Perspectives column by Anthony Walton: Making teaching more enjoyable
Faculty members at the modern university hold a great variety of attitudes toward different aspects of their duties. Some faculty members emphasize their research or creative activities. They find discovery exciting and rewarding. Some enjoy faculty governance or administration. They like seeing their vision of the university come to fruition, although colleagues may say they like power. Some may find teaching in formal classes or introductory courses a distraction from the aspects of their duties they find most interesting. I am one who now finds pleasure in teaching formal courses, both in the classroom and in the field.
In 1999, I stepped down as chair of the Department of Geology and returned to a full teaching load. I had neglected or had not taught some courses for years and faced the need to develop new courses that reflected my current interests, the state of the field, needs of the students and resources available at KU. At first, this situation was a little disconcerting. However, I am at the stage of my career that I can do pretty much what I want, as long as it furthers the general mission of the University. As I have come to understand my situation and adapted to it, I have had more fun teaching in the last several years than I ever had when I was worried about who was casting an evaluating eye over my shoulder. Upon reflection about what I am doing that works for me, some principles have come to the fore.
First Principle: Throw the book away in survey courses. Well, throw away a substantial part of the book. Geology, like many other fields, is very broad. Meaningful coverage even of that fraction of subject included in textbooks is not possible in a 15-week course. Students in geology survey courses must learn new words and specific but commonly different meanings for familiar words. Important concepts may get buried in a blizzard of terms. Overloading a class is easy, but would it be educationally sound? How many other introductory courses face the same situation? My solution? Figure out what is core material and teach that. Figure out what I like and know well from the rest of the textbook and teach that. Teach concepts using only the necessary vocabulary. Ignore the rest. I suspect that students learn a higher proportion of material and more total material if only part of the subject matter is covered, but covered in adequate depth with excitement and thorough understanding.
KU’s BA curriculum should encourage instructors in principal courses to cover philosophy, methods and standards of a field. As these topics are key aspects of a field, instructors should understand them and teach them well, even if they do not particularly like them. I admit that some subjects require certain material be covered, even in principal courses; general chemistry and calculus come to mind as courses where content is prerequisite to other fields and instructors have less latitude than I do. My first principle may not apply to such courses.
Second Principle: Value your material and the students will also. If students sense that you are going through the motions with material you do not believe is important or do not understand well, they will not believe in it either, and they are not likely to understand it very well. Because I teach what I think is important, I have no compunction about expecting students to see its importance and to learn it. Thus, I can set my expectations high and help students meet them.
I am amazed at colleagues who take the view that only students who want to attend classes should actually come. If I as a student sensed that an instructor held that view, I would not respect the class content, because the instructor did not think it important enough to make me want to learn it. I would wonder why the instructor was wasting time on unimportant material.
Third Principle: Application makes abstraction concrete and engaging. I am fortunate to teach geology, a subject that has real-world applications and involves encountering rocks in their native habitat. For several years, I have been privileged to teach a two-week field investigation trip for beginning geology majors. This course is students’ first concentrated opportunity to study all types of rocks, tectonic features, geomorphology and a number of other topics extensively developed in future courses. Students feel the excitement of their first studies of real rocks and the opportunity to apply concepts from introductory courses in the field. The trip gives students an opportunity to form friendships with others who share common interests and will share many classes in the future. These opportunities make the whole trip a formative experience for students. I get to guide them through the excitement of discovery, watch them build confidence as they gain experience and observe the development of enduring friendships. The student response has been gratifying, and the experience has made my return to a normal teaching load a rather pleasant experience. I think that the key aspect is that the course involves application of principles taught in the abstract to real field situations.
One of the unstated fringe benefits of our profession is to be with bright young students who are at the peak of their optimism as they look forward in time. Those students spend money and time to have us as faculty help prepare for their futures. In my introductory class, I set a goal of teaching students to see the Earth, not the world, in effect, adding a new dimension to their powers of observation. I believe that enhancing their observatory powers will help them in a variety of ways in the future. Accepting our role as facilitators of youth, exciting them about our subjects and watching them grow makes teaching fun.