Perils of the Modern Lecture: Lessons Learned from Non/Miscommunication in the University Classroom

I have, thus far, on this blog, resisted posting any pseudo-academic writing as to not harass or coddle readers who, I hope, will get a great kick out of the following post. As much as it has something to say about the American college classroom, the post is equally a kind of social commentary that I have been brewing over for some weeks now. Those of you who have had coffee, lunch, or dinner with me lately (poor LP who chats with me daily) will no doubt read echoes of my ranting from portions of our conversations. Below is a version of the talk I gave this weekend concerning why the American university classroom is so non/dis/un-functioning. Agree, disagree, whatever. As always, comments are welcome.
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Ami Zusman contemplated the current status of American universities in a chapter in a 2005 anthology entitled American Higher Education in the 21st Century.

Zusman’s assessment: “The twenty first-century has brought with it profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education in the United States. Societal expectations and public resources for higher education are undergoing fundamental shifts. Changes both within and outside the academy are altering its character—its students, faculty, governance, curriculum, functions, and very place in society.” Zusman concludes “…current changes are transforming higher education to an extent not seen since the end of World War II.”

(Zusman, “Challenges Facing Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century” in American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges, Philip G. Altbach, Robert Oliver Berdahl, Patricia J. Gumport, JHU Press, 2005).

This morning, I would like to consider three “lessons learned,” from my five years as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of G. that I believe might fit within this paradigm shift suggested by Zusman’s work.

Area One: “The brilliance of we academics”

The notion that humans communicate in a wide variety of ways is a “truth” that even the most strident post-modernist could agree with. In a number of different courses I have watched as out-going, and down-right-charming professors use their personal appeal to get students engaged in the course and its material. At the other end of the spectrum, I have observed the painful exhaustion of socially awkward academics suffering through their own lectures while over half the enrolled students drift from sleep to awake, from facebook to espn.com to tmz.com, you get the idea. I believe that this complex centers on communicative abilities; but should not be limited to one’s ability to construct a “cult of personality.” Rather, there is something that will always provide variety of classroom experiences simply because academics are human and will produce lectures or construct learning environments differently—not necessarily better or worse—just differently. The point, I believe, is that we should be attempting to communicate with our students in the best ways we personally can. With that said, I have developed some general points that (I hope) most professors already consider as they, consciously or subconsciously, develop pedagogical frameworks.

1. When we construct courses, particularly those at the introductory level, we should realize—that is , NOT blindly avoid—the fact our students are not our peers. They have not set through hours of graduate courses, seminars, colloquia, and conferences. More than likely, they have not read anywhere close to the amount of scholarship that we have—nor should they have. In introductory, and even capstone level courses, these are undergraduate students who we are guiding through processes of learning through which we began our own journeys some years back. Thus, we must struggle with a kind of conflict of interests, that is, striking the most delicate of balances as excellent professors: keeping in check our expertise and the drive that our graduate training/career aspirations inspire while NEVER allowing students to take in a semester of coursework unchallenged and non-stimulated.

2. This balance naturally requires that we assess early on our students’ familiarity with and/or interest in our courses. Unfortunately, the genuine interest of students in our topics, I believe, goes unnoticed by most professors simply because we do not take the time to listen to our students’ interests and make the connections so desperately needed; for example, at the beginning of every semester, I ask each student in my two-25 person breakout sections to introduce themselves and tell the class about their major. I know this sounds, to some, like a waste of time and I’m sure some students find it dull or even embarrassing, but as students introduce themselves I get a chance to show interest in their individuality by placing names with faces and also making the case that their major, be it art history, music, finance, math, or whatever has a connection with our course; so right there on the first day, I can see it, many students say to themselves: “Ok, I have to be here in this intro history course and spend my Friday afternoons with this strange guy, but at least he’s open to other things outside history.” This initial conversation also knocks down the level of intimidation that I was aiming at when entitling this section “the brilliance of we academics.” After a number of conversations with colleagues and former students, their number one point of agitation with professors was not grading irregularities, attendance policies, or even the lack of media in the classroom—-it was personal attitude. Too often, the expert at the front of the room lusts after the recognition of persons in the audience forgetting to fight the good fight to maintain professional/professor balance.

3. Whether with personal attitude or within our syllabi, it falls on us (like it or not) to make the course appealing to our students. Like my first-day conversation with students, we have to make the effort to connect our students’ likes and interests with the course as best we can. Will this always work?... of course not. But if we aren’t trying, I dare say that we aren’t reaching as many students as we might. In some ways, this gets us back to the idea of showmanship and personality types that I mentioned earlier, the general idea here is that we must force ourselves to interact and engage our students—if we don’t, given the power dynamics in most college classrooms, students will not make the effort and the learning environment will remain a flat and uninteresting space for both the lecturer and students. Granted, there are professors out there who… just… don’t… get the point; one, in particular, upon observing one of breakout sessions stated: “Chase, you shouldn’t have a classroom full of students who like you.” Of course, s/he also informed me that I was pressing the students too hard to think critically, was working too hard, and had extremely high expectations for my students. Again, sometimes it’s all about attitude.

4. A final note on our collective brilliance: I think we must be aware, as in the real estate business, pre-sub-mortgage crisis, of “location, location, location.” Please be sure to hear me when I say I am not advocating regionalism as a go-to guide for appropriate topics and approaches to learning. Quite the contrary. What I am advocating is acknowledging where you are in the world. Normally, in those first-day introductions, I ask students to include where they are from, if they feel comfortable doing so. But perhaps, a local example of this location awareness will provide greater clarity: when teaching the post-1865 U.S. History survey, students’ with differing racial/ethnic backgrounds receive information and interact with their peers in all sorts of ways—so much so that international students are often at a loss for understanding the kind of micro geo-politics that are unleashed when discussing black/white relations in southern society at a southern university. Given recent events, apparently topics concerning gender and sexuality also touch the nerves of at least a few Georgia state legislators and could be added to the “just be aware list.” So, is the solution to avoid such topics? Not at all. However, I think academics should be smart and sensitive to students who might have never questioned their socio-cultural frameworks, or worldviews, before and how such questioning can often result in anger, defensiveness, and/or hostility within the classroom.

Area Two: Intellectual Exhaustion: The greatest pox on the American classroom

There is, raging in lecture halls and seminar rooms across America a kind of intellectual exhaustion that has, in my opinion, resulted from professors’ and students’ inability to effectively connect or communicate with each other. Interestingly, as I’ve observed it, the timing of the exhaustion doesn’t usually run parallel for these two groups. Students, be they traditional freshmen aged 18-19 or non-traditional, say 40+, can gage whether the class is going to be worth the struggle and if they will, in fact, get anything out of the course by about week 3 or 4. Much of this is based on interaction with the professor and fellow students and, more crassly, whether they think they will ever need any of the skills to, and the phrase is an apt one, HOPE-fully pass the course. For professors, it’s a little longer: past the midterm and into, say, week 9 or 10 of a 15 week semester when s/he realizes, with mid-term in hand, that the students just aren’t getting it. So what to do—for professors, at least?

1. Professors have to be willing to meet students where they are when they arrive in the classroom. We have to, as I suggested earlier, be sensitive to who they are, but EQUALLY, we must be constantly pressing, at least in the humanities, and probably elsewhere, why they hold the worldviews they do. Helping students realize 1. That their notions of self, world, politics, relationships, and even their participation in socially constructing race, gender, and class have all been, well… just that… socially constructed. And 2. That the greatest goal of higher education is the discovering and (re)shaping of who we, as individuals, are… for and by ourselves. However, in this process we have to be willing to have our own worldviews questioned and defended as well. Often, it seems, academics are unwilling to engage because engagement might take too much effort and we might be unable to logically defend our own ill-formed notions of the world as we see it. I’ll return to this sort of double-standard in just a moment.

2. In this process of challenging intellectual exhaustion, we have to take on the epidemic I like to call: “of course, you’re right, sweet baby.” As a graduate student, we fight on the front lines of a culture war that lifts high this banner from the moment students enter pre-K programs until exiting secondary schools; thus, we inherit high school students who bring with them the notion that they are always correct and take personal offense when we dare to question this truth. The answer and reality is that “yes, one can be wrong” and we must be willing to inform students of this. If this strikes you as radical, hold on, because I'm not done yet. We must explain to students why we think they deserve a B minus and not an A+. A personal example comes to mind to illustrate the double-standard I mentioned before: After recently submitting a grant proposal, I received a rather bland and formulaic "we're sorry" email that offered little direction for improvement of what the review committee said was an unclear proposal. After several emails and a short, strange and stoic meeting, I was left with the dumbfounded feeling: “I really hope I’ve never made one of my students feel like this.” I really do not know how we can expect students to respect us as we wage war against this “always right” epidemic if we are unable to clearly explain their lack of clarity and concision in, say, essay assignments. It might take one or two meetings and several emails, but we owe it to our students to explain how they can make their writing better. This level of engagement could be extended further: Can we be bothered to write letters of recommendation for our students? Help them in graduate school searches? Engage in email dialogue to making sure that difficult concepts discussed during class were grasped by all students?

Area Three: Is technology on our side?

Although all sorts of commentators seem to be reconsidering whether social security will remain the notorious third rail in American politics under the Obama administration, the third rail in 21st century pedagogy is technology and its appropriateness in the classroom. From seasoned professionals to newly-minted PhDs the opinions are all over the boards: the ardent defenders of the “no-technology”school hold fast to the creed of no power-point, audio or visual clips, smart boards…nothing beyond the outstanding personality of the lecturer, a black board and stick of chalk (for some reason, many of these advocates seem to be anti-Expo markers, as well). At the other end of the spectrum, there are professors who can’t seem to get enough: everything is on the powerpoint slides, will be posted online before or after the lecture, there will be music greeting the students on arrival, movie clips and photos scattered throughout the lecture, and perhaps an intricately choreographed musical number put on by the TAs to bring the lecture to a close. Ok, maybe a little much on the musical, but you catch my drift. Two main points present themselves here:

1. Technology, I believe can provide great teaching tools. There is certainly something to be said for the engagement factor that movies, music, etc. can bring to the classroom. However, there are certain drawbacks: moving from one form to the other must be seamless, planned, and distraction-less; when TAs (or worse, students) have to repeatedly help the professor with the technology s/he should reconsider its usage. Students, no doubt, appreciate the attempts to be “modern” but when technology becomes distraction instead of aid, I think the classroom would be better off without it.

2. Unfortunately, many tech-savvy professors seem to believe that utilizing technology absolves them of several of the earlier points presented here today: namely, communication and connectivity. There is also the risk that we become so reliant on technology that several uncomfortable problems can occur: all lectures will be neatly guided by powerpoint (what if it fails, where does the lecture go?); students can easily print out the outlines and materials that are posted online (so why go to class?).

In some ways we end where we began, or somewhere close by… with balance. Technological advancements in the 21st century will continue to press college faculty to keep pace with where our students are headed. Podcasts and e-textbooks may well be the wave of the future that started yesterday, but we have to strike the balance between tech overload and underload just as much as we do between status as professional and professor. Does this mean tolerating some students reading Salon.com while you lecture? Maybe.

And yet, despite all the perils of the modern lecture, the oh-so-heavy burden falls on us to present students with intellectually stimulating as well as memorable classroom experiences. Again, the battle is ours for the fighting, and if they do read the NYTimes online once in a while, count it a bargained triumph for some level of success has occurred in your classroom; for if the next generation is to be our partners in facing the “profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education” I would much rather have it, albeit selectively, reading the Times rather than engaging in the mindless miasma of twitter.com.

TCH

Recent Events

Updates for those of you out there in the blogosphere:

1. Mardi Gras was a splendid little time that left me with a new appreciation for the phrase "Throw me something, Mister" and a host of new friends.

2. I miss Athens (actually, "my people" more than the city proper) more than I ever thought possible.

3. I am ready to play frisbee (and I mean, play hard) with a group of fellow enthusiasts and take in a whole UGA baseball game.

4. I read constantly and think that the on-going dissertation (both in my mind and on paper) will take the form of a screeching dinosaur that might well consume me and then regurgitate me before my committee who will collectively shake their heads in disapproval. Who wants to see dino puke?

5. I have returned to my running obsession and want to run another 10k and perhaps half marathon before next fall.

6. I am going to the beach, I've decided, sometime this summer and will do nothing but read and work on my tan, aka, skin cancer.

7. For the most part, I am happy and would love to hear from any of you followers as to what you all are up to.

TCH