The classics department requires graduate students to take a course that introduces them to educational research and encourages them to apply it to teaching in the discipline. The course, which Furman teaches, serves several purposes, he told me. One is helping the department’s grad students land jobs. Quite a few of its master’s students, he said, go on to teach Latin and related subjects at the high-school level.
Another is improving the experience of the department’s undergraduates — part of a broader strategy to keep its courses full.
By teaching its introductory courses, the department’s graduate students set its reputation among undergraduates, Furman said. Only so many students who take an intro class will ever major in classics, he acknowledged. “But we get people to tell their friends: Hey, this course was really great, I had this great instructor — and it fulfills these university requirements as well.” That, he said, is “the golden scenario for getting more and more students enrolled.”
The idea that future professors need better teaching preparation also came up in a recent conversation I had with Jim L. Borgford-Parnell, director of the office for the advancement of engineering teaching and learning at the University of Washington. Borgford-Parnell and a colleague, Ken Yasuhara, had reached out to share their thoughts on improving teaching. Among other things, they worried that existing ways of training faculty members mean that new — and not-so-new — instructors can cause real harm.
“Our concern,” Borgford-Parnell said, “is that there’s a lot of damage being done both to faculty who are struggling to teach well and to their students who are in the courses with faculty who are not yet competent teachers.”
The harm poor teaching can inflict on students seems pretty obvious. But what damage, I asked, did it cause faculty members?
Part of it comes down to professors’ attitude about teaching, Borgford-Parnell said. “They really don’t want to do it,” he said. “It’s not fun when you’re not teaching well.” Bad teachers tend to get negative feedback, he said. They develop a hard shell to protect themselves from it. And that makes it difficult for them to seek the help that would allow them to improve.
Bad teachers’ reluctance to reach out is just one challenge for faculty developers, said Borgford-Parnell. Another: College leaders are often “self-made” teachers who figured out how to succeed despite a lack of guidance — and expect others to do the same.
The solution then, he thinks, is to instill in professors early on that teaching is too complex and important to leave to a DIY effort.
Is graduate school the best time for teacher training? What form should that training take? Does your college or program have a good model for providing such professional development? Email me, at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and your response may be included in a future newsletter.
**A paid message from: AAC&U
“Global Citizenship for Campus, Community, and Careers,” in San Antonio. More information.
A Look at Digital Learning
The consulting firm Tyton Partners has released its latest survey of faculty and administrator views on digital learning, along with a set of “action briefs” intended to help colleges discuss and act on the findings.
One brief, for instance, looks to bridge the gap between the share of college administrators who “report that their institutions view digital learning as important for achieving strategic goals” and the smaller share who “believe their institutions have actually achieved an ideal digital-learning environment.”
To create that ideal environment, the report says, colleges must set clear, public goals, provide technical resources, and offer professional development.
Using Twitter as a Teacher
This month Joshua S. Goodman, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, tweeted out a set of tips for using Twitter as a researcher. “Be professional,” the first one reads, “but allow yourself to have a personality.”
That made me wonder what advice you might have for using the social-media platform to improve teaching. We often hear that good conversations about teaching can be hard to come by on campus, but social media offer another way to connect with colleagues. Have you found strategies to make that work? Are there pitfalls to avoid?
And are there particular accounts you’d recommend readers follow? I’d love to know that, too.
Send me your advice, at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and it may appear in a future newsletter.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us, at dan.berrett@chronicle.com, beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, or steve.johnson@chronicle.com.
—Beckie