presentation should not distract from the speech but underline it - no sentences in the slides, but keywors You use in the speech. One keyword every one or every two sentences. And try not to let it sound like print, better to construct the sentences around the keywords naturally, maybe even changing the sentences a bit every time You rehearse - the flexibility You gain will help You not to get stuck when You don't remeber the exact sentence You tried to learn by heart. Just a look at the slide and You'll remember what to say.
Don't forget to look at the audience, not only to Your manuscript (which in my case now only contains the keywords) and finally: rehearse a lot, alone and in public (family, friends, collegues, research group).

Well, you are going to hold a talk before a large audience first time.  So you are going to be nervous.  Accept it.
If you feel like you are going to make your talk incoherent, you can tell the audience in advance "well, I am not yet used to giving talks, so if you feel that any links are missing, feel free to ask".
Note that if this is your first talk, you'll likely be bad at estimating how much time you need for what.  Holding a talk in your living room will help to give a good estimate, but particularly if you allow the audience to interrupt, you should substructure your talk into more and less important subissues and put a timeline next to them.
If you see yourself falling behind, you skip less important stuff or details: the important thing is that the spine of the talk gets delivered.  Obviously, you want to do that kind of prioritization in advance since you don't have all that much organizing capacity available at talk time.  Particularly if you are going to be nervous.

Holding a talk in your living room will help to give a good estimate — But be careful with calibration.  It took me a few years to realize that for a good 20-minute conference talk, I should practice by myself in my hotel room until I can give the talk in 25 minutes.  (If I practice until the talk lasts 20 minutes in my room, I'll be done after 15-17 minutes in front of an audience.)  The adrenaline of actually speaking in front of people smooths out the false starts, tangents, and erms and uhs.

As others have mentioned, practice will help.  If you are really really nervous with public speaking, there may be a Toastmasters group nearby and they are there to help.
But, to give you a personal anecdote.  My first big presentation was as an undergraduate at the APS March meeting.  This was back in the dark ages of hand-written vugraphs and an actual, wooden, pointer. I barely heard the session chair introduce me, placed my title vugraph on the overhead projector, picked up the stick, and turned to point with it at my title as I introduced myself.
Well, the pointer went flying out of my sweaty hands, fortunately landing in the corner of the room instead of impaling someone in the front row.  At that point, and I still remember this clearly, the thought went through my head that, well, the worst that could happen had just actually happened.  Nobody laughed, the earth did not open up to swallow me, and I walked over to the corner, picked up the pointer, and calmly went through my talk.
After giving many talks and lectures, I now think it is a lot of fun to be up and talking about stuff that really interests me. So, practice your talk, realize that everyone can and will get nervous at times, but also remember that it will be just fine in the end.

There's a ton of material online for how to prepare a presentation.
Practice your presentation just as you'll give it. Arrange your space as much like the stage as you can. I had a large TV in the room where I practiced, I'd put the presso on that so it was behind me, so I could get used to working iwth it back there adn a 'presenters view' in front of me.
Don't read your presentation - you want to be like a stage actor delivering lines they know, not like the school principle reading a notice. But you should know exactly what you're going to say - not memorized, but 'now I'll say my uncertainty calculations were done by the XYZ method' .  Going over your slides 5-6 times is not enough if you're not a practiced speaker. Actually say it, out loud, over and over until you find yourself bored to death and find yourself daydreaming while giving it to the walls over and over.
Before a major talk I find myself giving the talk over and over when driving, cleaning house, etc. Near the time I deliver it, I'm hitting my timing marks within a few seconds.
Then invite a couple friends (fellow grad students are ideal) to listen.
I regularly give talks before large audiences at computer conferences, and the only solution to being scared is to be so thoroughly prepared that there's nothing to be scared of.
I have a couple little rituals. One is that I contact the organizer and find out if they'll introduce me or whatever, cause I hate that little awkwardness at the start of gthe talk.
The other is that I mentally say 'I love you, you're wonderful, you'll give a great talk' to myself right before I speak. It's incredibly doofy feeling, but does work.

As a musician, I've had a lot of experience with nerves.  One thing I didn't see mentioned here is that getting nervous has an up-side.  When your body gives you more adrenaline, it makes you a bit of a Superman/Wonder Woman.  Without that spurt of adrenaline, the music or the talk is not as compelling.
Slowing your breathing (like in yoga) is helpful.  But you need to practice a little bit every day.  Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your tummy.  When you take your breath in, feel your whole torso fill up like a balloon.  Make sure your shoulders remain relaxed and low as you breathe in.  Count the seconds as you are breathing out, and try to make each successive exhalation last longer than the one before.
If you find that your fingertips or your face start to tingle, that means you have hyperventilated, and you should inhale from and exhale into a small paper bag a few times.  This will keep you doing the slow deep breathing that will relax you, but you won't be taking in too much oxygen.


text:
What motivates professors to train Ph.D students who aren't nearly as smart as them in their schooldays?
Many professors got their Ph.D degrees from departments that were much more prestigious than the ones they are working in. So when they train Ph.D students in their current department, (I think)they may have the following comparisons, though they will never speak them out:

"When I was an undergraduate student in Princeton University, I could solve such problems much quickly than you graduate students do".
"When I was taking algebraic topology with *** in Princeton University, we covered the whole book within one semester while you guys...."

At the same time, the students may also have thoughts that they can never make achievements as big as their advisers in the future. For instance, they will get positions in departments that are much less prestigious.
So my question is, what motivates professors to train Ph.D students who aren't nearly as smart or excellent as them? Of course, I am comparing students and they advisers in their schooldays. I know professors just can't refuse students who want to work with them without strong reasons, but what makes them "feel happy" to work with students who are not nearly as good as them?

Unstated assumption: a significantly weaker student cannot be of help to an advisor. This is false. A lot of student theses are of the nature "understand some ideas the advisor has no time to fully pursue, write them up readably and correctly, and check how far they can be taken". This can be done using much less intelligence or even training than the advisor has (if such a comparison makes sense to begin with), and yet be of much use to the advisor (and others in the subject).

I also think a professor very well can refuse a student for being too slow or not smart enough or for various other reasons that might not be the student's fault. And, short of that, can drop many subtle clues to the student that an advising relationship might not work out well. At MIT, we had qualifying exams for essentially this reason: By failing a student or letting them "barely pass", an examiner can tell them "in the current state, you won't make a good student of mine".

@darijgrinberg Yes, failing to pass qualifying exams is one of "strong reasons" in my mind. But MIT is too prestigious. In many schools, passing qualifying exams still doesn't make you nearly as good as your adviser in his/her schooldays.

There are other options as well. I guess the standard is "read this book and tell me what you've learned". Depending on the book, this can be the beginning of the work for the actual thesis, but in any case it allows the prospective advisor to delay and decline as long as the student has not reasonably well understood the book.

One remark about slowness: it does not matter as much in research as you seem to think. A slow student might just get less done, but not necessarily at a lower quality or originality. So "we covered the whole book within one semester" might be just an anecdote. (My experience with people who read long books within one semester is: often they don't learn as much from said books.)

Students are still much smarter than computers.

Removed irrelevant references to "mathematics or theoretical physics".

I wouldn't think much of a professor who thinks they can accurately evaluate their students' "IQ" (or whatever) from the limited interactions they have. I don't think that's the right mindset to use for advising a student. There are plenty of reasons students can fail to perform that have nothing to do with raw ability. An advisor should be trying to address concrete actions by the student, not making assumptions in advance. If you drop a student you do it because of how they perform, not because you're making advance judgments about why they failed to perform.

"When I was taking algebraic topology with xxx in Princeton University, we covered the whole book within one semester while you guys...." I can assure you that many "average" mathematicians, even with a not-so-decent alma mater think exactly the same. Plus, they also think the same about their own lecture from 5 years ago. Ahh, the good old days…

It would be most weird if students were indeed consistently less smart and less successful than their advisors. That would mean that academia as a whole is getting dumber and dumber :) in fact, most experienced professors I know have had several PhD students that they consider smarter, more hard-working, and generally more promising than they were.

I think you overestimate how much those professors are smarter than their prospective students

As often happens, I'd disagree with significant parts of the implicit and explicit premises of the question.
For example, "as good as" traditionally makes most "sense" in the solitary-hero model of mathematics, in which there is some mystical gift/talent/genius without which one cannot reach the statospheric regions... blah-blah-blah. Further, "fast problem solving" is easy to see, but not much related to serious, long-term research enterprises, so to think about "solving problems faster" is misguided (I claim).
Yes, it is convenient for an individual (as it was to some degree for me years ago) to do well in contests, because this is an easy "success" to put on one's resume. In contrast, a natural affection for mathematics is hard to document, hard to "show", and so on. Many in my cohort at Princeton years ago had done very well on the Putnam, but turned out to not really like genuine mathematics (without quick gratification) enough to finish their PhD.
And, really, should one care in one's heart about the prestige of one's workplace? Sure, in some practical regards it may have advantages in pay and "status", but there are equally obvious downsides: pressure to generate status, as possibly opposed to genuinely advancing our collective understanding (for example). Tension and stress. Who needs it?
My own preference is for students who are genuinely interested in math, as opposed to viewing it as a career choice or a vehicle for ego. (E.g., some of my students who manifested a sort of mathematical "Oedipal" complex created needless troubles for themselves, and saddened me as well.)
To my mind, the operational difficulty in making interesting, genuine contributions to advancement of our collective understanding is not our "lack of heroic genius", but the commodification of research, and corporatization of universities, insofar as it leads to a fake objectification of "research". For example, success as measured by federal funding dollars. Srsly? The federal government as font of sage wisdom about human knowledge? "Even" NSF is driven by its accountability to congress, and certainly never having enough money to fund all the reasonably worthwhile projects people propose.
In summary, I like talking about interesting (to me) mathematics with people who are willing to not try to sucker-punch me or prove they're "better than me", but, instead, "focus on the math". Likewise, I have no interest in "proving I'm better than" anyone else, because I am less interested in those feral (if typical human...) interactions than in understand mathematics better.
The backstory on my possibly-extreme context for valuation of mathematics is that while I greatly enjoyed reading a variety of mathematics books in the public library as a kid, I had no idea at all that a person could make a living by doing such stuff, and was entirely prepared to just "think about math" as a hobby after 5:00 pm at some engineering job. The idea of teaching high school math was out of the question (crowd control), and community college was barely plausible (and pay not so good). The idea that one could teach "as little as 15 hours a week" and think about math the rest of the time and get paid pretty well was amazing and unfathomable to me at the time.
Plus, I claim that "math is not so hard", if portrayed less strictly-orthodox-ly than is common when "requirements" are used as a club to beat people with. That is, the ground question is interest and aesthetic, not "genius" (which is kinda a fake thing anyway).
(It is true that some people think their students should go off by themselves and come back only when they've done something amazing, but this seems to me a pathetic waste of the (supposed) accumulated knowledge/wisdom of more experienced people... This ultra-Spartan model connects to the bad hero-model, in my opinion.)
Wait, what was the question? :)
EDIT: ... and I should add that the main benefit of going to a fancy place for grad school was to get the idea that mathematics was not the dreary, grim, tedious, ugly thing that it may be portrayed by people who feel that they are inadequate, or don't really like it after all, but are "in too deep". That was a great relief!!!

Great answer, IMO. I just want to emphasise that (1) you don't have to be a genius to do research, and (2) there is simply so much work to be done in almost all researchable areas that even "average" students can very much make significant contributions.

@101010111100, yes, indeed. Good to put quotes around "average"! :)

All of your answers are really wonderful to read, as a student. Thank you so much.

So my question is, what motivates professors to train Ph.D students who aren't nearly as smart or excellent as them?

In most circumstances, research is not a competition.  If I have a student who is working on a scientifically valuable project, then their work does not become less valuable or worthwhile if I have even greater accomplishments myself.  Conversely, it doesn't become more valuable if I don't.
When I supervise grad students, I hope they will make the world a better place through research and teaching.  How likely they are to do good work matters, as does how much time and effort I need to put into mentoring, but it doesn't matter whether they seem more or less promising than I did at the same age.  I might make comparisons with other students to decide how to allocate my time (for example, we do this all the time in graduate admissions).  However, if a reasonable investment in mentoring will enable someone to do good work, then I have no reason to care how they compare with me.

Prestigious education, especially at the undergraduate level, is often an indication of a student who is (from a stable fortunate background and) hard-working and bright. But I never assume that a lack of Big Names on a CV means the opposite. At the graduate level in the United States in particular, name-brand prestige is mostly hype. The best choices of graduate programs usually aren't the ones with the most impressive names, but the ones with a given field's esteemed faculty members who are top-notch supervisors.
An example: my subfield (sociolinguistics) is quite sporadically represented among the Ivy League and other super-prestigious American colleges. As part of a search committee, if I were looking at an applicant with a Ph.D. from Ohio State or North Carolina State, that would likely be a solid attestation of potential because those schools have excellent sociolinguistics labs and some prominent people in the subfield would likely have written those recommendation letters. If I were looking at an applicant with a Ph.D. from Princeton and letters from people I've never heard of, I would frown and think, "Okay...if you wanted to do sociolinguistics, why the heck did you go there?!" I mean, you never know (maybe it could be that the student is firmly tied to the local area and had no choice), but these days that would be a pretty strange route to go.
I never think about relative 'smartness' of my students; and even if I wanted to, using the name of the institution that granted the Ph.D. would be a pretty poor proxy for a measure of that. What makes me feel happy are seeing my grad students excited about the concepts and coming up with their own research ideas and joining the scholarly community and completing big papers and learning to give presentations and getting jobs of their own (in academia or otherwise, depending on the circumstances). Couldn't care less about whether the place I work has prestige in general, especially as that's mainly about undergraduate education.

Professors (in my experience) only push PhD students to right direction. It is not like they are some research buddies that work a lot alongside.
Professor is often the manager that takes some executive tasks in administration and manage the courses and their dominion on PhD and postdocs pushing the research to where the grants are made. They may have some research ideas that they execute on their underlings. In tenure track they increasingly move from your postdoc to a full professor that has only a coordinating role.
The hierarchy in academic organization is really flat, and thus there may be an illusion that the professors are actually doing research, but they seldom do have hands on the real work.
And how this links to the question is that the PhD is simply a normal underling for a professor. In this way, universities are similar to business. The professor can still get something done with the less talented person to him, that is worth value for the professor. The professors seldom do any research, so they delegate the work to their underlings. The less talented ones get tasks or research problems that they can cope with.


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How to respond to peer review - a step by step guide to my first response?
I'm in the process of responding to my first peer review (major revisions).  There seems to be a lot of advice out there, (even some stuff here: How to write good Response Letters for the reviewers) but there are still a few etiquette and structural things I'm not sure about.

How do you structure your response? Do I respond to the comments chronologically in the order they appear in the paper, or do I create two separate sections for each reviewer?  Maybe a "general" section, followed by separate comments for each reviewer?
Do I write a cover letter thanking the reviewers for their helpful comments?
How casual/formal should I be?  Should I use contractions and a conversational (yet professional) style, or keep it as formal as the article itself?
Any dos/don'ts that would be helpful for me to know?

I see that you have added the (regrettably rare) [tag:humanities] tag. Note that most users around here come from sciences, math and/or computer sciences. Conventions may be different in the [tag:humanities]. If we have anyone who actually works in the [tag:humanities], it would be great if that someone could answer, and/or indicate that an existing answer applies.

Variations are possible, but I have found that the following seems to be a fairly typically form of a response to reviewers:

Begin with a letter to the handling editor and reviewers, in which you thank the reviewers for their useful feedback (even if it wasn't) and say you believe you've addressed all comments.  If you've made any really major changes, a sentence or two here is a good to address them.
Quote the reviews as sent and address each comment inline, either saying how you've done what they wanted or explaining why you haven't.  I always organize by reviewer and address in the order of their comments (rather than the structure of the paper) because the goal is to clearly show that you have addressed all comments.

I recommend adopting a polite and semi-formal style.  You can be a bit more informal than the paper, but I still don't use contractions.
Do not get argumentative with the reviewers, and do not blow off their criticisms.  Even an apparently crazy criticism should be treated politely, and as a matter of confusion rather than as a personal attack.

Related: If 2 reviewers give the same comment about the same subject, how should you respond? Combine them in 1 comment? Answer the first, but not the second? Answer them both with the same reply? Refer to one of them from the other?

@Nzall I typically answer the first in full, then in the second say something like: "See my reply on the same issue for reviewer #1"

I recommend the following. (Taken & modified from my answer here).
How to Respond to a Review
Every time I respond to reviewers, I create a document.  I write a short paragraph thanking the reviewers for their time and state my responses to their comments are below. I copy each reviewer's comments, organized by reviewer (my preference). Beneath each comment, I write a response.  If I make a change, I specify where and how I've updated the paper. If I disagree, I state that I respectfully disagree and then elaborate on why.  I may choose to include tables, figures, or references in this document that are solely intended for the reviewers.
By doing this, each reviewer can quickly and easily see my responses to their comments as well as my responses to the other reviewers.  Where there are similar or duplicate comments, I have similar or duplicate responses to make it easier for the reviewers.  I have found this approach to work well---it also helps the editor weigh the totality of the review and my responses.
I send this PDF with the updated paper back in; my hope is that it demonstrates to the editor and reviewers that their comments have been taken seriously.
In terms of style, I prefer to write confidently, respectfully, in a semi-formal style. I explicitly address every comment, even if only by saying "changed", "complete", or "added two sentences to page 3, para 2 to clarify this.".  When I disagree, I say so respectfully and provide a narrative to persuade and/or provide clear evidence as to why I take the position I do.  I use bullets when it makes more sense to do so but I use them sparingly. I do not use a cover sheet. (Thank you to @Anyon for suggesting I add some style notes as well)

Sample Format
Authors’ Response to Reviewer Comments
Manuscript: con575r1
We thank the reviewers for their time and helpful comments - their feedback substantially improved this paper.  Our responses to each comment are provided below (reviewer comments are italicized in bold).  The references listed at the end of this response are intended for all reviewers as cited in our responses.
Response to Reviewer 1...............p. X
Response to Reviewer 2...............p. Y
Response to Reviewer 3...............p. Z
Response to Reviewer 1
Comment 1 Text
Response: Response here to include any required evidence.
Comment 2 Text
Response: Response here.
Response to Reviewer 2
Comment 1 Text
Response: Response here to include any required evidence such as tables, figures, additional results, etc.
Comment 2 Text
Response: Response here.
References
Reference list (if needed) for anything in this Response Document that is solely for the reviewers & the editor. It is not just the references from the paper.

Please see this meta answer. Personally, I think your answer is quite applicable here too, but if you can tailor it a bit more, that'd be even better.

@Anyon thank you.  I tried to be transparent by posting the link.  I feel it is already very tailored to the specific points the question poses and I'm not sure what to add right now.  If you have any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.
As I said, I wanted to disclose the use of this upfront.

I agree, and I'm honestly not sure how consistently these duplicate answers get removed. I just remembered that meta thread and wanted to point it out. However, maybe you could expand a bit on style, or do's and don't's (OP's points 3 and 4). You sort of address those points implicitly through the sample already, and might want to do so more explicitly. That's all I have at the moment.

@Anyon  Thank you for the heads up - you are absolutely correct.  Will try to make some updates.

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