I received a number of thought-provoking responses. Several readers pointed out that it’s as important to change structures as it is to motivate people. In other words, when incentives and rewards change, behavior will follow. If you ask or expect individuals to change on their own, you are more reliant on their intrinsic sense of motivation.
“For me, increasingly, and especially in my newest role, the problem is not, ‘Why won’t instructors change practices?’ but, ‘Why won’t institutions transform in order to create conditions of possibility for supporting greater attention to instruction?,’” wrote Jody Greene, associate vice provost for teaching and learning at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who was recently appointed a special adviser on educational equity and academic success. In a phone call, I asked Greene to elaborate. Here are a few of her ideas, in a nutshell.
Start early: Support new hires and graduate students as they design their first courses, so you don’t have to go back in later and help redesign them, when changing habits may be harder to do. “We have to get them at the gates,” says Greene, pointing to Santa Cruz’s New Faculty Teaching Academy.
Train faculty members to act on data: As more colleges use dashboards to help professors see which students are struggling, it’s important to provide training on effective teaching practices to help solve the problems they find. “If you don’t tell someone how to close an equity gap,” Greene asks, “why do you point it out?”
Greene notes that it’s less important to pinpoint why students are struggling, which is a common question she gets from professors. That’s because evidence-based strategies such as inclusive teaching, universal design for learning, and early interventions can address a multiplicity of problems and benefit all students. “You don’t have to know why the gap is there. The same moves will close the gaps.”
Maximize instructors’ use of time: Greene calls faculty time the elephant in the room. It’s not that professors don’t care about teaching; it’s just that they can’t add one more thing to their plate without something else falling off. That’s why course-development institutes, for example, are helpful, because they spread the labor, allowing peers and professional developers to assist in the process of redesigning your course.
“We don’t need everyone to do research on effective teaching practices,” Greene says. “We need to deliver research in a way that can be metabolized by our colleagues. And we need to do that in a way that doesn’t take too much time.”
How can colleges do that? Here are some approaches shared by other readers.
Purdue University’s Polytechnic Institute is piloting a program for new tenure-track and clinical teaching faculty members called the Teaching Excellence Collaborative. The idea is to create a community in which instructors can feel supported as they navigate classroom challenges and try out new teaching strategies, says Abrar Hammoud, a clinical assistant professor who is leading the initiative along with Greg Strimel, an assistant professor. Seasoned faculty members known for their excellent teaching serve as mentors, and the group is encouraged to visit each other’s classrooms to see how they implement new strategies. Throughout the year, participating faculty members develop their teaching portfolios, using a modified version of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Career Framework for University Teaching. They could include, for example, participation in Purdue’s Impact course-transformation program.
Through the collaborative, Strimel says, they hope to define and elevate the value of teaching excellence across the polytechnic and open participation to all interested faculty members.
The University of Alberta’s Centre for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education is designing a professional-development program called Spark-Eng (Scholarship of Pedagogy and Research Knowledge in Engineering). Kerry Rose, the outreach projects manager, says that the impetus for the program was to increase retention and diversity among students enrolled in the university’s undergraduate engineering program.
“Our 12-module set of mini-courses each includes readings, podcasts, videos, and interactive activities (all online and asynchronously delivered) with synchronous Communities of Practice meetings where the professors discuss their ‘workplace learning products’ and other learnings from each module with each other.” Rose writes. “This work is sponsored by the Faculty of Engineering, but most of the development is being done by educational researchers and experts from across Canada.”
Rose hopes the fact that the program is spread out over two years, with participants working asynchronously and coming together for a total of 12 meetings, will make it manageable. Each module is expected to take about 10 hours to complete. The plan is to begin with new hires, then eventually roll it out for all faculty members in engineering.
Talking About Teaching
The first event in our new virtual series, Talking About Teaching, is tomorrow, Friday, January 28. We will bring together a panel of experts to talk about the changing professor-student dynamic and answer your questions. You can also share advice and ideas. Interested? Sign up here.
If you miss it, you can watch the recording on demand later, or look for the next event in the series, on February 25. Hope to see you there.
ICYMI
- In this Twitter thread, Viji Sathy lists the works she and her co-authors turned to when writing their Chronicle advice piece, “How to Give Our Students the Grace We All Need.”
- Lindsay Masland started a lively Twitter discussion when she asked for examples of student-centered practices that instructors regretted because they were unsustainable.
- “Let’s not lose sight of the joy of general education,” writes Leonard Cassuto in this Chronicle advice piece, weighing in on the debate about the value of great-books courses.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
— Beth
Learn more about our Teaching newsletter, including how to contact us, at the Teaching newsletter archive page.
