GenX women in higher ed from around the globe

Posts Tagged ‘Teaching’

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Communication, not Edutainment

In Uncategorized on 2011/03/06 at 12:48

Guest blogger,  Melonie Fullick, writing from Toronto, Canada

How do we, as tutorial leaders or professors, deal with the revelation that students find classes or entire subject areas “boring?” And to what extent is it our responsibility to get them “interested?” These were questions that came to mind as I read Itir Toksöz’s recent UVenus post about “academic boredom”. While she was discussing the boredom she experiences in conversation with colleagues, my first thought was that boredom is not just (potentially) a problem for and with academics, but also for students.

I see boredom as something other than a mere lack of interest. I think of it as a stand-in for frustration, which can, in turn, stem from a sense of exclusion from the material, from the discussion, from the class, from understanding the point of it all; ultimately an exclusion from the enjoyment of learning. This can happen when the material is too challenging, or when the student doesn’t really want to be in the class for some reason.

Boredom is sometimes about fear, the fear of failing and looking “stupid” in front of the instructor and one’s peers. In other cases it can also be a symptom that someone is far beyond the discussion and in need of a deeper or a more challenging conversation. All these things can be called “boredom” but often they are more like communicative gaps in need of bridging.

In other words, boredom is often a mask for something else. We need to remove this mask, because of the negative effects of boredom on the learning environment and process. It causes people to “tune out” from what’s happening, and in almost every case it creates or is accompanied by resentment for the teacher/professor and/or for the other students. As a psychological problem, this makes boredom one of the greatest puzzles of teaching, and one of those problems that most demands attention.

It’s even more important to uncover the causes of boredom now that many students have access to wireless Internet and to Blackberries and iPhones, in the classroom. Professors and TAs complain that students are less attentive than ever while in class, because of this attachment to their devices—something I’ve encountered first-hand with my current tutorial group.

I think the attachment to gadgetry comes not from the technology itself, but from the students. In my blog I’ve written about the issue with students using technology to “tune out” during lectures, and they do it in tutorial as well; they’re “present, yet absent”. To understand this behaviour we need to keep in mind that the lure of the online (social) world is reasonable from the students’ perspective. Popular media and established social networks are accessible and entertaining, and provide positive feedback as well as a sense of comfortable familiarity. Learning is hard work, and the academic world is often alienating, difficult, and demanding. It’s all-too-easy to crumple under the feeling of failure or exclusion. Facebook is welcoming and easy to use, while critical theory is not.

The other side of this equation is that in the process of negotiating and overcoming “boredom” there’s a certain point at which I can meet students halfway, as it were—but I can’t go beyond that point. Like everything else in teaching and learning, boredom is a two-way street, and the instructor is the one who needs to maintain the boundary of responsibility. I’m not there merely to provide an appealing performance, which leads to superficial “engagement.” I’m not “edutainment”.

However, I think it’s part of my job when teaching to “open a door” to a topic or theory or set of ideas. I can’t make you walk through that door (horse to water, etc.) but I can surely do my best to make sure you have the right address and a key that fits the lock. And that means using different strategies if the ones I choose don’t seem to be working.

Holding this view about boredom certainly doesn’t mean I’ve solved the problems with student attention in class; I’m reminded of that frequently. It just means I have an approach to dealing with the problem that treats their boredom as something for which there’s mutual responsibility. In an ideal learning environment there must also be mutual respect—but unfortunately mutual “boredom” is easier and often wins the day. My hope is to help cultivate the former by finding ways of unraveling the latter.

Toronto, Ontario in Canada.

Melonie Fullick is currently a Ph.D student working on research in post-secondary education, policy and governance. She previously earned a BA in Communication Studies (2006) and an MA in Linguistics (2007). She can be found in virtual space on Twitter [@qui_oui] and in the blogosphere [http://speculative-diction.blogspot.com/ and http://panoptikal.blogspot.com/].

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Are Students Intentionally Plagiarising?

In Guest Blogger on 2011/02/15 at 12:19

Janni Aragon, writing from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada

Like most instructors, I have graded more papers than I care to count. Add to this the drafts and proposals that I have reviewed and the number gets all together more daunting. Something was a bit different this term, though. I saw more issues with plagiarism or “almost” plagiarism. I was reminded about how it is easy to do the research, but writing is a special craft that the students have to learn. I tell students each term their writing will improve.

I am part of a team-taught course with some 225 students in the class. This class gets 6 Teaching Assistants (TA) assigned and one part of my role is managing the TAs. This includes marking papers and providing the TAs with sample marked papers and grading rubrics, so that they are prepared to do their own marking. Maybe I had better TAs this term, but something was amiss. Anecdotally compared to last year, I re-read more papers that had citation issues. The majority of these instances were cases where students do not attribute the original source.

Now, in many cases sources were never incorporated into the paper. None—not a direct quote or a paraphrase. Yet, a works cited was attached. My point here is that the majority of these instances did not look like the student was intentionally plagiarizing; however, the student had not cited. And, when I met individually with the student, it became obvious that the student did not know how to cite or when to paraphrase. I had an off the record chat with some other faculty and heard that they had also seen more “almost” plagiarism cases in their classes.

There are many things that I would like to say about this. Am I seeing a new phenomena related to students not doing well in their English classes in high school? Is this more commonplace? I am not sure, but my concern is more focused on what to do. I am going to continue my dedicated lecture to the paper assignment; however, I am going to need to speak to writing more. I already have a lecture dedicated to the proposal and I mark all of the proposals. I am also going to have a meeting with a colleague in the English department who teaches their survey writing course and get ideas from him.

Hopefully, my colleague in English will also have some hints to teach more critical thinking and analysis! Wait, that is another post!

Janni Aragon is a Senior Instructor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. Her areas of interest are varied: Gender and Politics, Women and Technology, American Politics, Feminist Theories, Youth Politics, and Popular Culture. Most of her work attempts to connect these interests. Currently she is working on a co-edited Introduction to Women’s Studies textbook. When she has time, she blogs at http://janniaragon.wordpress.com/.

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The Importance of Classes

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2011/02/10 at 04:46

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from the Philippines.

On the 3rd of January, I showed up bright and early for my Comparative Politics class and was peeved that only 1/3 of my students showed up. One student who was due to deliver an oral report said she wasn’t ready because “she didn’t think I would hold classes that day.” I was similarly aghast that many of the faculty members from my Division were also absent that day. The Arts and Sciences building felt like a ghost town–the habitués having decided they needed an extra day to recuperate from their holiday hangover.

This is, sadly, part of a larger cultural malaise besetting my home institution– the tendency NOT to take classes seriously. This is indicative in the way administrators set meetings, consultations and celebratory occasions within class hours (7am to 5pm, Mondays through Fridays) and suspending classes to give way to them. Apart from early January, faculty members routinely do not hold classes on the first week of the semester (arguing for attendance in “opening exercises/programs”) and a day before and during the Christmas Lantern Parade. Many also routinely miss classes on account of moonlighting activities (our professors are poorly paid). While it is standard to require the holding of make-up classes for these absences, many times faculty members are not as judicious given difficulties of scheduling. And so they just send the students away with loads of additional assignments and film showings. Predictably, students also imbibe this lackadaisical attitude; they anticipate these “informal” class holidays and go on long vacations, show up late in classes and max out their quota of 7 unexcused absences.

Read the rest at Inside Higher Ed (link here)

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“We Need to Talk”

In Uncategorized on 2011/01/29 at 03:52

Guest blogger, Liana Silva, writing from Kansas City, Missouri in the USA

One of my students plagiarized this semester. Not once, but twice. I graded both papers in a week’s time, so the severity of the offense seemed even worse. Instructors who have encountered plagiarism will remember that brief moment of hesitation, the slow passing of time as you wait for Google (or Turnitin) to bring up the results, the quick beating of your heart as you see the lifted passages appear on your screen, the determined swish of the cursor to “Print.” Now imagine that twice in one week. It was unnerving but also sad.

We’ve read the numerous articles on plagiarism (like David Callahan’s article in Huffington Post or Carson Jerema’s post in Macleans.ca). However, as a new, female, adjunct instructor, other concerns about my identity as an instructor come into my head.

From that first semester as a teaching assistant, I have been trying hard to convey my authority to my students. I was aware of my position as a young, new, female graduate student of color; I had also seen how some students treated other female teaching assistants who seemed less authoritative, less “professorial.” I wanted my students’ respect, maybe even more so than their admiration. Through my dress manner, tone, and the way I addressed them inside and outside of the classroom, I tried to show them I was in control of the classroom. During the semester I opened up and relaxed a little; I became friendly, chatty, sarcastic, and witty. But I always made sure I held command of the classroom. Some thought I was too stern or too serious, but honestly I always worry about being too “nice.”

Over the years, I’ve seen students do respect me. I also feel more confident about my position as their instructor. However, I’ve also noticed a difference in their interactions with me: they open up about their personal lives more often than they do with my male colleagues (whereas they usually have students come to them to talk about books, readings, ideas discussed in class). They question my decisions more than my male colleagues. Conversely, it seems to me male instructors I have worked with seem more confident in their standards than the female instructors. Even with my years of experience I still wonder if I’m too “nice” or too harsh. Is being “nice” wrong? Not really. However, it is when other instructors equate being “too nice” with not being strict enough with your students or with being easily swayed by their appeals. As I confronted the student who plagiarized, the same concerns popped into my head.

I slowly pulled out the plagiarized essays with the internet articles as evidence, and went over my talking points in my head. As I explained what I had found, I repeated to myself “don’t let X try to sway you; this student failed the assignment.” But I also wondered “does this student understand the gravity of the situation? Did the student understand what they did? Am I being too mean? Maybe the student deserves another shot.” The right and left sides of my brain battled it out. On one hand, I wanted to make it clear this was unacceptable, and there would be consequences to this unethical behavior. On the other hand, I wanted to give this student the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, I worry that showing sympathy or emotions of any kind will undermine my authority as a female instructor. This situation probably did not warrant sympathy (after all, this student plagiarized two WHOLE papers), but if I did not wonder so much about my tenuous position as a female adjunct instructor of color at a new school I would probably feel more comfortable talking with the student about their actions.How many of my male counterparts have the same dilemma between being too strict and too lenient?

I asked the student what happened that they felt they had to plagiarize. The student said nothing. I asked if they had plagiarized other papers in the class. Response? No. The student said they only did it one paper. I showed the student both essays, with my evidence. No response. I didn’t know what else to say, so I mentioned how plagiarism was unacceptable in a college writing course. No response. As the student walked out, they asked, “is there anything I can do?” “No.” I went to my office, drank some water to calm down my nerves, then walked to my next class. I was a minute early.

This post was also published at Inside Higher Ed.

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What is a Course in Higher Ed?

In Uncategorized on 2010/12/23 at 10:40

Lee Skallerup Bessette, writing from Kentucky in the USA

My 200-level students last semester proposed or redesigned a university-level course for their final assignment.* They were allowed to make it in any subject, at any level. It wasn’t my most tightly conceived assignment, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from them. The results were understandably uneven, but revealed a great deal about what undergraduates think an undergraduate degree should be.

First, the good news. There were general education courses proposed in strategic thinking, debating, the history of rock and roll, and biology (which included the important component of making it relevant). There were highly specialized courses in local micro-sociology, service learning for veterinary tech, sports sociology, diversity issues in education, and even a design class for business students. These students showed real creativity and practicality when proposing the courses, looking at what students could and should learn to most benefit their educations. These courses were about getting students to think and do differently. These were, unsurprisingly, in the minority.

Read the rest at Inside Higher Ed (link here)

*****

We launched the University of Venus blog in February 2010 and currently have readers from over 125 countries. In October, 2010 the blog was visited by over 26,000 readers.

In July 2010 we partnered with Inside Higher Ed (a large higher ed media publication in the US) as part of a new initiative to support blogs focused on international and global higher ed.

In June, GlobalHigherEd and The World View launched with IHE. GlobalHigherEd is headed up by Kris Olds (professor at UWisconsin-Madison) and Susan Robertson (professor at UBristol, UK). The World View is a blogging venture coming from Philip Altbach’s team at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.

Beginning July 12, we started blogging at University of Venus @ Inside Higher Ed. Check out our new home and join the conversation (link here)

 

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Do You Want Fries with That Degree?

In Uncategorized on 2010/12/15 at 23:13

Afshan Jafar, writing from Connecticut in the USA

It happens every time. I start teaching the concepts of McDonaldization and mass production to my students and it sends me into a mini-crisis. I keep thinking of the video for “AnotherBrick in the Wall” by Pink Floyd. It’s the one where students are being manufactured on an assembly line: face-less, and almost mechanical.

There seem to be at least four forces which rationalize and ease the move toward mass production in higher education.

 

1. The institutions: With financial uncertainty and the increased dependence on tuition for an institution’s well-being, admitting greater numbers of students is a more attractive option. As enrollments increase, at the same time that institutions are unable and/or unwilling to hire more faculty, our class sizes increase.

 

2. Textbooks and their publishers: Test banks, lecture outlines, power point presentations, video clips—you name it, they have it all figured out for us! Why start from scratch? We can save a lot of browsing through colleagues’ syllabi, and reading the latest research in the field, by using instead one of these pre-packaged bundles of knowledge. When I was a graduate student and thrown into teaching a large class on a topic that I had never taught before, my first and sometimes my last stop was a textbook. This is not to say that you can’t teach a great course using a textbook or that there aren’t times when it is necessary. But textbooks, especially when used in the social sciences or the humanities, standardize knowledge and make students into “efficient” readers—with their boxes, bold print definitions, chapter summaries, keywords—though not necessarily more engaged ones. But if you want your students to struggle and realize that knowledge is complicated and open to interpretation, textbooks may not be the best tool for that kind of instruction.

 

3. The professors/instructors: With increasing class sizes, we are often forced to make decisions about our courses that have everything to do with efficiency and how best to evaluate large numbers of students, and nothing to do with our pedagogical ideals. We may know the flaws of standardized testing, but when faced with a large class, are weekly journal assignments a feasible option? It is precisely because of these fears of the mass production of education and of students themselves, that I’ve taken (and have been fortunate enough to take) certain steps when designing my courses. I’ve avoided textbooks entirely since leaving graduate school (and I acknowledge that my field and my institution afford me that privilege), I’ve never given multiple choice exams, and there are no page limits on my assignments. Every detail, every stitch, on every one of my courses has been put there by me personally. But this semester I taught two large introductory sections as two of my three classes, and I saw the seams, those stitches that I myself had sewn, starting to come undone. Out went the weekly writing assignments; out went the papers with no page limits.

 

4. And lastly, the students: Yes, even the students, who really are the ones who lose the most in all this—they pay a lot of money to be in huge classes which require them to buy expensive textbooks—they too play a role in the march towards standardization and the mass production of education. The complacency with which many students have accepted their fates is sometimes astonishing. When was the last time students protested their class sizes or the methods of evaluation employed in large classes? Of course, the fault is not entirely theirs. Their passivity is a reflection of how accustomed they are to being on the assembly line. And it’s a testament to how effective our institutions are in producing docile bodies. But what have we, as teachers, taught them to expect from their education? On the first day of classes this semester, I asked my students to get up from their seats and follow me around the building, single-file, no talking. They did. I meandered down the hallways and then returned to class. Not one student questioned me or asked me why we had just done that. What was the point of the exercise? As I told my students later on, it was to encourage them to reject the assembly line model of higher education, to question, to wonder, to be engaged

I often start off the semester with this exercise and not a single student has ever asked about the purpose of the exercise. It’s no wonder I can’t get that Pink Floyd video out of my mind.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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General Education Examined

In Ponderings of a Peregrine Pinoy Professor on 2010/12/13 at 23:44

Rosalie Arcala Hall, writing from the Philippines.

My sister recently visited a physician in Manila who turned out to be a former undergraduate student of mine in Iloilo. Recognizing the common surname (Arcala), the doctor gushed about how I had tempted her to switch from a Biology major to a Political Science major, upon taking my General Education class in Social, Economic and Political Theory. To this day she remembers Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau and Marx and the engaging manner in which I embedded their ideas in their historical milieus. In my twenty odd years in the academe, it was the best compliment I have ever received (albeit indirectly). It is also a silent vindication of the premise behind General Education courses in my home university.

First introduced in 1959, GE courses comprise 45 units (or 15 courses covering Communications, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, History, Humanities and Philosophy). Whether majoring in fine arts, computer science or marine biology, all students have to take the GE courses as they form the core learning and competencies that are the university’s trademark. One of my GE teachers referred to it as Renaissance education; another touted its usefulness for engaging cocktail conversation.

Read the rest at Inside Higher Ed (link here)

*****

We launched the University of Venus blog in February 2010 and currently have readers from over 125 countries. In October, 2010 the blog was visited by over 26,000 readers.

In July 2010 we partnered with Inside Higher Ed (a large higher ed media publication in the US) as part of a new initiative to support blogs focused on international and global higher ed.

In June, GlobalHigherEd and The World View launched with IHE. GlobalHigherEd is headed up by Kris Olds (professor at UWisconsin-Madison) and Susan Robertson (professor at UBristol, UK). The World View is a blogging venture coming from Philip Altbach’s team at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.

Beginning July 12, we started blogging at University of Venus @ Inside Higher Ed. Check out our new home and join the conversation (link here)

 

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Grading Student Essays or How to Give Constructive Feedback

In Anamaria's Posts on 2010/12/10 at 22:18

Anamaria Dutceac Segesten, writing from Lund in Sweden

The topic of this blog post comes naturally to me, as I sit surrounded by over 40 essays waiting for me to grade. 40 essays, each 8 pages long – you count how much text I must get through, and fast (as my deadline for delivering the final marks is approaching very soon). The immensity of the task makes me wonder what the purpose of this exercise is and which ways there are to best achieve this goal. And so, I find myself writing about grading.

The recent discussions on this topic on Twitter have been very intensive (just check #grading and you will see what I mean) and have covered very interesting aspects involved in the process of assessing a student’s work: everything from using numbers vs. using letters (as in Prof. Hacker’s entry), to how to deal with cheating, and to calls for a general reform of the grading system in the US (as seen at this conference).

Read the rest at Inside Higher Ed (link here)

*****

We launched the University of Venus blog in February 2010 and currently have readers from over 125 countries. In October, 2010 the blog was visited by over 26,000 readers.

In July 2010 we partnered with Inside Higher Ed (a large higher ed media publication in the US) as part of a new initiative to support blogs focused on international and global higher ed.

In June, GlobalHigherEd and The World View launched with IHE. GlobalHigherEd is headed up by Kris Olds (professor at UWisconsin-Madison) and Susan Robertson (professor at UBristol, UK). The World View is a blogging venture coming from Philip Altbach’s team at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College.

Beginning July 12, we started blogging at University of Venus @ Inside Higher Ed. Check out our new home and join the conversation (link here)

 

 

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Professing While Female

In Uncategorized on 2010/11/24 at 00:16

Afshan Jafar, writing from Connecticut in the USA

Where does professors’ authority in the classroom come from?

On one level the answer is simple: it comes from our mastery of our subject matter – it comes from our knowledge and training. In that sense, anybody with a Ph.D. who walks into a classroom should have authority. But we know that’s not the case. There are many professors who have to work very hard to establish themselves as authority figures. Some reasons for this have to do with personalities, level of confidence, and other personal attributes. But that doesn’t explain why, for certain groups of professors, their authority is not a “given” and it is not assumed. To believe that it is ignores the connection between individuals and their experience with (or lack of) privilege as members of particular groups. So, yes, we walk into the classroom as individuals who have mastery over our field, but a growing number of us also walk into the classroom as members of under-privileged and/or under-represented groups.

Consider the following examples: When I was in graduate school I once watched students by-pass a 50-something female professor who stood at the front of the classroom and go right to the 26-year-old male graduate TA; they all thought he was the professor. Another time, I was a TA for a class where on the first day of the semester, a student asked the young-looking female professor : “Do you even have a Ph.D.?” More recently, a colleague of mine co-taught a course with a male professor; students routinely referred to her as “Miss” but referred to him as “Professor”. Juxtapose these with another example from when I was a graduate student: I was a TA for a male professor who lost student assignments, lost his train of thought, lost his lecture notes, and lost his matching socks, but never lost his authority in the classroom! By that I mean that students never openly challenged him or his expertise or training, and never once did they think that he was not the one “in charge” (if they did they certainly never let on).

We could explain the above discrepancies by asking about each individual professor’s characteristics. But such a focus would only reveal part of the story. A focus on personal attributes alone would ignore one of the basic insights of social constructionism: Believing is seeing. That is, what we choose to see (how we understand reality) is a reflection of what we already believe to be true. Take the example of the male professor who fumbles and forgets things in class. Students are likely to see him as an example of the stereotypical “absent-minded professor”. Yet, the same behavior in a female professor and/ or faculty of color would likely be seen as evidence of them being unprofessional, or not being qualified for the job. A common perception regarding challenges to professor’s authority in the classroom seems to be that it reflects their own failures as a person, or that individuals somehow “bring this upon themselves” by not playing the role of the professor well enough. This, to me, is a very narrow way of approaching the issue of challenges in the classroom. It is tantamount to arguing that certain groups of people are much more likely to be “randomly selected” at the airport for additional-screening because of their own failure to somehow comport themselves as the ideal traveler. Or that an African American man’s higher likelihood of being pulled over while driving reflects his own failures as a driver. Sure, there are some travelers who act suspiciously, and some people who drive recklessly, but this approach fails to acknowledge that as a pattern certain groups of people are more likely to be screened at the airport, or pulled-over while driving.

We all try and bring our best practices, our most “professorial” personae to our classrooms, but we also bring a whole lot that we can’t leave behind. When you belong to a group of individuals who are under-represented in the academy (or within particular fields), and who have certain expectations and stereotypes attached to them, you quickly come to realize that even in the college classroom you may get pulled aside by students for “additional screening”.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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Control in the Classroom

In Guest Blogger on 2010/11/08 at 21:58

Guest blogger, Susan Currie Sivek, writing from Fresno, California in the USA

Those first days of teaching were disastrous, but I didn’t know it.

I started out teaching at a community college right after finishing my master’s degree in journalism. Entrusted with the campus’s only two sections of the introductory Mass Communication class and given little guidance about how or what to teach, I was thrilled to find ready-made PowerPoint slides from the publisher included with the textbook.

I rocked those first few classes, talking through the slides and flipping quickly from point to point. I thought I had it made. I was on pace to cover the whole book, too!

Once the adrenaline wore off after about four class sessions, I realized that those sighs coming from the students weren’t due to the enlightenment they felt upon entering into my instructional presence. They were groans of pain as they massaged their hands after trying to take notes on my speed-lecturing. There may have also been groans of boredom.

I still cringe thinking of it now. But after a frank discussion with those classes about what was going wrong and how I could improve, I made huge changes to my approach. Into the trash went the pre-made PowerPoints. I built in more discussion opportunities. I slowed it all down. I taught less content, but tried to teach it better.

This was the beginning of a trend that would change my teaching, though it’s taken this long – about six years – for me to really realize it was happening. It’s not an original concept, I realize, but finally observing and labeling it has helped me continue to improve my teaching. What I’ve noticed is that the more I let go of control of the class – without losing control completely – the better I teach, and the more students learn.

It seems contradictory. After all, shouldn’t a masterful instructor plan every moment of a class session and anticipate all the students’ needs? That’s what I thought at first. As a beginning instructor, I wanted to manage every moment of class. I tried to anticipate students’ responses to pre-planned discussion questions so I could craft perfect segues from topic to topic, slide to slide. I wanted it all to be orchestrated to the finest points of detail. I thought this would make the teaching better, complete, perfected.

In the last couple of years, though, I’ve finally learned to let go – and let them. Let the students take more of a lead in determining how our classes go.

I now let them talk more. A lot more. I leave lots of time for discussion. If a topic takes off, great; and on the days it doesn’t? Well, I do still lecture some, and can provide some useful information when discussion is flat. But if I never leave the floor wide open for the students to take things where they want them to go, they won’t get what they want and need out of the class. I don’t always know what they need, no matter how much I think I can anticipate it.

I now let them have time to think individually and with each other about our class topics. In my large 120-student class, I now allot 10 minutes of each 75-minute session to a small group discussion warm-up activity on the assigned reading. I then collect and talk about students’ questions at the start of class and see what they’ve learned or missed from the reading right away. I think the activity is also helping to build a sense of community in that large, diverse general education class.

None of these ideas is novel, I know. I learned most of them from other instructors. But as a beginner, I would have been terrified of these approaches. Answering completely unplanned student questions around any possible aspect of the reading? Giving up class time for unstructured discussion in groups, in which they might wander off-topic? The horror!

I think I needed time to mature as an instructor to get to this point – and I certainly don’t have everything figured out and perfected even now. I learn something new with every class session. I also needed time to gain confidence in my subject matter so that I feel confident dealing with a variety of questions.

I had to learn how to keep a class on topic and hard at work, without micromanaging every second. Not micromanaging runs counter to my Type A personality as well, making this approach even more challenging. However, for a personality like mine, failure is a powerful teacher. Reflecting on my early teaching failures makes me more determined to improve.

I also needed to see, semester after semester, that loosening, without losing, my control over the classroom was possible and beneficial. And a whole lot more fun.

Susan Currie Sivek is an assistant professor and the graduate coordinator in the Mass Communication and Journalism Department at California State University, Fresno, where she teaches courses in media studies, writing and qualitative research methods. She blogs atsivekmedia.com and is a knitter, triathlete and hiker when she can get away from the computer.

This post was also published in Inside Higher Ed.

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