Here’s the challenge: How do we maintain the quality of education in the face of ongoing financial cuts? I’m inclined to say it’s impossible.
I share with other faculty a deep frustration that although I’m working as hard as ever (or perhaps even harder) I’m not able to do my job as well as I once did. I don’t know as many names of students, I’m not able to give them the individual time they deserve. I’m devising assignments that are faster for me to mark and devolving more of the marking onto teaching assistants. The list goes on.
And yet, I’m committed to trying anything that works because teaching still matters deeply to me, as it does to my colleagues.
So what then am I trying? In large classes, I’ve followed the advice of others (including those at the Centre for Teaching and Learning) and moved to the frequent use of small group discussions during some of the lecture time. I’ve designed my large lecture courses so students have the opportunity, at least once a week, to discuss the lecture, reading or assignment material with each other. I’ve found this works especially well if they’re given a focused question for discussion. I circulate among these groups, hoping to glean a sense of what they’re learning and what their interests and abilities are.
I’ve tried letting students create their own groups and I’ve tried assigning them to groups myself. The latter seems to work better. Not only is it more likely to produce groups with a range of interests and abilities, but the process of group assignment also ends up being more inclusive of students who might otherwise get left out. Even so, some groups inevitably get along better than others. The challenge for me is how to make them all as useful as possible.
The small group work seems especially effective around discussing assignments. This gives a focus and an importance to discussions that otherwise might feel arbitrary or needless. I’ve adopted the use of frequent, usually unmarked homework assignments that review the lecture material. Where possible, the assignments direct the student to apply the course material to something that matches their individual interests or concerns. As a consequence, no two assignments are the same, and students can benefit from seeing each other’s innovative interpretations of the tasks.
In taking up the assignments together in the group discussions, they can learn from each other’s unique approach to the assignment. As I circulate among the groups, I get a sense of how well the material is being interpreted. I can also help in building trust and interest within each group through responding to what I hear, ideally through modeling for the group members what constructive engagement in the work would look like.
I’ve experimented with student presentations with mixed results. On the plus side, most students take these quite seriously. They develop important skills and the results are often very impressive. On the downside, too much attention can be given to the presentation form as compared with the content.
As well, there is a finality to the performance that makes offering constructive feedback challenging; once it’s done, the students know that it’s over, and mentally walk away, much like at the end of a final exam.
My lectures work to summarize and synthesize the reading material and to set up the assignment work. I hope they open up new ways of thinking about the topic. I try to organize them in a way that assists not just in note-taking but in later review of the material.
Beyond that, I try to encourage students to connect what we do in class to everything around them. I teach political theory. My approach to the subject is to encourage a critical understanding of the world. Critical, not in a negative sense, but in an analytical sense. And the ways in which we analyze things are not random, but often arise from particular perspectives.
Classroom group work should provide immediate and current examples. The assignments themselves are developed ideally to encourage individual creativity, engagement and interest.
While all of these strategies might work in the large classroom, I rarely get away from the sense that they work even better in a smaller one. The University is chock-a-block full of really good teachers who aren’t getting to teach to the best of their abilities. Students now don’t know what it looked like 10 years ago, let alone 30 years ago when I was a student at Carleton University. I remember the excitement of being part of a working seminar, the dread I felt when I knew I wasn’t prepared for class, the shock at realizing a teacher not only knew my name, but remembered my assignments or what I had said in class. I continue to want for my students now the kind of education that I enjoyed.
For this to happen, we need more than a list of strategies for how to teach. Teaching innovations sometimes work, and sometimes they don’t. What I do know is that when they’re effective, they’re likely to work better in smaller classrooms.
None of them, it seems to me, compensate for the loss of real human contact that forms such a large component of how I understand education to work best.
Eleanor MacDonald was a finalist in this year’s TVO Best Lecturer competition. She is a professor in the political studies department.
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