In his provocative new book, The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America, historian Jonathan Zimmerman chronicles more than 200 years of the quality of instruction in higher education. It’s a history filled with noble but failed efforts to improve and reform college teaching, marked by student-led protests and solitary campaigns led by individual professors or administrators. These efforts repeatedly stumble and stall across different eras, Zimmerman argues, for similar reasons: A reluctance to identify and embrace evidence-based teaching practices using the same professional standards established for research and scholarship.

In this interview with ACUE, Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, shares lessons from the past, what he believes may be different about our current moment, and what it means for the future.

What’s Amateur Hour about and why did you decide to write this book?

We had a thousand monographs on the history of the American university, some of which addressed teaching in a tangential way. But, believe it or not, there was not a single monograph about how American professors have taught and how college students have learned over time.

I first started to imagine writing the book at an online teaching seminar several years ago. One side said it’s going to make “everything” better and the other side said it’s going to make everything worse. But what is everything? You need a baseline for what everything is to say something will make it better or worse. I wanted to write a book about what worked–or not–over time so that we could discuss how to make it better–or what’s making it worse.

What are some common throughlines chronicled in your book between the different efforts to improve college teaching over time?

The most important is the quest for a more “personal” form of instruction. The biggest inhibitor to reforms is the research ethos, which by definition is premised on abstract and theoretical knowledge that is–at least in theory–impersonal. Teaching has always been seen as too idiosyncratic or personal to be systematized and organized around any sort of professional code.

And I understand this reluctance. Teaching is personal. Our identities are tied up in it. How could you possibly make the rules around something that is so idiosyncratic? Won’t those rules remove some of the joy and the inspiration and the charisma from it?

So I understand why teaching is both art and science, but we need to make it more scientific, where we’re trying to learn more about what works and what doesn’t. I think this gets really to the heart of ACUE’s work, which is that there is a proven science behind teaching that not only benefits the students but creates a culture of peer engagement and review around teaching as well.

Why did you pick The Amateur Hour as a title?

I want people to understand how much effort has gone into changing college teaching over time. Every campus had a few people who were renowned as excellent teachers, and this book tells many of their stories, but they were rarely known beyond their own institutions.

The reason I use “amateur” to describe college teaching is not because people do it badly, because amateurs can be really good. To say somebody is an amateur doesn’t mean they’re bad or ineffective. What it means is that there isn’t really that professionalizing dynamic, a code of accepted professional standards, which peers try to enforce surrounding their behavior.

Who’s an important or interesting character from your book?

Fred Keller jumps out because his innovation most directly prefigures our current moment of asynchronous online learning. He was a behavioral scientist at Columbia, and he found the lecture system of teaching and learning utterly inadequate. On sabbatical in the 1960s he goes to Brasilia, this new hyper-modernist capital in the middle of Brazil meant to be a streamlined exemplar of modern and efficient government and society. He develops the Personalized System of Instruction (PSI), which was actually pretty simple. It broke a course down into a set of modules, each with a set of reading and writing materials. You’d complete the module and a proctor would test you. It was entirely self-paced and if you passed, you moved onto the next module. There was no other grading.

Keller comes back to America and becomes an evangelist for PSI as a way to provide more ‘access’ to formerly underserved populations. And it has this incredible flash—at some institutions 25% of courses are taught this way—and fizzle. A big reason it flops is that it didn’t work for the least prepared students. They came in with poor reading and writing skills and they washed out of the course.

I think Keller was right in his critique of conventional higher education as an elitist institution that reinforces the inequalities and failures of society. And the idea behind his solution, which is a forerunner to mastery learning, sent the right message that all students can succeed.

But it ended up exacerbating inequalities, which to me is a reason to be concerned about our current moment.

What’s different about this moment?

I hope that when people read my book they are inspired to learn about some of the more recent efforts at reform—like what ACUE is doing. There is a big and growing body of knowledge and expertise about how to do online instruction well, and I think we’ve learned a lot in the past two decades.

The biggest difference, in this current moment, is that everyone is being forced to learn via machines. Up until now, the machines were for newcomers to the system—that is, to provide more “access” to formerly underserved populations. Now, for the first time, we’ve all been thrown into the same mechanistic pool. So one of the big questions I have about this moment is the role of students. In researching this book, I was surprised—and energized, and ultimately depressed—by the large amount of organized student activity and protest around college teaching—every era except ours! If anything, I didn’t highlight this enough in my book, which is that students will need to speak out more for things to get better.

Jonathan Zimmerman is a historian of education who is a Professor of History of Education at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

“Back to Class” means something different during a global pandemic. New face masks, hand sanitizer, laptops, and headphones fill online shopping carts, and thousands of educators nationwide are welcoming their students through a screen instead of in a classroom.

Nevertheless, faculty are as dedicated as ever to the success of their students. In a series of “Back to Class” posts, I’m sharing some resources that faculty can use with their students—whether in a classroom or a virtual learning environment—to support deeper engagement and learning.

Earlier in August, I shared a resource you can use with your students to discuss the importance of a growth mindset. In this post, I am sharing a resource you can use to help your students Study Smarter!

Believe it or not, the most suggested study skills, like “highlighting, underlining, and sustained review of notes and texts,” are not always effective.

If you really want your students to learn, consider sharing these strategies from Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel instead.

The video below is an excerpt from our course in Effective Online Teaching Practices. In this video, Dr. Jennifer Whitley discusses study skills.

Have a great class!

—Laurie Pendleton, Executive Director of Curriculum and Assessment, ACUE

This month ACUE teamed up with health education organization Osmosis to present a webinar on how faculty can use online teaching best practices (from ACUE’s Online Teaching Toolkit) in their instruction in health-related disciplines and others. ACUE’s Laurie Pendleton, Executive Director, Curriculum and Assessment, and Julie Candio Sekel, Director of Video Production, presented the webinar, and Catherine Johnson, Senior Director of Institutional Engagement at Osmosis, moderated.

Pendleton and Candio Sekel delved into each of the six practices:

• Welcoming students to the online environment
• Managing your online presence
• Organizing your online course
• Planning and facilitating quality discussions
• Recording effective microlectures
• Engaging students in readings and microlectures

Using insight from both instructors and students, they explained why each practice is essential in creating a quality online experience. For example, Pendleton noted that using videos can give students insight into you and your course and help students get to know you as a person. She referred to a student interviewee (for ACUE’s Effective Online Teaching Practices course), who remarked, “We should get to know each instructor and why they love to teach this course.”

“Show that you care,” she said, adding that online social forums can also help students build connections. “Make sure students start strong.”

Pendleton and Candio Sekel also touched on how to hold discussions in an online environment. During the webinar, a poll asked participants to indicate whether they found it challenging to hold discussions in their classes: sixty-seven percent responded ‘true.’

“[Online discussions can be] a challenge for everyone,” Candio Sekel said. “We hear that a lot, especially from non-humanities faculty.”

She recommended a handful of practices to help make online discussions an effective and engaging component of any online course, including reinforcing real-world applications and leveraging students’ experiences. “Ask questions about ethics,” Candio Sekel suggested, based on a prompt one instructor uses in her courses. “What would you do in this scenario? How would you improve your professional practice?”

During the Q&A, one participant asked about how to best gather and utilize data. The presenters recommended leveraging LMS capabilities and looking at how often and when students are engaged, even sending a message if the student hasn’t logged in or checking in with students who may benefit from specific resources.

Another asked about the greatest challenges about the transition to a digital environment in health courses in particular. Johnson noted that hands-on learning is often replaced with simulation-based activities. Pendleton said that these courses require some creativity. Candio Sekel added a handful of recommendations she’s curated from faculty interviews and participants shared, in the chat, a few suggestions. 

Pendleton and Candio Sekel also had participants engage in short tasks, putting the information into practice. In the chat, participants shared their own strategies for welcoming students into an online course, with one participant suggesting having students create their own videos. 

Ultimately, it’s about building that connection. “Be human” Pendleton said.

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Download Participant Takeaways

Watch Webinar Recording

As higher education made an abrupt transition to emergency remote instruction this past spring semester, many faculty were left scrambling across disciplines. To support instructors, ACUE released an Online Teaching Toolkit with resources and recommendations for teaching in a digital environment. To date, the videos in the toolkit have been viewed over 100,000 times.

Osmosis is a health education platform powered by approachable, professionally-illustrated videos and associated assessment items built with a vision of helping everyone who cares for someone learn by osmosis. To achieve this vision, Osmosis has the mission of empowering the world’s clinicians and caregivers with the best learning experience possible.

While many colleges and universities across the country pride themselves on robust online offerings, Amherst College, a private liberal arts institution in Massachusetts, has remained firm in its commitment to being a residential college where a highly invested community of faculty and students benefit from in-person interaction in the learning process.

So when COVID-19 forced colleges and universities across the globe to reconsider their academic plans for fall 2020, Amherst leaders committed to doing everything possible to ensure faculty could provide students with the personal, dynamic and rigorous experience they expected of Amherst—in person and online.

Amherst College faculty ACUE course-takers Martha Umphrey, Sony Coráñez Bolton, and Jen Manion

“Whether you study on campus or remotely, I am confident that the quality of your education will be excellent,” wrote Amherst President Biddy Martin in a July message to students. “I am inspired by the fact that over 90 percent of the faculty teaching in the fall are sacrificing research time during the summer to learn more from one another and from outside experts about the most effective uses of online learning, incorporating novel methodologies that will make for a more engaging and rewarding experience for students.”

“When Amherst moved to online instruction, many of our faculty understandably felt out of their element,” says Dr. Riley Caldwell O’Keefe, Amherst’s director of the Center for Teaching and Learning. “Our faculty care deeply about our students and felt the burden of wanting to continue to carry out instruction with excellence.”

To support faculty in their goal to provide a quality online learning experience, Amherst has partnered with the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) to prepare faculty through ACUE’s microcredential course, “Promoting Active Learning Online.” 

Dr. Jaya Kannan, Amherst’s director of technology for curriculum and research, worked with ACUE in the past while at Sacred Heart University. She understood that to have the greatest impact, Amherst needed to support as many faculty members as possible, while also recognizing they had a short window of time before the school reopens for fall instruction.

Caldwell-O’Keefe and Kannan initially anticipated supporting around 50 instructors through the six-week program—about one-quarter of the number of instructors who teach in any given semester. Seeing the value in such a program, Amherst College’s provost, Dr. Catherine Epstein, opened the course to any faculty member who wanted to participate. Ultimately, 155 faculty enrolled in the summer course. Caldwell-O’Keefe saw the faculty dedication as a testament to their passion for learning and great teaching—regardless of modality.

Faculty who satisfy ACUE course requirements earn a microcredential that may be utilized toward earning ACUE’s Certificate in Effective College Instruction, endorsed by the American Council on Education.

“We looked at various organizations to partner with, but in the end, we appreciated how ACUE’s materials were well-researched and heavily cited. It aligned with the pedagogical language we already use,” Caldwell-O’Keefe says. As the college’s Center for Teaching and Learning moves into its fourth year, both Caldwell-O’Keefe and Kannan believe this professional development builds on the goal of both departments to develop and sustain a community of teaching practitioners. The two were encouraged to see how, almost immediately, the faculty began to share what they are taking away from the course with one another.

“We spend a lot of time talking about how we can continue to build on this momentum—whether that’s inviting faculty to participate in teaching circles or offering Google groups where they can have asynchronous discussions on teaching practices, and allowing the power of peer learning to take over,” Kannan says.

In addition to Caldwell-O’Keefe and Kannan, there were three additional facilitators: Sarah Bunnell from the Center for Teaching and Learning, Megan Lyster from the Center for Community Engagement and outside expert, Dr. Kathy Takayama, as well as support from Lisa Aiken in the CTL, staff in the academic resource team, and multi-media services. This team augmented the ACUE course through convening a weekly 90-minute remote synchronous session for faculty to learn from one another and make the links between the ACUE modules and the specifics of the Amherst context. The facilitation team also integrated additional assignments that encouraged faculty to integrate learning with direct application to their course design, such as developing a community building plan, completing a transparency assignment that demonstrates transparent pedagogy, and creating a course map to ensure course alignment and potentially share with students.

Additionally, Kannan and her fellow cohort leaders have used the group chats to spotlight the incredible work their faculty members have produced for years and which the departments have highlighted on “Teaching with Technology” and “Innovative Teaching Practices” websites.

“This has been a golden opportunity to showcase our Amherst classrooms. While we are not an online school, we’re not behind on digital pedagogy,” Kannan explains. “We’ve enjoyed learning from ACUE’s recommended practices, like online microlectures, and selecting examples across disciplines where our faculty have successfully implemented them.” 

“From initial feedback, our faculty members who are participating in the ACUE program feel more grounded and prepared to teach in this current context,” Caldwell-O’Keefe says. “We’re reminding them that they already have a lot of pedagogical expertise and that relatively small changes in teaching can make a big difference in their students’ well-being and success in the course.”

A Conversation on Student Success with Dr. Rebecca Karoff and Susan Cates

Higher education faced an abrupt shift to emergency remote instruction just months ago. This, coupled with other changing dynamics in a volatile world, left many institutions and faculty scrambling.

Rebecca Karoff, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at The University of Texas System (UT), and Susan Cates, CEO of ACUE, joined Sherri Hughes, assistant vice president of professional learning at the American Council on Education (ACE), for a conversation on how the UT System is making meaningful progress on student success goals in a volatile and stressful time for students, faculty, and institutions. Karoff and Cates offered insights into balancing immediate needs with future strategic planning.

Key Takeaways from the Conversation

UT’s three pillars have helped guide the system through the crisis.

In her role, Karoff oversees student success work throughout the UT System, one of the largest higher education systems in the country. The System’s diverse student demographics closely resemble that of the state of Texas, she said. 

In an effort to meet the needs of a diverse student population, the System, in collaboration with UT institutions, has developed an equity-minded framework around student success. The framework focuses on three pillars: finances, advising, and belonging. These pillars are aligned with the institutions’ values and the needs of students they serve—and have shaped their approaches to coping with the challenges that have emerged over the past few months.

Right now, Karoff said, the System’s primary focus is ensuring students have everything they need, including financial support and advising. She notes that, amidst the fear and anxiety about the coming semester, there has been “incredible responsiveness,” with presidents, provosts, and other institutional leaders calling students to make sure they have places to live, and providing hotspots and laptops.

“That kind of responsiveness is absolutely stunning,” Karoff said.

Faculty need to be represented in system-level conversations.

“As faculty made this move to emergency remote learning, and other parts of the student experience fell away, the faculty relationship with students was that much more central—faculty became the university for students,” Cates noted. 

So, how has the UT System sought to engage faculty in the student success mission at the system level?

Karoff wondered the same thing herself when she joined the office several years ago and observed that faculty weren’t well-represented in higher-level discussions around student success. During the System’s 2018 Summit, she focused on the role of faculty in student success. The System’s Faculty Advisory Council and Student Advisory Council both played roles in bringing about this kind of system-wide engagement, as did provosts.

The Faculty Advisory Council, Karoff said, recommended the ACUE program, and partnered with her on a systemwide pilot.

“It’s been a really nice, organic evolution of increased interest in ACUE,” Karoff said. She had several of the most seasoned and awarded faculty from the System’s Academy of  Distinguished Teachers participate in the pilot, commenting after that they wished they could have taken advantage of the program decades earlier but still learned something. Additionally, both UT Arlington and UT El Paso conducted their own ACUE cohorts. UT System Chancellor J.B. Milliken became one of ACUE’s most ardent proponents as well, helping secure funding from the UT System Board of Regents to fund cohorts at each of the System’s eight academic universities.

“There’s such a hunger right now for professional development and collective problem-solving across disciplines,” Karoff said. 

Quality instruction goes hand-in-hand with equity.

The pandemic isn’t the only roadblock in higher education. Some challenges are exacerbated, while others are deeply entrenched and highlighted by the current landscape. 

Karoff stressed the importance of embedding efficacy research into the impact of initiatives, especially as new equity gaps emerge. The UT System is also bringing together faculty to examine how to best support students, especially in light of the deep problems we’re facing as a society, including poverty and racism. 

“We now have an opportunity to think about how to address inequities and systemic racism,” Karoff said. “We’re trying to be more intentional about this work. This is happening in our classrooms as well—faculty are eager to have difficult conversations but also anxious that they’re not as well prepared as they could be to lead them.”

Karoff stresses that this is difficult work. Cates, too, summarizes the efforts ACUE is making to conduct research on the impact of their work. 

”We believe passionately that evidence-based teaching is inclusive teaching at its core,” Cates remarks. She cites studies across numerous partner institutions, including Texas Woman’s University, Cal State LA and Broward College, all of which confirm that students are more engaged, learn more, and complete courses in greater numbers—more equitably with their peers—when taught by ACUE-credentialed faculty. Cates also noted that ACUE recently released an Inclusive Teaching Practices Toolkit, a set of recommendations that faculty can immediately put to use to create more inclusive learning environments.

“We have the opportunity to make change,” Karoff added. “This is a national moment of reckoning. Systems and institutions have a responsibility to address systemic inequities and institutionalized racism. I know the discomfort people are feeling. We need to utilize it to make us do the hard work to remove barriers, especially for Black, Indigenous and students of color.”

Systems must provide institutions and faculty with resources to enhance their teaching.

Karoff also stressed the importance of equipping faculty and leaders with resources to address student success. Those resources include centers for teaching and learning, along with, of course, programs like ACUE.

First, though, deans and other faculty and staff must examine the data and see who’s being left behind and why they aren’t being served.

These resources can not only fuel improved instruction, but they can also serve other purposes. 

“The time is really ripe for doing curriculum innovation,” Karoff said, suggesting institutions and systems take a more interdisciplinary, project-based approach to teaching. Additionally, she added, “We need to be more focused on preparing students for the future of work, a future that has to be engaged in solving global problems including pandemics, poverty, racism and climate change. All of these global problems are right here in Texas”

“Whether you’re teaching philosophy, math, or engineering, how do you support students as they prepare for their career as it relates to your discipline?” Cates agrees. ACUE, too, has worked with partners to think about the faculty role in career readiness, offering a course concentration.

Amid the many immediate disruptions, Karoff believes it’s essential to keep these issues front and center, while planning for the post-COVID landscape.

Watch the full webinar and join the conversation by creating a free account on ACE Engage®.

About Conversations on Student Success

This series offers an informal opportunity to learn from a range of leaders and experts on timely topics relevant to students’ success. Conversations on Student Success are produced in collaboration with the Association of College and University Educators. 

“Back to Class” means something different during a global pandemic. New face masks, hand sanitizer, laptops and headphones fill online shopping carts, and thousands of educators nationwide are welcoming their students through a screen instead of in a classroom.

Nevertheless, faculty are as dedicated as ever to the success of their students. In a series of “Back to Class” posts, I’m sharing some resources that faculty can use with their students—whether in a classroom or a virtual learning environment—to support deeper engagement and learning.

Growth Mindset

Dr. Carol Dweck and her colleagues are credited with studying the impact of having a “growth mindset.” In short, students who are able to view setbacks and failures as opportunities for growth actually develop their brains to become smarter and more resilient, leading to higher levels of achievement. The alternative is known as having a “fixed mindset.”

To talk with your students about the importance of a growth mindset, download this ACUE Student Resource: Growth Mindset.

The video below features ACUE faculty expert José Antonio Bowen, PhD, discussing the positive impact of having a growth mindset. Have a great class!

—Laurie Pendleton, Executive Director of Curriculum and Assessment, ACUE

Cindy Blackwell, Ph.D.
Cindy Blackwell is an ACUE Academic Director and earned her ACUE Certificate in Effective College Instruction in 2017 at The University of Southern Mississippi.

Having been involved in formal academic integrity processes for more than a decade spanning two universities, I understand the frustrations faculty feel when they suspect or find a student has cheated in their course. For many faculty, a student cheating can feel personal, even though it is not.

Reflecting in The Chronicle of Higher Education on what he learned from his own academic integrity journey, James Lang (2007) wrote that “the last thing on the student’s mind, when he made the poor decision to plagiarize, was his personal relationship with you. He did it because he was lazy, or he was rushed for time, or he felt overwhelmed by the assignment. He did not do it to send any message to you about your worth as a teacher, or to test your integrity, or to make your life miserable. He did it for his own reasons and did not expect to be caught, and hence thought little, or not at all, about how his actions would affect you.”

While cheating is not a personal affront to the faculty member, it is also not learning for the student. We teach because we want students to learn.  As Donald McCabe (2005) wrote in Liberal Education, “Our goal should not simply be to reduce cheating; rather, our goal should be to find innovative and creative ways to use academic integrity as a building block in our efforts to develop more responsible students and, ultimately, more responsible citizens.” This is, after all, the ethos of most university missions.

As Lang notes, students cheat for myriad reasons with the most prominent reasons being not understanding the assignment and not managing time well. As faculty there are many ways we can deter cheating that also assist students with broader growth and development, including motivating and preparing students through structured and guided assignments that are clear, relevant and offer checkpoints and timely and meaningful feedback.

Help Students Self-Motivate

To begin, help students develop intrinsic motivation by making the connection between increased effort and improved performance, as noted in the ACUE Module, ‘Helping Students Persist in their Studies.’ Providing the tools students need to complete a difficult assignment such as rubrics, checklists, exemplars, checkpoints and specific, timely and actionable feedback offers students the structure and confidence to work through complex tasks and helps them better understand an assignment and manage the workload. When students move through an assignment with multiple checkpoints, it greatly decreases their temptation and ability to cheat on the assignment. For example, it is more difficult and less tempting for a student to purchase a research paper at the last minute when she has already submitted and received actionable feedback on a thesis topic, annotated bibliography and an outline or first draft.

Provide Clear Purpose and Goal

In addition, strengthen students’ motivation by making the purpose and expectations of the assignment or assessment clear. Using a Structured Assignment format (offered in ‘Developing Self Directed Learners’) that lays out an assignment’s purpose, goal, tone and skills to be developed and style expectations among other criteria can make the assignment more relevant to the course and the learning outcomes. Further this by making a connection to the students’ future careers. This is important even and especially for GEC courses that students often question why they are required to take. Explaining that you may never use algebra again, but you will use algebraic thinking often can help students stay motivated and persist through difficult tasks while increasing confidence and reducing temptation to cheat on the next exam.

Clearly Define Directions and Expectations

Finally, provide clear directions and explanations that let students know what is and is not cheating for your assignments. If you do not want students to collaborate, be sure they know that. Be sure they also understand your definition of collaboration. Through working with faculty on academic integrity issues, I find that we, as teachers, often send students mixed messages. For example, some faculty encourage students to cite verbatim from the textbook on a homework assignment, while other faculty would consider directly copying from the text a plagiarism violation, even if the assignment never specifically stated to put the definition in your own words. Review your assignments to be sure you are not making assumptions that the answers to are only found in the hidden curriculum.

We teach because we want students to learn and because we care about their development. Cheating for most students is a mismanaged call for help. Show students you care about their learning and character development by offering them a supportive and structured experience that offers them the motivation they need to learn. As McCabe wrote, it is our responsibility to “develop more responsible students and, ultimately, more responsible citizens.”

Lang, J. (2007, October 23) It’s not you. Chronicle of Higher Education.

McCabe, D. (2005). It takes a village: Academic dishonesty and educational opportunity. Liberal Education, 91(3).