One of the many joys of being at KU as Provost is that I do not have to struggle to change the culture here so that it values teaching. This community places a high value on teaching. There is great teaching all around us all the time. What is more—and what is most rare at a major research institution like this one—is that one cannot really be ascribed a position of high esteem among this faculty unless one IS a very good teacher as well as a leader in one’s field. But I suspect that we all share my uncertainty in discussing that good teaching.
One of the things that I hope comes from meetings like this one is progress toward a familiar set of rubrics, and familiar vocabulary for discussing teaching amongst ourselves. You are people who are particularly motivated to engage teaching. I would like for you to be able to discuss among yourselves the attributes of great teaching with the same shared metrics and comprehensive terminology that you use when you make assessments of one another’s scholarship.
The reason for this is two-fold: (1) such vocabulary comes only after we ourselves have come to understand what great teaching is. We need to be able to talk about it. And (2) we need to be able to talk about it, because it is only when we CAN talk meaningfully about teaching that we can convey to the larger public what it is that we do in the classroom. Unless you have been hiding in a very dark cave for the past two years, you know that there is a movement afoot to force some sort of “assessment” on higher education similar to the No Child Left Behind legislation that has been visited on K-12. There are many reasons for this impetus, but a prominent one is that students and their parents do not understand how the transformation takes place in the classroom. And make no mistake—what you are doing in your classroom is transforming the lives of your students. They are often enthusiastic about this. They can FEEL the transformation, but they are seldom equipped to talk about it. We need to give them as well as ourselves, the tools to do so.
One year ago I asked each of your respective deans to come up with succinct and elegant statements of why your school or college exists at KU. These can be found on the Provost’s Office website under “Why KU Teaches…”. Those simple statements capture effectively the broad spirit of each school and its purpose. The reason that I asked for these statements is that we are in constant need of a roadmap for all who are involved with KU. That roadmap needs to help everyone—students, parents, alums, legislators, staff, and even us, the faculty, to know where we are and what we are doing. Think for a moment of the feeling of desperation that a student must feel when confronted with the dazzling array of choices that our course offerings present to them. How can they possibly make sense of the options? We often encourage them to stretch themselves and take full advantage of the opportunities we present to them. But do they understand what we expect of them when we ask them to make those choices? Sure, when they elect a major, we tell them what is required, but do we ever explain to them WHY those requirements exist? My experience indicates that we don’t do so very often. We need to do so, and some programs do a very good job of this—especially our colleagues in Engineering.
Even when a student has managed to piece together a sound understanding of degree requirements, how confident are each of us that our students understand how our courses fit into those requirements? It is one of my recurring hopes that one day each of us would begin every class by situating the day’s activities in the context of the department’s purpose, the school’s purpose, and the goals of the educational design of each degree program. Admittedly, this is a daydream bordering on delusion, but you get the point. We need to help students understand WHY we are teaching them what we teach them.
In order for us to help our students understand the context of what is happening in their classes, we need to have a vocabulary, a common set of reference points that help us to understand ourselves and then to convey this understanding to other audiences. I am not asking here for the sort of technical language and jargon that is so tiresome to everyone. Rather, I would like to see a reduction in the self-consciousness that I often see when people talk about their intellectual work in the class room.
For most of us – no, all of us – it is dead simple to get us to talk about our research work. We know that we are good at it. We have a clear sense of its value and importance. We can situate it (usually) in larger intellectual landscapes. We have confidence when we talk about our research. I do not see similar confidence when talking with colleagues about their teaching. To be sure, the best among us are superb at this, and it is wonderful and inspiring to hear prize-winning teachers talk about their work in the classroom. We will be announcing a number of such prize-winners in the coming days—this year’s Kemper fellows. We need to listen carefully to one another and take care to capture, preserve and share the best of the conversation on teaching. Forums like this one are excellent opportunities for this.
When we talk about teaching, what aspects of excellent teaching do we need to talk about, and what occasions do we have for talking about teaching?
Conversations on excellent teaching have three basic topics: (1) content, (2) technique, and (3) outcomes. What do we teach? How do we teach it? and What is the result for the students? Each of these presents its own intellectual challenge. In the matter of content, you have been chosen for your job because of your mastery and your ability to acquire mastery. You know the material. But you have (in most cases) only 15 weeks to address the topic. What do you emphasize? What do you leave out? What sequence? What theoretical base do you use? etc. The matter of content is often closest to our individual research agendas, and thus gets a large share of our attention quite naturally.
The matter of technique is the subject of less focus in our conversations. There are disciplines whose accreditation requirements make it necessary to insure that courses be consistent regardless of instructor and this often gives rise to discussions of content AND technique. Engineering is one such discipline. I suspect that the introduction of the entirely new curriculum last year in the medical school has encouraged – even leant urgency to —conversations among colleagues about technique in instruction.
We have historically paid the least attention to the assessment of outcomes among our students. This is the hot and controversial topic of the moment. This is what the Bush administration’s Department of Education is focused on when they are not explaining away the relationship between student loans and the banking lobby. Outcomes most interest parents and legislators as well. When the anecdotes begin to fly about how poorly prepared students are upon graduation from universities, the conversation usually takes on a certain edginess and finger-pointing quality that is not completely edifying. We criticize student motivation, work-ethic, skills, etc. It is relatively rare when we can list in a clear and orderly fashion the outcomes that we expect in our classes. It is still less frequent when we can clearly and simply articulate how the grades we award reflect those outcomes. We must improve our profession’s record in this area. The pressure and the momentum for assessment that is meaningful and comprehensible to general public are inexorable. It is not just the Department of Education. The Association of American Universities, National Association of Universities and Land Grant Colleges, and National Association of Colleges and Universities are all urgently developing separate systems of assessment for universities to use. I have a higher degree of confidence in your ability to develop meaningful assessments than in anyone else.
So when do we have occasion to engage conversation about teaching? Well, today. This group (nearly 400 of you today) is a collection of colleagues who care deeply and passionately about teaching. Today is a great opportunity for us to talk with gifted teachers about all aspects of this portion of our intellectual lives. But this is only one opportunity. Many departments and schools have retreats to talk about this. We know from our colleagues reports that these retreats have been effective in shaping the teaching in those programs. I am not surprised. The motivation to make our students’ experience as rich and sophisticated as possible is a common instinct among the faculty at KU. It is usual, however, for these retreats to end with a set of suggestions for revision of curricula. This is a worthy outcome, but the focus in such instances is not on the teaching itself.
Today is an opportunity for us to have sustained and focused conversations about the intellectual work of teaching. I hope that you will take advantage of this. Beyond today, I invite you to get together with your departmental colleagues and begin the process of determining and articulating the outcomes you seek for your students. In the course of doing so, your capacity for articulating the answers to those earlier questions:In the past year, with the assistance and counsel of the Center for Teaching Excellence 12 departments engaged in this exercise with admirable results. The departments of Public Administration, Nursing, Speech-Language-Hearing, and Psychology will be discussing their results in this summit today.
Teaching is a collaborative by its nature. In a sense, the broader the collaboration the greater is the likelihood for a successful outcome. Great teachers are, in my experience, always open to innovation and adaptation. By way of example, I would point to someone as gifted and experienced as Stan Lombardo, our colleague in the Classics Department, who recently discovered a dynamic new way to teach the trial of Socrates when he attended a workshop on a course developed at Barnard College entitled “Reacting to the Past.” The richness and the rewarding nature of effective teaching never wanes.
I want to thank you being here today, to congratulate you for being part of such a teaching-focused culture here at KU, and for your efforts to enhance and promote that culture.
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