Teaching

Welcome to Teaching, a weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education. This issue was put together by Beckie. This week, we’re looking at what professors do when outside forces shake up the premise of a course. Keep reading for some books and articles you may want to catch up on, as well as tips for sharing the newsletter with others who might enjoy it.

When the Syllabus Is Suddenly Out of Date

Last week, our colleague Megan Zahneis wrote about ethnic-studies professors grappling with how to discuss family separations at the border in their courses this fall. Jimmy C. Patiño Jr., an associate professor of Chicano and Latino studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, for instance, is “spending this summer talking with colleagues about how to broach the topic of family separation with students in a manner that’s both intellectual and respectful,” Megan wrote.

That got me thinking about the outside forces that might push professors to seriously rethink their syllabi. In 2016 — back when Donald J. Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric was coming from a presidential candidate, not the president — I wrote about how it shaped an Islam 101 course at the University of Florida. Teaching that subject has been complicated by news events yet again with the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold Trump’s travel ban. And given the planned retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, any course that touches on the current Supreme Court probably needs some adjustments this year. There are plenty of other examples of current events shaking up course content. It’s a testament to the speed of the news cycle that both of those examples came up just last week.

In other cases, professors find themselves freshening up courses due to advancements in their fields. Major discoveries are possible in any discipline, but some fields change so quickly that keeping the curriculum current is a constant challenge. Among them is cybersecurity, as our former colleague Shannon Najmabadi explored in this set of articles for The Chronicle’s Idea Lab section.

Redesigning a course is a major time commitment. Given this, one pre-emptive approach is to keep the curriculum flexible, a theme of Shannon’s stories.

Have you ever found plans for a course derailed by changes in your discipline or events in the news? How did you handle it? And what do you do to keep your courses flexible enough that you can respond when the context changes during the semester? Write to me about your experiences at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and I may share your comments in a future newsletter.

ICYMI

• Even seasoned instructors can benefit from having a faculty mentor as they try out a new teaching technology or technique. Read more in this recent story from Beth.
• We’ve written a lot about the problems with student course evaluations. Now, read my story about how one university overhauled its survey, and read annotated “before” and “after” questions it asked.
• It’s about a middle school, not a college, but this tale of education innovation gone wrong from Wired is relevant to anyone interested in the messy ways technology, funding, and efforts to help disadvantaged students can converge.

Tell Your Friends

As the Teaching newsletter nears its one-year anniversary (woo-hoo!) we’ll be spending some extra time reflecting on what’s going well, and where we might improve. As always, we welcome your feedback. What would you like to read about that we’re missing? Do you find anything we’re doing off target or confusing? Please email any of us to share your thoughts. Our contact information is always included at the bottom of the email.

And if you like the newsletter, please pass it along to others who might — we’re growing a readership mostly through word-of-mouth. So please, forward the newsletter, tweet it, post it on Facebook — or, if you’re interested in being a teaching reformer, print it out and nail it to the door of your department. And thanks for reading.

Recommended Reading

When we asked what book has had the biggest impact on your teaching, Dom Caristi, a professor of telecommunications at Ball State University, found himself unable to narrow it down to one title. Fair enough — during a 2017 sabbatical, Caristi wrote, he read “all or part of about 100 books related to teaching and higher ed.” Instead, he passed along the takeaways from three books that he shared in his sabbatical presentation:

• The Courage to Teach, by Parker J. Palmer: “Good teachers know themselves and have a connection to their students.”
• Drive, by Daniel H. Pink: “People who are extrinsically motivated will never rise to the level of people who have autonomy, mastery, and purpose.”
• Mindset, by Carol S. Dweck: “If I know that my students’ attitudes toward the class affect their ability to learn, what about my attitude and its effect on my ability to teach?”

Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at dan.berrett@chronicle.com, beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com, or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.

— Beckie