Happy Thursday. Dan Berrett here to welcome you to Teaching, The Chronicle of Higher Education’s newsletter. This week we talk about how your fellow readers spark conversations about teaching with colleagues, we draw your attention to some recent articles you shouldn’t miss, and we offer a tip (with a Latin catchphrase to boot!) on how to teach students to be better judges of information.
Coming Together
When people describe the often decentralized and sclerotic nature of higher education, they like to use the metaphor of a silo. Classrooms, departments, and colleges can feel isolated from the rest of campus, which makes it difficult for faculty members to share ideas about something they have in common and often care a lot about — teaching. A few weeks ago, we asked what you do to foster teaching-focused conversations with colleagues in other disciplines. Here are some takeaways from what people shared with us via email:
Make it a thingSaint Joseph’s University held an event this spring called Open Classrooms, in which dozens of sections of courses were opened up for faculty members to drop by to watch. Based on the response, it’s going to become an annual weeklong event, says Usha Rao, the director of the Office of Teaching and Learning, which organized it.
“We all need to make time to study each other’s teaching practice,” wrote Ms. Rao, an associate professor of chemistry. “Every conversation I have with other faculty about teaching improves my own in big and small ways.”
Entice with food and drinkLight refreshments and “adult beverages” help bring West Georgia University faculty to a monthly meet-up at a local bookstore that’s owned by former students, says Muriel Cormican, a professor of German there. The casual and nonhierarchical spirit of the get-togethers, which blend the social and the professional, is intended to make them inviting. While the first few meetings were modestly attended, Ms. Cormican said, those who did come represented a variety of departments and colleges, and they left with a “tool bag” of activities to use in class. She hopes that the conversations might encourage collaboration or “even just cross-pollination,” and this may already be happening. Three professors — in philosophy, geosciences, and art — found that they were all working on projects that dealt with the idea of “home,” and they talked about getting together to talk further.
Conversations can be even more informal than West Georgia’s. At Southern Virginia University, faculty members in the business, history, Latin, and math departments get together over lunch every few days to talk about teaching. It has become one of the best parts of the day for Mark Matheson, a visiting professor of business there.
Pick a good topicThere’s nothing like a perennially sore subject to spark conversation — even if it’s the intellectual equivalent of eating your vegetables. At Saint Anselm College, the topic of two town halls was grading. “I have yet to meet any teacher who enjoys grading,” wrote Dianna Gahlsdorf Terrell, an associate professor of education. “But clearly grading is feedback, and providing quality feedback is central to the task of teaching.”
She and her colleagues grappled with lots of questions: What does a C mean? What really distinguishes a B-minus from a C-plus? Does a grade reflect sustained performance over a semester, or should it measure growth?
As she reflected on the conversation, Ms. Terrell realized several things. One was that, if dialogues like this are going to work, there needs to be a level of trust. “Teaching is a very private act and talking about your teaching decisions is making that private act public,” she wrote. “Essentially, we are putting our teaching on display for colleagues to pick apart.”
