November 2006

End Note: Five ways to make teaching fun

In an article for the National Teaching and Learning Forum, engineering professor Joseph A. Untener described an experience he had touring a commercial facility. It was clear to Untener that the tour guide was not enjoying the activity; however, the guide indicated that he was certain everyone on the tour was getting a lot out of it. Untener thought about this experience and applied it to his teaching: “Perhaps there were times when I thought I was pulling off a similar trick. Times when I thought to myself that even though I wasn’t enjoying the class session, the students were having a great experience” (p. 6).

This led Untener to develop the following thesis: No one in the classroom is ever having any more fun than the person in the front of the room. He states, “When I am teaching a class, I set the maximum level of enjoyment” (p. 6).

The author advocates changing approaches to teaching in five ways:

1. Bring new material into the classroom. Notes yellowed with age can’t excite you, and probably won’t stimulate enthusiasm for your subject on your part or on the part of your students. Untener relates that in one lab, a professor asked him why he changed lab activities since they were well-designed and were all new for the students anyway. His response was that he changed them because they were old for him. “There were no surprises in the experiments and consequently the very thing that makes learning fun was missing” (p. 7).

2. Experiment with a wider variety of approaches to teaching. If you typically lecture most of a class period, mix in some discussion or have students work in small groups.

3. Find new ways to have students run activities. Student-driven sessions put them in the front of the room with the opportunity to have the most fun for a while.

4. Bring as many students as possible as close to your level as possible. Untener envisions a bar graph with his enjoyment level as the first and highest entry, and then each student’s entry follows his. He views it as part of his job to maximize the height of those bars all the way down the line.

5. See it as your responsibility to make sure the classroom stays enjoyable for you. If you’re not enjoying the class session, it’s doubtful students feel good about it.

Untener adds that he doesn’t see it as his responsibility to motivate students, which he believes is intrinsic. He does, however, accept a significant role in student learning and believes that people find enjoyment in learning. He concludes that his task is to enable a “rigorous academic experience that is also one that students enjoy naturally—that is to say, enjoy because they are doing something that appeals to their interests and their sense of wonder” (p. 7).