So, what really makes a good GEES lecturer?

The issue of teaching excellence has recently received greater emphasis than, perhaps, it did in preceding years. However, there is still a debate on what ‘excellence’ really means. Lubin and Prosser (1994) define teaching excellence as something which ‘does not imply that good teaching always results in high quality student learning but that it is designed to do so and that it is practised in a way likely to lead to high quality’, whilst the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme defines a large number of characteristics that might be exhibited by an excellent teacher (Gibbs and Habeshaw, 2003). These include an ongoing engagement with the scholarship of learning and teaching, an understanding of how students learn, a promotion of interactivity, and all round enhancement of student learning. In a bid to recognize the student voice in these definitions, the Higher Education Academy, through their network of Subject Centres, ran a student essay competition, asking students to detail what made a good lecturer and what the best learning experience entailed. Ramsden (2003), reporting on the Australian experience, suggested that students identified helpful, timely, and extensive feedback, sympathetic staff, good quality explanation, and creating interest and motivation as characteristics of good teaching.However, he also points out that fun and ‘diverting exhibition’ do not guarantee quality learning. These results are echoed by other studies (e.g. Forrester-Jones, 2003; Marentic Pozarnik and Steh, 2004; Nonis & Hudson, 2004), with students also identifying personality traits as important (Brown, 2004).