Back in the fall, Dan, who is now my editor, encouraged me to put some classroom reporting back in the mix. I was excited by the idea and wanted to make the most of it. I decided to focus on large-enrollment courses. I have long been fascinated by the challenges of teaching in this setting and by efforts to make it a better learning environment. Besides, I figured, pretty much every Chronicle reader has been in a well-designed course with a small number of students. The majority of our readers have probably taught such a course themselves.
But not everyone has taught, or taken, a course with hundreds of students. And even fewer readers are probably familiar with the many ways instructors have found to make this challenging project successful.
So I spent a couple of days at the University of Central Florida, where I sat in on some large classes that use active learning with the help of undergraduate learning assistants.
Learning-assistant programs are one of the unheralded success stories in college teaching. They’ve been around for a couple of decades now and operate on more than 100 campuses in and beyond the United States. Research suggests that having learning assistants is beneficial to the students taking a course. The programs enable professors to do more interactive and relational teaching at scale. And they’re a great opportunity for the students serving as learning assistants, too.
But these programs don’t get a lot of attention, perhaps because while they can improve student success, they’re not designed as a hammer to hit that nail.
There are so many pressing problems facing higher education right now; it can feel pretty overwhelming. Against this backdrop, I had some misgivings about working on a story about how to build a better learning environment. But in the end, I hope, this story is a reminder that, for students, working with professors and each other can take learning to a level that just isn’t possible by watching YouTube lectures and getting answers from generative AI. And it’s a reminder that creating that kind of classroom takes hard work and a refusal to be satisfied with the status quo. I hope you’ll read it.
When I write stories for The Chronicle’s core audience, which includes a lot of administrators, I often ask them to consider this question: Will colleges deliver on their promise to educate the students they now enroll? If you know of a promising effort to improve teaching and learning that you think more people in higher ed should be aware of, please tell me about it at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com
Syllabus solution
In recent weeks, I’ve shared a few ideas for improving syllabi and making sure that, whatever else they’re required to do, these documents clearly communicate key information to students.
Ellen Brand, a professor of English at Broome Community College, part of the State University of New York, wrote in to share her approach to this challenge:
“Our campus administration imposed a mandatory syllabus template a couple of years ago (can you tell how I feel about it?). It includes two pages of College Policies and Procedures with links, all of which are already available on the school’s website. This information overwhelms the information that is relevant to my course.
“My solution is simple — I make the college template syllabus available to the students in our LMS, but make it clear that the course syllabus, one that I have developed over the years and pertains to just our course, is the document they should focus on. This way I am compliant with the administration’s demands, but I am still able to communicate with my students in the way I see fit. My syllabus, which covers my expectations and policies for my course, runs four pages, unlike the 10-page syllabuses I have seen from colleagues.”
Help us reach students
Beth is curious about how students are using AI to learn. If you’re willing, please share this Google form survey with students you know. As noted in the form, she won’t quote anyone by name without their permission but is looking for a frank account of the many ways in which students are using AI in college.
Thank you for any help you can provide in spreading the word. And if students want to write directly to Beth, they can reach her at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com.
—Beckie
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