As a former university professor, and as a historian of higher education, I’m gratified (mostly) by the vigilant defence of academic freedom proffered by journalists and others in the wake of the Andrew Potter episode at McGill University. Academics who speak or write controversially should be protected, not sanctioned.
Still, there is too little understanding of what academic freedom means. It is not absolute and it is not the simple equivalent of “freedom of speech.” All citizens have, or should have, the latter, but only individuals who have specified educational and professional qualifications are entitled to academic freedom within universities. In the words of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), they are granted the “freedom to teach and discuss; freedom to carry out research and disseminate and publish the results thereof; freedom to produce and perform creative works; freedom to engage in service to the institution and the community; freedom to express one’s opinion about the institution, its administration, and the system in which one works.”
What do you call a professor? Professor. Oh, I’m so funny…
In all seriousness, the answer to this question is much more complicated than you might think, hence my humour flow chart. Let me explain. Most students who attend university grew up in homes that valued manners to one degree or another. So unless told otherwise, they referred to adults as Mr., Mrs., or, more rarely, Ms. This was standard procedure from their parents’ friends to their elementary and high school teachers. So when these students get to university, they end up with one of two problems. Either they don’t know what to do or they say the wrong thing. So in this post, I’m going to discuss what not to do, why the title you use is important, and how to avoid feeling like an ass. The easy answer is to just call your professor, “Professor.” It’s a good catch-all and you are unlikely to offend anyone. If you want to delve further into this topic, read on!
In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need to call on students to get them to participate. They would be fully invested in our courses, and would come to class eager to play an active role in the day’s activities. They would understand that more participation equals more learning. We wouldn’t be sergeants at the front of the room, putting our conscripts through their paces. Rather, we’d be facilitators — helping our students when we can, asking guiding questions,
suggesting new paths of inquiry.
But of course we don’t live in an ideal world. Instructors everywhere struggle with quiet classrooms, with discussions that die before they get started. Our questions hang in the air for what feels like minutes, and students seem to be trying to find out how little they’ll have to do before the end of class arrives. While there are things we can do to create better class discussions, it’s hard to get away from the prospect of cold-calling.
There’s a mental health crisis on today’s college campuses. According to research conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness: one in four college students have a diagnosable illness, 40 percent do not seek help, 80 percent feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities, and 50 percent have become so anxious that they struggle in school.
How can faculty support students who are facing these issues? Showing students kindness goes a long way. Creating a classroom environment that exudes kindness and concern for students’ well-being sends a message to students that not only do we care about them, but we support them. Facilitating this type of classroom environment can enable students to take the
necessary steps to approach their instructor when they are having a difficult time. A safe and supportive classroom environment helps students begin a conversation about the challenges they are dealing with during the semester. This in turn can lead faculty to assist a student in exploring support services available to them on campus, so they do not have to suffer in
silence.
In the early 1970s, Rosalind Driver, then a graduate student in education at the University of Illinois, had a peculiar notion. To understand how children learn important scientific concepts,she argued, we first need to grasp how they see the world before they start school. Children do not come into their first science classrooms as blank slates, with no sense of the natural world or of the way objects move in space. Talking with children, Driver showed, often revealed that they had quite fully developed (if incorrect) ideas about scientific phenomena.
Her crucial — and radical — insight was that learning is dependent on preconceptions. We learn by revising our understanding of things.
“First and last class sessions are the bookends that hold a course together.” I heard or read that somewhere—apologies to the source I can’t acknowledge. It’s a nice way to think about first and last class sessions. In general, teachers probably do better with the first class. There’s the excitement that comes with a new beginning. A colleague said it this way: “Nothing bad has happened yet.” Most of us work hard to make good first impressions. But by the time the last class rolls around, everyone
is tired, everything is due, and the course sputters to an end amid an array of last-minute details. Here are a few ideas that might help us finish the semester with the same energy and focus we mustered for the first class.
In showing respect for their favorite professors, today’s college students have ventured well beyond the proverbial
apple.
An Indiana University at Bloomington instructor was once given chicken livers … five pounds of them, from an adoring student whose father was a butcher. He gladly accepted and enjoyed the tasty treat. One Southern Methodist University instructor was presented with “a limited-edition Snickers bar” that said “goofball” on it. Apparently the student saw it and thought of her. For now, the candy bar remains in her office, she said, at least until she “gets hangry.”
The current Annual Report uses visualizations developed from years of CCMH data to
explore college student mental health with an emphasis on individual counseling provided
by counseling centers. To start, it is worth briefly reviewing the findings from the last two
Annual Reports:
• 2015 Annual Report: Counseling center utilization increased at 5 to 6 times the rate of institutional enrollment, during the preceding five years. This increase is primarily characterized by students reporting a history of “threat-to-self ” characteristics, and these same students use about 20-30% more services.
• 2016 Annual Report: Counseling center resources devoted to “rapid access” services increased by 28%, over the prior six years, whereas resources devoted to “routine treatment” decreased by 7.6% on average.
As we move forward into a new millennium and the landscape of higher education continues to change rapidly, there is a growing interest in using technology to improve the student learning experience. With the developing awareness of the science behind learning, an increasing number of higher education faculty and course instructors are looking for means to use their time with students more effectively, and see technology as a potential part of the solution.
The inverted (or flipped) classroom is a teaching approach in which students are introduced to the fundamental ideas of a course through pre-class activities that often involve the viewing of a short video. This enables the in-class time to be used for learning activities that go beyond traditional lecturing. In many ways, this is akin to the practice of requiring readings before
class and using class time for debate and discussion that is common in many humanities and social science courses and seminars. In some sense, the inverted classroom approach is an adaptation of this long-standing instructional method to courses, in such fields as engineering and science, for which readings before class are not typically required or completed. This approach has great potential to create a more student-centred environment that is more conducive to effective
learning. It can be used to support a number of fundamental principles of the science of learning that have been well established over the past 100 years. It enables students to engage in more active learning experiences, process the new material in meaningful ways and incorporate these new ideas into their own existing knowledge framework. It allows for enhanced student-faculty interactions and opportunities for prompt formative feedback throughout the learning process. As
well, it supports the instructor to scaffold the material appropriately, as there is a greater awareness of how much the students understand prior to and during the in-class experiences. Despite the strong theoretical reasons for use of the inverted classroom approach and growing interest in the approach, empirical studies that systematically investigate the effects of the approach on students’ behaviours, perceptions and learning outcomes are not often seen. Therefore, more empirical evidence is needed to support effective implementation of the approach.
Some students are more challenging to teach than others. They require pedagogical skills of a different and higher order. Sometimes it’s easier to sigh and just turn away. And that’s legitimate in the sense that students (indeed, people of all sorts) have to figure things out for themselves. But many of us were such “works in progress” when we were in college, and a teacher (or several of them) ended up being instrumental in moving us in more productive directions. It’s for that reason I’d like us to consider some of these challenging students, each one a unique individual, but many displaying the same counterproductive attitudes and actions. Descriptions of these students come much more easily than solutions to what’s holding them back. Said more directly, my goal here is to start this conversation and ask for your wisdom, insights, and experiences with students who are tough to teach.
A recent post in Matt Reed’s Confessions of a Community College Dean column raised the question of “how research informs teaching and whether it factors in at the community college level”.
How can you make sure your online students take tests without cheating? It’s one of the most-frequent questions asked by new online instructors and even some experienced ones. The short answer: You can’t.
You might be tempted to join the “arms race” in cheating-prevention tools, or to adopt punitive approaches such as proctored online exams and time limits for online tests. But the reality is, students will always find new and creative ways to get around your policing
efforts. So what to do?
Internationally, a growing number of interprofessional education (IPE) offices are being established within academic institutions. However, few are applying educational improvement methodologies to evaluate and improve the inter- professional (IP) learning opportunities offered.
The University of Manitoba IPE Initiative was established in 2008 to facilitate the development of IP learn- ing opportunities for pre-licensure learners. The research question for this sec- ondary analysis was: what, if any, changes in the number and attributes of IP learning opportunities occurred in the academic year 2008–2009 compared to 2011–2012? The Points for Interprofessional Scoring (PIPES) tool was used to quantify the attributes of each IP learning opportunity. Most notably in 2012, eight (73%) of 11 IP learning opportunities achieved the highest PIPES score (> 55), compared to only four (36%) in 2009. The concept of the PIPES score is introduced as an educational improvement strategy and a potential predictor of achieving the desired educational outcome: collaborative competence.
If graduate education is to undergo serious change, relying on the development of supervision abilities only through modeling or memory seems out of step.
In light of recent national discussions on the purpose, content, structure, and assessment of the doctoral dissertation, the highly competitive (academic and non-academic) job market and the increasing precarity of employment in the academy—it is no surprise that the design and role of graduate education has been called into question. While some might cheekily say “So
you want to earn a PhD?” and outline the employment outcomes for PhD graduates, it might be time to ask “could the process of earning a PhD be improved?” More importantly, who could do so?
The rapid turnover of technology and ever expanding network of data and information which underpin the knowledge economy have led to a reevaluation of the importance of knowledge to the economic process. Economists now conclude that human capital - the ideas, skills, and expertise of people - is a fundamental driver of economic growth. Demand for employees that possess a mix of both “hard” and “soft” skills is rising as companies respond to intensified global economic competition.
I had an experience recently that confirmed what I’d already suspected: I am no longer an early career scholar. Perhaps because of my age, or simply because I am pre-tenure, I had still considered myself to be "early" in my career until that moment.
It happened a week before my discipline’s biggest conference. As I was checking the online schedule for pre-meeting workshops, I found an intriguing one for "early career scholars of color." But after reading the agenda, I realized I wouldn’t benefit from the content. The lineup included sessions on developing career goals, publishing a dissertation, preparing for the job market, crafting a strong CV, negotiating a job offer, publishing your first book, finding a mentor. As an assistant professor, I’d already done those things. I read the list multiple times, searching, to no avail, for at least one applicable session. Then I posted on Facebook, asking the world: "When do you stop being an early career scholar?"
“Write an initial post and then reply to two of your classmates.” These are the standard requirements for students participating in online course discussions. Discussions in an online course play a vital role in creating substantive interactions, aiming to capture the spirit of discourse in face-to-face settings. This, however, can look and feel like busy work, making the purpose of online discussions unclear to students.
The standard blueprint is safe but has been exhausted. “Initial posts” can be counterintuitive—in essence, they require students to complete small writing assignments individually before giving other students feedback on their work (Liberman, 2019). How can we think outside of the box of posting and replying when it comes to these discussions? One way is to use online discussions as an opportunity to promote student autonomy and ask students to be active participants not only in how they respond to class discussions, but how they initiate them. Here are five considerations for promoting student autonomy while also
breaking the online discussion mold:
Looking to incorporate some learner-centered teaching principles into your courses but aren’t sure where to begin? Here are 10 activities for building student engagement and getting students more actively involved in their learning.
I was in several meetings last month with groups of higher education Vice-Presidents with oversight for teaching and learning, where the topics of discussion included the increasingly dynamic knowledge environment which our graduates are facing. The capsule summary of the workplace knowledge dynamics from one of these meetings was daunting: “We expect most of our graduates will enter work contexts where they will soon face the following new challenges:
working with knowledge that doesn’t yet exist…
using practices that don’t yet exist…
in jobs that don’t yet exist.”
The concept of “disability” should be interpreted in broad terms including both present and past conditions as well as subjective components based on perceptions of disability. These subjective components determine disability in relation to individuals’ interactions with their environment: in the ways buildings are constructed, in the performance standards used to assess individuals, and in the ways individuals are expected to engage in daily activities. This interpretation of disability
is referred to as a “social model.” This model places responsibility for overcoming accessibility barriers onto entire communities. This OUSA policy paper uses a social model of disability to offer recommendations that ensure all willing and qualified students in Ontario are able to access and excel within the post-secondary education system.