Editor’s note: Last week, we sat down with Michael McPherson, co-chair of the Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education, for an insightful discussion about why colleges and universities should invest in their faculty, measure the impact of good teaching, and create more productive working environments specifically for their adjunct faculty members. McPherson highlighted some of the important findings published last fall in The Future of Undergraduate Education, The Future of America.

1. Why should institutions invest in quality instruction when they have so many competing priorities?

MM: There are obviously a number of things institutions need to be paying attention to, and not everything should be put aside in favor of teaching. But I think we have to recognize that, in far too many parts of American higher education, teaching has been assigned an extremely low priority. The main business that most college faculty are in is teaching undergraduates, and they get very little training in most cases for that work—they get evaluated in many institutions more on their scholarship than on their teaching, even if what they spend the most time on is their teaching. With very little support to enable faculty to do their jobs, something that comes through loud and clear is, “Folks, we really don’t care about teaching.” And that has to be addressed.

2. The report says, “Effective student/faculty interactions are correlated with increased retention and completion rates, better grades and standardized test scores, and higher career and graduate school aspirations.” Why do you think so many institutions leave faculty development out of their student success strategies despite the pressure they’re experiencing to raise completion rates?

MM: Well, I think one challenge is that our level of knowledge about how to improve teaching is not very high. It’s not surprising that that’s true because the subject has been so widely neglected. There are, of course, substantial exceptions to this generalization. But on the whole, attention has been given to assessing research performance in American higher education, with elaborate systems for measuring it. People measure what they care about, and they measure research, and they don’t measure teaching, except with student questionnaires, which are generally a weak indicator of performance.

3. So you think that designing some kind of framework for measurement would go a long way in disseminating the importance of teaching?

MM: I think it’s one thing that institutions should be investing in. And I want to be clear that I’m not simply talking about measuring teaching outcomes, but actually measuring, tracking, observing teaching performance. It’s very difficult to go straight from what a teacher does in class to what a student’s test scores are, because obviously those are influenced by a great deal of factors.

Actually, I think one of the things we’ve learned from a lot of work in K-12 is that conscientious observation of classrooms by trained observers with organized ways of providing feedback on performance can be very effective in improving teaching performance. When there are classroom observations in higher education—and again, there are exceptions—these observations are done, for example, by full professors going to the class of an assistant professor, but that full professor has not been educated about how to judge performance in the classroom. So those observations may actually be worse than nothing, because you’re getting random feedback.

4. What role can or should tenure evaluation and contract renewal play in elevating the importance of teacher quality?

MM: Experience from K-12 education suggests that there’s a real tension between doing evaluation for the sake of improvement and doing evaluation for the sake of promotion. And both are needed, but they should be kept in reasonably separate boxes. If you want to learn how to teach better, you don’t want to be putting on a show which is going to figure into whether or not you get tenure. So I think there does need to be a systematic way of assessing teaching performance and assessing teaching outcomes. But those ought to be complementary to attempts to learn more about how to improve teaching, by putting what’s learned into practice.

5. What can be done at the graduate level to help aspiring instructors reconceive of the role of a college faculty member, with attention to pedagogy and ongoing evaluation of their teaching?

 MM: These are challenging matters. Graduate institutions are not, all by themselves, going to decide that they’re going to devote more of their energy to preparing future teachers. They’re only going to do that if the institutions make clear that they are looking for evidence of high-quality teaching. So really, it needs to start with the institutions leading activities that signal “we really care about this.” One of those is evaluation for promotion and tenure, how much weight is given to teaching and so on.

But an even more obvious thing is we simply can’t have teaching being done without thinking in a serious way about how to prepare faculty well and how to create environments in which they’re able to do good work. We have to change the concept of a teaching professional because, in the current understanding of undergraduate teaching, especially at four-year institutions, the PhD is a research degree, not a teaching degree. That’s not going to change unless the institutions signal that they’re going to value teaching and, similarly, if the institutions are willing to find the resources and determination to improve the working conditions of people who are in part-time positions or adjunct-type lecture positions. Without those changes, I think it’s going to be hard to make progress in any substantial way.

6. When you mention improvements for faculty in part-time or adjunct positions, what types of changes are you referring to?

MM: I think one is better job security. That doesn’t mean tenure, but it should mean multiple-year appointments, in many cases. A second is providing working conditions that allow people to do proper work. It’s really not optimal to have to meet your teacher for office hours at a Starbucks because your teacher doesn’t have an office. So relatively straightforward things like that are important. But something that’s subtler and may be even more important is if we recognize how valuable good teaching is and give the people who deliver the bulk of the teaching a voice in how the institution operates. Adjunct faculty, in some cases, are not even invited to faculty meetings, and they have very little opportunity to vote on matters that are going to affect them. That all reflects back and can be problematic.

This week, see how some colleges are using student feedback to help shape their courses.

How Students Can Shape the Design of Their Courses
At the University of Dayton, students helped redesign Principles of Oral Communication by providing reactions to readings, offering midsemester feedback, and participating in exit interviews about the content. Other institutions are also finding that faculty are receiving fresh ideas about content and delivery by seeking feedback from students. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

On ‘Experiential Learning’
Traditional academic learning has greater long-term benefits than experiential learning does, John Kijinski argues. He contends that while the latter may be valuable, these experiences should not displace classroom time in which instructors equip students with the ability to grapple with intellectual challenges. (Inside Higher Ed)

The Difference Between Being Qualified and Being Prepared
Many students begin college with a surface-level proficiency in writing, but poor preparation, John Warner writes. Once they experience writing as a quest for self-discovery outside of the confines of a rubric or standardized test, he argues, students are able to enjoy the process more and improve their craft. (Just Visiting)

The Introverted Student Online
Citing studies on introverted learners, Oliver Dreon offers thoughts instructors should bear in mind when working with introverts. For instance, he suggests that online courses are the ideal environment for introverted student to be successful, because they have the opportunity to connect with similar learners and participate at their personal pace while enjoying the solitude they need. (The 8 Blog)

How to Reach Out to First-Generation Students
Recounting his own struggles as a first-generation college student, Brian Payne describes the benefits of mentoring programs like Old Dominion University’s First Gen to Faculty. In the program, students learn how to navigate higher education under the guidance of faculty, who, like them, were first-generation students. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

This Is How a Scholar Behaves
According to David Gooblar, pedagogical goals should drive an instructor’s teaching persona. He writes that instructors should model their preferred intellectual virtues and search for ways to encourage students to follow suit. (Vitae)

The American Council on Education’s College Credit Recommendation Service (ACE CREDIT^®) has evaluated and recommended the Association of College and University Educators’ (ACUE) Course in Effective Teaching Practices for three graduate-level college credits. More than 2,000 colleges and universities consider ACE CREDIT recommendations in determining the applicability of coursework and examination results to their courses and degree programs.

According to CREDIT, the rigorous credit review process is performed by a “team of teaching faculty from relevant academic disciplines, representing a diversity of colleges and universities.” ACE’s recommendation of three credits confirms that the 25-module program with research and application meets CREDIT’s requirements for graduate-level content, scope, and rigor. It also affirms that ACUE’s foundational course is appropriate to the professional needs of current and aspiring faculty and further provides colleges and universities with a way to recognize faculty who grow and hone their instructional practice. ACE CREDIT’s recommendation is independent of ACUE’s collaboration with ACE.

Colleges and universities nationwide are already using ACUE’s credential to recognize and reward faculty for their use of evidence-based teaching practices. For example, Miami Dade College counts the ACUE course toward promotion decisions. At the University of Missouri, faculty who complete ACUE’s program are eligible for salary increases.Other institutions are providing conference travel stipends, access to grants, and recognition at campus celebrations of teaching, among other incentives.

These colleges and universities are among those heeding the call to demonstrate the value of effective instruction that has been articulated in recent reports, such as The Future of Undergraduate Education, The Future of America. In this important publication, the Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education noted, “Faculty are rarely trained, selected, and assessed as teachers, and their effectiveness as instructors is rarely recognized or rewarded. . . . It is time for colleges and universities to elevate the importance of good teaching and to treat the practice of teaching as a central skill to be developed and supported.” By rewarding the use of evidence-based teaching practices through credit toward promotion and increased pay and recognizing exemplary instructors through campus-based and national initiatives, institutions are providing our distinguished teaching workforce with the acknowledgement they deserve.

Learn about ACUE’s course.

An instructor urges her colleagues to learn more about teaching and discuss pedagogy with other practitioners.

Why Don’t Educators in Higher Ed Take Education Classes?
Before beginning her Ed.D. program, Jillian Joyce didn’t expect to learn much about teaching. Now, as she routinely discusses instruction with other educators, she realizes how important it is for higher education instructors to grow pedagogically and learn from other practitioners. (Inside Higher Ed)

Carrot Versus Stick Teaching
Much like in parenting, positive reinforcement is more likely to encourage students to put forth effort than punishing them for failures, according to Rob Jenkins. Jenkins incentivizes students by offering points toward their final grades when they take quizzes about assigned readings, complete assignments thoughtfully, and submit multiple drafts of papers. (Vitae)

The 21st-Century Academic
Manya Whitaker describes and encourages faculty to embrace a new kind of academia. Students no longer attend college to learn for learning’s sake, but for professional advancement, she writes, so faculty must apply their material to real-world contexts and cultivate different types of skills in students across disciplines. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Giving a Test on the Second Day of Class
In order to prevent needless review and avoid assuming prior knowledge, Doug McKee gives students a test of skills required for his course on the second day of class. Then, he begins filling in their knowledge gaps with focused lectures and in-class problems. (Teach Better)

4 Ways Universities Can Better Engage with Nontraditional Students
As nontraditional students become the norm, colleges and universities must find ways to meet their needs. Meghan Bogardus Cortez suggests that, among other solutions, faculty and administrators afford these students flexibility and emphasize skills they will need in the workforce. (EdTech)

Higher Ed’s Three Digital Literacy Resolutions for the New Year
New Media Consortium’s Digital Literacy Impact Study offers insights into how higher education can improve digital literacy among students. Recommendations from the study include ensuring that educators have the resources to incorporate digital literacy into their programs and understanding the different literacy models to integrate digital skills in coursework. (eCampus News)

By Judith Boettcher

Due to the rapid growth of online programs, more faculty are being assigned to teach an online or hybrid class, often with little notice or preparation. How do teaching practices for the online environment differ from those used in face-to-face instruction? What can you do to adapt your approaches to meet the needs of students online? Here are three best practices to get you started.

1. Bolster presence

Instructors new to online teaching often feel overwhelmed with the idea of not being able to see their students. So, one of the most common questions is, “But how will I get to know my students, and how will I know whether they are ‘getting it’?”

The absolute number one best practice for online teaching success is that of “presence” (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016 as cited in Boettcher, 2011). The research on the Community of Inquiry model by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) divides the concept of presence into three constructs—social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence. By ensuring that your course design incorporates these three types of presence, you will get to know your students and they will get to know you as well, building the basis for the relationships that we treasure in teaching and learning careers. As you may intuit, the concept of presence is foundational for all personal relationships. We sometimes stay aloof from our classroom students and even close friends because relationships take time. Thus, teaching online requires developing course designs that help us manage our time, while mentoring and supporting student success.

The practice of presence also helps us reaffirm one of the core learning principles. We know that learners need to build on data and understandings that they already have, as is affirmed by Vygotsky’s (1978) zone of proximal development. Only by getting to know students—and their minds—can we as instructors adapt our instruction in real time to accommodate and help students move from where they are to where they need to be, avoiding the glazed-eye syndrome in online contexts, too! So the companion question about seeing students is wondering, “How can we know whether or not students are understanding and growing in their skills?” Here are some of the ways: We use their forum postings, their questions, their responses to questions, and their contributions and participation in the course community. Just as in the classroom, there are the students who jump in quickly as well as those who hang back a bit, think about things, and then join the conversation. We can use this information to check for student understanding and adjust our instruction when necessary, just as we do in the classroom.

Key strategies:

• Develop a course design that includes forums where you can regularly interact with your students as a mentor.
• Set a regular schedule to monitor students’ participation and questions. Keep a log of the quieter students to check in with after the first few weeks of the semester. Also, keep a list of commonly asked questions so you can adjust your instruction when needed.
• Get to know your students by posing question prompts on the first day that ask about their interests and career goals.

2. Create community

Getting to know our students leads to another best practice—building a course community. Students in a classroom environment often bond naturally as they see each other on a regular basis. Building a course community online requires more ‘unnatural’ bonding activities, but community building is even more important for online students who often fight feelings of isolation. Casual assignment groupings for short collaborative and peer activities can help build community, support the learning dialogue between students, and save instructors time. A concern expressed by many instructors is about the amount of time it takes to teach an online course. That is a worthwhile concern, as poor course designs lead to too much time spent on grading assignments and one-on-one communications. Good course designs plan for assessments that gather evidence of learning throughout the course, provide very clear models and rubrics, and integrate peer collaboration. This type of design encourages community learning and reduces grading time.

Key strategies:

• Arrange students into groups for short collaborative and peer activities.
• Set clear expectations for students’ participation in group activities to ensure students are actively involved.

3. Lecture using short interactive concept demonstrations

Another question commonly posed by instructors new to online teaching is, “But how do I lecture?” Do you notice the assumption behind this question? The question assumes that much of our time for classroom courses is devoted to preparing and delivering lectures—in other words, in “telling” students information, which we know doesn’t work all that well when it isn’t segmented and supported by activities. In the online environment, our teaching presence is invested more in coaching and mentoring catalyzed by problems, challenges, and creative work.  We teach the really important concepts that form foundational knowledge for solving problems with short text or video concept presentations. Shifting our expertise from telling to mentoring and creating focused concept demonstrations is a new set of skills that we need patience to develop.

Key strategies:

• Be selective when identifying the concepts that build foundational knowledge and require direct instruction.
• Segment your longer lectures into short, manageable chunks, presented with short text or video concept demonstrations.
• Support your concept demonstrations with group activities that engage students in their learning and help build community.

Other common questions about online teaching best practices relate to setting clear expectations, preparing engaging discussion posts, and customizing learning to meet all students’ needs. While the online environment can never be the same as the classroom, it can be an extremely effective learning platform even while being different.

Submit your questions about online teaching best practices to Judith by January 19 to have them addressed in her end-of-month online office hour.

References

Boettcher, J. V. (2011). Ten best practices for teaching online — Quick guide for new online faculty. Retrieved from http://www.designingforlearning.info/services/writing/ecoach/tenbest.html. (Author’s note: This document is expanded in Chapter 3 of the book The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips (2nd ed.), by J. V. Boettcher and R.-M. Conrad, 2016.)

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2000). Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The Internet and Higher Education, 2, 87–105.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

The definition of a well-educated college graduate? Someone who thinks critically and creatively. Who inquires, analyzes, and integrates learning. Who communicates persuasively. Someone who is literate, with information and quantitatively, and can work in teams to solve problems of local and global impact. Among other essential competencies, these are the attributes articulated by Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) through the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) in their national movement to promote excellence nationwide. LEAP’s VALUE rubrics take the effort one step further—by providing valid and reliable ways to assess students’ progress toward these outcomes.

A fundamental question remains: With agreed-upon goals and authentic measures, what can we do, as educators, to help more students achieve the meaningful outcomes necessary for rewarding careers and purposeful lives?

Dr. Penny MacCormack, chief academic officer at ACUE, and Dr. Shannon Washburn, assistant dean of academic programs at Kansas State University, will lead a discussion of this question at AAC&U’s Annual Meeting this month. They will focus on how great teaching is central to the answer—specifically, the degree to which faculty employ the evidence-based teaching practices shown to promote student engagement, higher quality work, and deeper levels of learning. The presenters will also discuss how quality instruction is critical to an institution’s strategic efforts and to achieving LEAP’s goal to allow all students to realize economic and democratic vitality.

We hope to see you in Washington, DC for a meaningful discussion that gets inside the instructional “black box.”

Visit AAC&U’s 2018 Annual Meeting website to view the full schedule of events.

A consensus is emerging that high-impact practices must, at a minimum, require that students:

• reflect, at a metacognitive level, on the assignment or activity;
• make a sustained effort over a period of time that culminates in a major piece of work; and
• demonstrate, in a measurable way, outcomes such as stronger persistence, engagement, communication skills, and other key competencies.

Assignments and activities that meet these criteria require careful planning and implementation. They ask educators to cultivate and evaluate student learning in new ways. And they must be deployed at a certain scale if they are to dramatically improve student retention, program completion, and learning, begging the question: How ‘high-impact’ are our strategies for implementing high-impact practices?

ACUE is delighted to facilitate a discussion of this important question at the “High-Impact Practices in the States” conference hosted by California State University, Dominguez Hills and the National Association of System Heads (NASH) in February. How are high-impact practices being deployed on campuses? Are they scalable, with measurable impact? And to what degree are evidence-based teaching approaches necessary for the faithful implementation of high-impact practices?

We look forward to an engaging discussion on the critical link between evidence-based teaching and high-impact practices.

To see the full conference agenda, click here.

An instructor describes how she begins courses with discussions about students’ expectations for the course, and another suggests that teaching character is natural, and instructors should instill the intellectual virtues that are important to them in their students.

Syllabus Week
In her first semester as a teaching assistant, Ingrid Paredes’ pedagogy class began with the instructor asking students to share their objectives and expectations for the course. Now, Paredes begins her own courses with similar discussions, encouraging students to become active participants in the class. (GradHacker)

A High-Tech Learning Center Changed How These Professors Teach
In this video, see how redesigned classrooms, a Learning & Teaching Center initiative at the University of Maryland at College Park, have prompted instructors to rethink how they teach. Anya Galli Robertson, for example, factored the classroom space, where students sit in groups at round tables, into her teaching plan. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Yes, We Should Teach Character
“Academics can’t help but teach character,” David Gooblar posits. He suggests that educators consider the intellectual virtues they want to encourage in their students, pointing to Professor Jason Baehr’s nine core virtues, which include curiosity and intellectual courage. (Vitae)

Higher Ed Liberal Arts Degrees on the Upswing
With more students choosing to study liberal arts, David Hawkins advises that colleges demonstrate how these degrees have high ROI potential, are interdependent with technical-based education, and hone key skills, such as critical thinking, writing, and understanding other cultures, that are necessary for almost every profession. (University Business)

My First Experience Co-Writing an Open Textbook
Bonni Stachowiak collaborated with her class of 16 students to write an open textbook. Here, she describes the development of the project, process, and resources she and her students used to create the finished product. (Teaching in Higher Ed)