Teaching

You’re reading the latest issue of Teaching, a weekly newsletter from a team of Chronicle journalists. Sign up here to get it in your inbox on Thursdays.

This week:

• What happens when you’re unable to make it to class? I describe one option available to professors at Davidson College.
• I pass along one instructor’s thoughtful perspective on how to learn and use students’ names in a large course.
• We share details on an upcoming Chronicle webinar.
• I round up some recent articles you may have missed.

Making the Most of Missing Class

Sometimes professors run into a conflict that prevents them from making it to a class period they’re scheduled to teach. When that happens at Davidson College, the Center for Career Development has a message for them: Don’t cancel class.

Instructors can instead invite staff members from the career center to cover for them. The pitch: “Let us take that time and come in and do something meaningful with your students,” says Jamie Stamey, executive director of the center.

A number of other colleges, including Elon University and the University of Iowa, advertise similar programs.

Here’s how it works. At the start of the semester, the career center sends out an email explaining the offer. It includes a link to a form that professors can fill out with the date they’ll be away; the sort of presentation they’d like students to be given; and some details about the class, like the number of students and when they’ll be graduating.

Professors can choose from a list of existing presentations, and career-center staff can tailor them based on students’ characteristics, like class year and major. Often, Stamey said, presenters will draw on Davidson’s data on what its graduates are doing six months after they finish college. For instance, presenters have shown first- and second-year students in a chemistry class how to use its tools to network with other chemistry majors.

The center asks professors for a two-week heads up about their coming absence, but does its best to help out when there’s less warning, too.

Last spring, when the career center made this offer for the first time, it got 20 requests and ultimately presented in 15 classes, Stamey says. This semester, it has already gotten 13 requests.

Offering to sub for instructors helps the career center get in front of more students. It also builds relationships with professors, Stamey says — even though they don’t usually attend the workshops themselves.

That’s something that the center is eager to do. Students respect their professors, Stamey says. When faculty members are the ones encouraging students to check out the career center, they’re a lot more likely to listen.

Ultimately, Stamey said, the center aims to help students understand how what they learn in class — and outside the classroom, too — can help their professional development. Running the sessions during otherwise unused class time is one way to help students connect those dots.

What do you do when you have to miss a class? Does your campus or department provide an alternative use of that time for your students? Tell me about it at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and your example may appear in a future newsletter.

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Your choices impact students. Choose your own adventure in this interactive video and experience the benefit of first-day digital access.**

Calling Students by Name

Learning students’ names shows you respect them and can help build community. But if you have large classes, it can be a lot of work. In a recent blog post, Cynthia Brame, associate director of the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University, describes an approach she has refined.

After reading a research paper on the benefits of using “name tents” to identify and call on students, Brame began using them in her large biochemistry course. But then she learned that a student with an anxiety disorder had stopped coming to class because “the possibility that I would call on them in class was just overwhelming.”

This encounter led Brame to a new approach. She still uses name tents, but now she lets students indicate on one side that they don’t wish to be called on that day. For more on Brame’s thinking — and to see what her name tents look like — read her full post.

Teaching Online

Looking for advice on how to be a better instructor online? On September 10, our colleague Ian Wilhelm is hosting a free webinar on the topic with Flower Darby, a senior instructional designer at Northern Arizona University. You can sign up here.

ICYMI

• How can teaching online make you a better instructor in any setting? Kevin Gannon, a professor of history at Grand View University and director of its Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, reflects on the question here in The Chronicle.
• “It’s easy for teachers to take their frustration with a few student writers and extrapolate from it a number of conclusions based solely on their own experiences, histories, and biases,” writes Elizabeth Wardle, a professor of written communication and director of the Howe Center for Writing Excellence at Miami University of Ohio, in a Chronicle commentary piece. She’s here to set them straight with some perspective.
• How can active-learning techniques be used in large courses? Bonni Stachowiak tackles that frequently-raised question in this column for Ed Surge.

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, or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.

— Beckie