February 2 0 0 5 Vol.3 No.2
Reflecting the Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning at the
University of Saskatchewan
In this Issue..
Preserving and
Expanding the GMTLC
The Nine and a Half
Commandments of
Good Teaching
Energizing your
Classroom Delivery
Information on The
Foundational Document
on Teaching & Learning
at the U of S
Active Learning and
Teaching by Inquiry:
Two Books from the
GMTLC library
An Interview with
Master Teacher
Award recipient Terry
Matheson
New Workshops for
2005
TLC Days &
Graduate Student
Development Days
News from the GMTLC
The revolving door at the The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre is still
moving. We recently said sad farewells to our Director, Ron Marken and our
Programme Director Eileen Herteis. But we are not letting positions or offices stay
empty for too long. In this issue we are pleased to welcome Dr. Walter Archer as
our Acting Director. We are also pleased that Sheena Rowan, TEL Project Manager,
has become part of our unit, and that Melissa Spore, Instructional Design Group is
sharing space with us as she works on a project which will help distance education
students access help to improve their writing skills. Another personnel change that
is not expanded on in this issue but needs to be announced, is that Kim West and
Tereigh Ewert Bauer (Program Coordinators/Developers) have had their positions
made full-time and Joel Deshaye (Program Coordinator/Instructional Technology) is
now part-time. They are delighted to have “real jobs”, and we are so pleased to
have them here sharing their skills and knowledge with all instructors on campus.
The GMTLC is in a time of transition. Changes for the centre were outlined in the
Integrated Plan, but before the proposed “Learning Centre” becomes a reality, the
Foundational Document on Teaching and Learning at the U of S must be written and
approved by Council. Walter Archer expands on these issues in his article and there
is also more background information on the Foundational Document on page 13.
We are looking forward to what the future brings. We are hopeful that the concerns
of all instructors will be heard and their needs will be addressed in this most
important document. We have set up space on our home page (www.usask.ca/tlc)
so that anyone interested can type in their views on the Foundational Document
and we will forward this to the Integrated Planning Office.
Our main article in this issue is by Robert A. Ferguson, Columbia University who
generously granted us permission to reprint “The Nine and a Half Commandments of
Good Teaching”. Although Ferguson’s advice is aimed primarily at new instructors it
contains useful reminders about the importance of thinking about learning outcomes
for all instructors.
As usual we have teaching tips and reviews of resources on teaching in this issue.
There is also an interview with Terry Matheson, Master Teacher Award recipient. We
are fortunate to have so many knowledgeable instructors on campus willing to share
their pedagogical views and advice with others, whether it is in the form of an article
or a workshop. We wish you all the best in the coming semester and, as always, we
welcome your calls and visits to the centre.
Christine Anderson Obach & Joel Deshaye, Co-Editors
1
Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre
37 Murray Building • 966-2231
February 2005
Vol. 3 No. 2
The Gwenna Moss Teaching
& Learning Centre
University of Saskatchewan
Room 37 Murray Building
3 Campus Drive
Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A4
Phone (306) 966-2231
Fax (306) 966-2242
e-mail : corinne.f@usask.ca
Web site : www.usask.ca/tlc
Bridges is distributed to every
teacher at the University of
Saskatchewan and to all the
Instructional Development Offices
in Canada, and some beyond.
It is freely available on the
world wide web through the TLC
web site. Your contributions to
Bridges will reach a wide local,
national, and international audience.
Please consider submitting an article or opinion piece to Bridges.
Contact any one of the following
people; we’d be delighted to
hear from you!
Walter Archer
Acting Director
Phone (306)966-5536
Walter.Archer@usask.ca
Christine Anderson Obach Program Coordinator
Phone (306) 966-1950
christine.anderson@usask.ca
Joel Deshaye
Program Coordinator
(306) 966-2245
joel.deshaye@usask.ca
Corinne Fasthuber
Assistant
Phone (306) 966-2231
corinne.f@usask.ca
ISSN 1703-1222
PRESERVING AND EXPANDING
THE GMTLC
Walter Archer, Acting Director, The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre
and Dean of the Extension Division
I am very
pleased that I
was appointed
Acting Director
of The GMTLC
during this time
of transition
and expansion.
A plan for
expanding
and enhancing
the Centre
was laid out in broad brush strokes in
A Framework for Action: University of
Saskatchewan Integrated Plan 20032007. The process of adding detail to
this broad outline is already under way,
as a draft of a foundational document
on Teaching and Learning is being
prepared. This winter and spring this
draft and subsequent drafts will be
placed before the University community
for discussion. Everyone interested in
teaching and learning – and I’m sure
that includes all readers of Bridges
– should take this opportunity to express
their views and have an impact on this
institution’s policies and practices.
undergraduate degree in History had,
of course, included nothing at all about
pedagogy. While I had learned a few
things in my five days of ESL teacher
training, I certainly learned a lot more
about teaching in that environment from
my many mistakes!
Somewhat later, I completed my B.Ed. –
major in social studies, minor in French.
One of the experienced teachers who
came and talked to us budding teachers
gave me the best advice I’ve ever had
about teaching. She said, “Don’t think
first about what you are going to do.
Think first about what the students are
going to do, and then it will be clear
what you have to do.” That advice,
to think first about learning and then
about teaching, served me well during
my three years of teaching in rural high
schools in Alberta and my subsequent
teaching at the postsecondary level.
The focus of my doctorate in
intercultural education was rural
education, with particular attention to
Aboriginal education. This led naturally
to my thirteen years in the Faculty of
I’d like to use the rest of the space
Extension at the University of Alberta.
that I have in this issue to say a few
My first assignment there was as
things about my background, and my
Director of Adult and Distance
particular interests in teaching and
Education. I taught in adult education
learning. I grew up on a farm about
programs there at the certificate,
70 km north of Calgary. My first
undergraduate, and graduate level.
five years of formal education were
Most of my students were mid-career
in a rural school where one teacher
professionals in their 30s and 40s
taught pupils in nine different grades.
– a very demanding audience!
During the rest of my elementary and
Probably about half the courses I
secondary education I spent a couple of taught included at least some element
hours each day traveling to school in a of distance education, everything
bus. That experience gave me an early from straight correspondence courses
awareness of the special educational
to audio-teleconferencing to videoissues faced by people in rural areas.
teleconferencing to online delivery. I’ve
also taught face-to-face on campus,
My first teaching experience was as
and in various off-campus sites all the
an ESL teacher in Helsinki, Finland
way from Vancouver to Fort McMurray.
and later in Bonn, Germany. My
Having to cope with this wide variety
2
of teaching environments had made
me think often and a bit “outside the
box” about teaching and learning. I
think I’ve learned a few things – many
of them the hard way! Some of what
I think I’ve learned was distilled into a
book titled A transactional perspective
on teaching and learning: A framework
for adult and higher education (2000)
for which I was second author. (The
first author, D. Randy Garrison, is
currently Director of the Learning
Commons, University of Calgary.)
In July, 2001, I became Dean of the
Extension Division at this University.
That is still my day job. But I’m really
enjoying my time as Acting Director
of The Gwenna Moss Centre, partly
because of the dedicated and energetic
staff who work there, and partly
because it gives me a role in this
institution’s rethinking and reaffirmation
of its strong commitment to teaching
and learning.
“Tips, tricks, and techniques
are not the heart of
education – fire is. I mean
finding light in the darkness,
staying warm in a cold
world, avoiding being
burned if you can, and
knowing what brings
healing if you cannot. That
is the knowledge that our
students really want, and
that is the knowledge we
owe them. Not merely the
facts, not merely the
theories, but a deep
knowing of what it means
to kindle the gift of life in
ourselves, in others, and in
the world.”
Palmer, p. x in O’Reilley,
Radical Presence (1998).
TEL moves to the
GMTLC
The staff ot the GMTLC are pleased to welcome Sheena
Rowan, TEL Project Manager to the Centre. We look forward
to working with her on TEL related projects. The following is
an excerpt from the article - TEL renewed for 6th year, as
GMTLC sees changes, On Campus News, Volume 12,
Number 5, October 22, 2004.
Sheena Rowan
TEL Project Manager
Saskatchewan’s five-year, multi-million-dollar push to create web-based
and multi-mode university and college courses is getting a boost – both
provincially and at the U of S. At the same time, U of S TEL Project Manager
Sheena Rowan says there are exciting new developments on campus that
will raise the profile not only of online,televised and “multi-mode” course
development, but also of the whole area of improving teaching and learning
at the University.
Since the departure this summer of its first director, English Prof. Ron Marken,
The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre (GMTLC) is being headed
by Acting Director Walter Archer, who is also the Dean of Extension. And
Rowan, who has helped to co-ordinate TEL on campus since its planning
stages in 1998, moved along the TEL program into the GMTLC on June 30.
Rowan and Archer say this paves the way for the next phase of teaching and
learning initiatives at the U of S. They say the University is set to build on the
groundwork done by the GMTLC since its creation in 2000.
This 2004-05 year is being seen as a transition period during which a key
foundational document will be developed on teaching and learning at the
U of S, and new directions for the whole area – laid out in the University’s
Integrated Plan for 2003-07, approved last May – will start to take shape.
Rowan notes the University Plan calls for creation of a new, more
overarching Teaching and Learning Centre which may incorporate not only
the GMTLC, but also elements from Extension Division’s Instructional Design
Group and Centre for Distributed Learning, from the Division of Media &
Technology, from Information Technology Services, and from the Library.
The new Centre will not only be a service unit helping with activities like
TEL program development – it may also promote research into innovative
teaching and help colleges and departments to identify and apply best
practices in teaching and learning.
The TEL and Campus Saskatchewan initiatives have made their mark over
the past five years. “Right now the U of S has close to 40 TEL courses being
delivered, and a number of others are in various stages of development.”
Since 2000, 94 courses have been approved for TEL development at
the University in a range of disciplines including agricultural economics,
soil science, biotechnology, Native studies, women’s and gender studies,
computer science, art and art history, geography, math, music, education
and nursing.
In each of the past two years, the U of S has been given about $980,000 for
TEL development, from a provincial total of just over $4 million. The money
goes to content development, faculty development and learner services.
3
This article is a transcription of a
lecture given by Robert Ferguson,
who was asked for the Chicago
Teaching Program’s spring 1987
workshop to provide some practical
suggestions for those beginning
their careers as teachers. In
response to this assignment, he
offers a series of commandments
for teachers, which he illustrates
with anecdotes about the kinds
of problems that can arise when
teachers forget that their students
do not simply absorb information
passively. Rather, as he so nicely
illustrates, students actively interpret
what they
hear and
thus will,
EDUCATION is
with
always a matter
surprising
frequency,
of exchange.
alternately
puzzle and
amuse you
with their reconstructions of what
you have said.
Our topic today is the nature of
teaching practice, and I address
you as a teacher and not as a
theorist of pedagogical
methodologies. The following
observations come from a
reasonable wealth of practical
THE NINE AND
A HALF
COMMANDMENTS
OF GOOD
TEACHING
Robert A. Ferguson,
Columbia University
experience and from the comments of
a few colleagues who have been
kind enough to share their own
thoughts in the two weeks that I have
had to ruminate on the subject.
My assumptions in addressing you are
twofold: first, that you are essentially
new or beginning teachers; and
second, that the subject of greatest
mutual concern is the discussion class.
If you are personally more worried
about formal lecture techniques, some
of my comments should still be useful—
especially if you pay some attention to
the plan of what you are about to hear.
In any case, the whole purpose of
the lecture is to reach toward
effective discussion. Education is
always a matter of exchange.
Let me begin with an example from
my first important teaching
experience as an instructor in an
expository writing class with twenty
freshmen. At the time, I was a
graduate student—one of perhaps
thirty new instructors in this very
large course—and we were all
given a small teaching manual to
help us get started. I don’t remember
the manual, but I have a very vivid
memory of one of my colleagues, a
tall ex-Marine who, accustomed to
orders, followed the manual all too
carefully in his first class. That class
had reduced a strong, self-confident,
outgoing person to a mass of
trembling fears.
This is what happened. Apparently,
the manual called for an instructor to
enter the first class with a common
object from daily life and to dare
the class to define it. The exercise
was supposed to lead into a spirited
discussion about the vagaries of
language and the need for precision
in its use. Our ex-Marine was an
athlete. He brought a tennis ball
with him, bounced it on the desk,
The Nine and a Half Commandments of Good Teaching
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Make the classroom your own.
Effort!
Remember the formal process of instruction.
Be aware of your students.
An idea is not an idea until you hear it from your students.
Never answer your own questions.
Take a few calculated risks in your class and, now and then, even
some uncalculated ones.
8.
Welcome change.
9.
Make sure that they enjoy it.
1
9 ⁄2. It is what your students take outside of the classroom, not what they
do within it, that counts.
4
and, following orders, dared his class
to define it. And from the back of the
room had come, “It’s a tennis ball. Now
what’s next?” The timing, the poise,
and, yes, the casual hostility of the
remark destroyed this new instructor’s
entire class plan. Later in the day, when
our conversation took place, he literally
could not remember how he had
survived the rest of the hour.
even your dullest student will eventually
see through the artifice and decide that
WHEN a student asks
you are a phony. Of course, knowing
you a question, and
oneself is a difficult business, but you
you do not know the
can learn a great deal while teaching
if you give yourself the chance. Think
answer—it will happen
rather deliberately about your own
occasionally—there is
character. Know your strengths and
weaknesses. Work on your weaknesses,
only one correct answer:
but play to your strengths. If, for
“I don’t know.”
example, you are a straightforward,
I give you the story for two reasons.
earnest individual, don’t try to be overly
accomplished, but you never want to
First, it is an excellent example of every witty in the classroom. At the same
lose sight of the ideal.
beginning teacher’s nightmare. Your
time, please don’t forget humor; it is
class plan has collapsed, and you
one of your most creative teaching
2. Effort! —The second
experience the derision of your charges devices.
commandment can be given in one
in direct consequence. You have been
word: effort, yours and theirs. If you are
left with nothing to say and a great deal Not the least part of being true to
industrious, your students will respect
of time in which to say it! You have lost yourself lies in admitting ignorance.
you. It is almost as simple as that,
the upper hand and fear that you can
When a student asks you a question,
though I refer you back to rule one
never retrieve it. Most terrible of all,
and you do not know the answer—it
above as a sometime qualification. So
your knowledge has been dreadfully
will happen occasionally—there is
be industrious. This characteristic is
inadequate to your needs. The incident only one correct answer: “I don’t
rarely a problem with beginning
literally embodies the question that you know.” These are hard words to
teachers. I raise it now because the
will ask a hundred times a class in your get out for a beginning teacher, but
halls of academia are filled with lazy
first year of teaching, Am I running out
don’t underestimate the pedagogical
teachers and even lazier students. Mark
of material?
usefulness of your own ignorance. Let
Twain is quite correct when he says that
me suggest just two strategies among
“the natural inclination of the human
My second reason for giving you this
many: (1) outline the way in which
being is toward rest.” There is, I
example has to do with my innate
one might think about constructing an
believe no substitute for continuous
suspicion of teaching manuals, every
answer to the question, or (2) make a
one of which should be taken with
mutual assignment (for yourself and the effort, even if you know your material
well. Teaching is work. Don’t ever
many grains of salt. A rigid application student who has asked the question)
of rules in the volatile forum of the
out of finding the correct answer for the forget that. You are the source of
energy in your classroom. Now this
classroom will inevitably fail. Another
next class.
may seem like an obvious comment, but
person’s decent insight quickly becomes
the point is more complicated than most
an artificial constraint when applied too Of course, making the classroom
people realize.
mechanically. It should be clear to you
one’s own means much more than I
then that my title, “The Nine and a Half have just suggested. It does not mean
Commandments of Good Teaching,”
imposing your own personality on your Your effort in preparation must be
matched by a similar effort in
has its facetious side. The openstudents. The logical extreme of such
endedness of that final half has other
obnoxiousness can be seen in Ionesco’s preparation from the other side of the
desk. It is your responsibility, in other
important meanings that we will get
play, The Lesson, where the teacher
words, to insure that your students
to later, but it stands most immediately
ends up killing his student because she
prepare. They will sit back and expect
for incompleteness, lack of system, and fails to conform to his understanding
you to entertain them if you allow them
the knowledge that you must make
of her. I do mean, however, that you
to. But if you let this happen, there will
your own rules based upon your own
have to guide and, at times, control
be long stretches of boredom for all
experience instead of relying upon
your class through the nature of
concerned, and this will be true even
mine. On the other hand, I have seen— your own personality. There are a
if you are an accomplished performer
and lived—your problem, so bear with hundred different ways to do this, and
because that is all you will be, a
me. Here is the first commandment.
experimentation is the key. Making the
performer. Your mission is to make your
classroom your own means creating
students think. That does not happen if
1. Make the classroom your
an atmosphere in which everyone,
they are simply relaxing. There should
own. —In part this means the
including yourself, is comfortably
be no freeloaders in your classroom.
Shakespearean homily, “To thine
effective—an atmosphere in which
Students should be in class, they should
ownself be true.” If you try to present
everyone is engaged and engaging.
be prepared, and they should be
yourself as something that you are not,
This goal is more easily stated than
5
expected to participate on a regular
of course, to your class agenda. Know
fashion if you have not thought of its
basis.
what you mean to accomplish in every
implications. I remind you of Cicero’s
I sometimes think that the single
class. Your students should know what
famous injunction: “The authority of
greatest characteristic that we have
you are doing and why you are doing
those who teach is often an obstacle to
lost sight of in contemporary education it. They will be especially interested in
those who want to learn.”
is the value of the spoken word in
the details. They should know what is
intellectual exchange. One of the
expected of them and when—from day 4. Be aware of your students
reasons why some of you will have
one in your class. They should know
.— My fourth rule, be aware of your
difficulty as beginning teachers lies in
how you grade and what the grade
students, sounds simple enough. The
the unfortunate fact that you have never means to you.
issue, however, has many dimensions.
been expected to hold forth in a formal
We can start with the literal and work
way in a classroom. My rule of thumb
The elements just listed are ones that
up. You cannot hope for a substantive
in presenting this need to my students
beginning teachers usually remember
exchange with your students if you do
is as follows: students should speak
(with the possible exception of
not know their names. This amounts
often enough in class that the act does
repetition). If anything, a new teacher
to a near law of human nature: your
not interrupt their own flow of thought.
will overemphasize the formality
knowledge of the name is a primal
Thus, if a relatively passive student
of instruction at the expense of
signification of your interest; failure
spends five minutes thinking about the
substance—sticking too closely to an
to know is just the opposite. I actually
form of a comment and then ten more
agenda, for example, at the expense
take role before every class. I do it not
worrying about what has been said,
of a more interesting point in class. But
just to learn the names in a large class
that student has just missed one-third
there is one element of formality that
but to inform everyone of that name.
of your class. Stress the formal skill of
new teachers often fail to comprehend. It is also an act of preparation. When
public address; it is one of the vital
I refer to the hierarchical nature of the
you call role, you can actually see your
skills a college student is supposed to
relation between teacher and student.
students sit up a little more carefully
master. To accomplish this goal
as they get ready for the
in a balanced way, I call on
public participation that true
MY own gauge for success in thinking
students in class. If you adopt
membership entails.
about the corporate identity of the class
this practice in a regular and
A second level of awareness
fair-minded way, your students takes the form of an aspiration. I hope
of your students has to do
will accept it as part of the
that if I were suddenly called from the
with the corporate identity
natural process of instruction
of your class. Here I refer
and will not see it as a
room my class would continue the
to their own interaction and
problem.
discussion at hand without a break.
apparent sense of place, to
their likes and dislikes within
3. Remember the formal
That relation is unavoidably hierarchical the group. A hatred between students
process of instruction. —The
with all of the implications that this
in a class—this will happen—can be a
third rule of good teaching is almost
implies. Beginning teachers are often
peculiarly corrosive phenomenon for the
as obvious as the first two: remember
still students themselves in another
whole group. You have to diffuse these
the formal process of instruction. The
context, and the dimensions of
situations as they arise. What you hope
artificiality of the classroom in the
hierarchy often make them
for as a teacher is a certain organic
formal process of instruction leads
uncomfortable. Learn to work within
wholeness, a sense of enterprise within
you to do things that you would not
it. Because you have an institutional
the class as a collectivity. You work
do in ordinary discourse. Prepare
advantage—one that will at times
on this by bringing everyone into the
for this formality. It includes, among
fascinate your charges—you also have
business of each class. Remember, no
other things, the careful, even labored
a hundred ways for taking personal
freeloaders. You do it by controlling
attempt to achieve precision in the
the monopolists and by drawing out
formulation of questions. It also involves advantage of your students. All are
the silent ones. You do it by making
an unusual amount of repetition of your questionable, and at least a score of
them are completely unethical. This is
sure that the self-worth in a student’s
points and of your students’ points. (It
comment builds within the immediate
is always helpful here to remember the not a lecture on teaching ethics, but
you should never forget that to take
intellectual challenge that the group
old adage of the BBC: tell them what
advantage of a student for your own
is facing. My own gauge for success
you are going to say, say it, and then
physical or intellectual pleasure is to be in thinking about the corporate
tell them what you have said.) These
a traitor to your profession. Hierarchy
identity of the class takes the form of
qualities would be tedious in regular
as such is neither a positive nor a
an aspiration. I hope that if I were
social exchange, but they are vital in
negative ingredient, but I guarantee
suddenly called from the room my class
the classroom. This formality extends,
you that it will operate in a negative
would continue the discussion at hand
6
without a break.
If they do not
SIMPLY
understand what
A third and related element of
you are saying,
put, I teach
awareness might be called the
then no one does. If
most of
musketeer syndrome: all for one and
they are manifestly
the time
one for all. You face a dozen quick
bored, it is time
decisions in every class as to whether
to move on. You
to my best
you favor an individual student or the
compensate by
students.
group. Most of the time, the individual
being available to
and the group work in tandem. Most of all of your students
There is, in
the time, you will give the group priority outside of class.
fact, little
if there is an implied conflict. Even so,
Office hours, you
choice in
you owe every individual student time
know, don’t sound
in your class, and there will be moments like much. You
the matter
when you will want to sacrifice the
can find a way to
if you want
group for that individual. Let me
spend an hour and
offer a quick example from recent
a half in your office to hold
experience. This year I was teaching
before going home.
your class.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin. The
The easiest thing
novel is about a young, beautiful, and
in the world is to
socially prominent woman who turns
turn a student away
her back on place and preference
from your door. But because you are
and who, as an increasing outsider,
moving quickly in a class—particularly
eventually commits suicide. The book,
here at the University of Chicago—you
naturally, is more complicated, but
must be ready to spend a lot of time
this quick summary is all you need to
outside of that class with your slower
know to appreciate the dilemma of my
students. You have to give your people
student, a Korean American, who was
the time that they need, and you are not
striving very, very hard to fit within her
going to do it in an hour and a half a
adopted culture. She was supremely
week.
threatened by The Awakening . She saw
that Chopin’s character was throwing
There is one last level of awareness
away everything that she was working
of your students that is worth stressing
for, and she needed to talk about it.
to new teachers. You want to think
Why, she wanted to know, should this
carefully, even clinically about your
perfectly adapted character fail to
students’ actual situations as they
participate in society and then take her present them to you. Who seems to
own life? It made no sense to her. My
be in trouble? Who is pressing? Who
student, you will gather, was operating is nervous? Who is riding for a fall?
on an entirely different level than her
Whether you consider a display of
peers in the class. Nevertheless, I
intellectual arrogance to be merely
gave her five minutes of our class to
that or a mask for painful insecurities
explain her point of view. She needed
will determine a great deal about how
every one of them. For that time in that
you respond to it. You are, in short, a
situation, the others had to wait.
counselor as well as a teacher, and
you can help your students more than
There is another and perhaps more
you might think by understanding the
controversial aspect of one’s awareness direction behind their performances.
of students. Simply put, I teach most
of the time to my best students. There
A concrete example might help here. In
is, in fact, little choice in the matter if
that first expository writing class that I
you want to hold your class. One of
alluded to earlier, I managed to bring
the talents that you need to develop in
an alienated female student from the
the classroom is the ability to watch
periphery into the center of intellectual
and gauge your students even as you
activity of the class. Her work improved
are thinking or talking with them. Your
mightily during the semester, and I
better students are your weather vanes. was proud of our mutual success right
7
up until the moment when she broke
into tears in public over the discovery
that her instructor was a married
man. I failed that student in the sense
that I was the cause of unnecessary
embarrassment and pain to her. I failed
to see what was happening. I was so
absorbed in my success that I did not
think about the additional dimension
and guard against it. Remember, the
goal is not just to get your students’
attention or to win their applause or
even to teach them. The goal is to
contribute to their ideal growth and
development. You should realize that
you are dealing with a population
that is going through a very difficult
maturation period. Make sure that you
contribute to that growth instead of
hindering it.
5. An idea is not an idea until
you hear it from your students.
—My fifth commandment is a little
different, and I hope that we are getting
into less familiar territory as we move
along. It is this: an idea is not an idea
until you hear it from your students.
I believe this one more with each
passing day. You can be brilliant on the
subject of realism in American fiction
or on Weber’s theory of charisma in
a sociology class, but, if your students
do not come up with an understanding
of realism or charisma, you have been
plowing in the sea. Several years ago,
I listened to a colleague deliver an
excellent lecture on eighteenth-century
prose to a class of juniors and seniors.
This professor was a former actor, a
man with a fine voice and sense of
audience, and he had never been more
brilliant than on that day. But the young
woman on my left, an industrious note
taker for the first few moments, seemed
at first confused and then disinterested.
Her mind wandered, and then, forty
minutes into the class, she wrote at the
top of her page, “Who is Dr. Johnson,
anyway?” I hope the lesson is clear.
Who is Dr. Johnson, anyway? The goal
of the class, no matter what the class,
is to get your students to use the ideas
that you have suggested to them. They
must understand first. Then perhaps
they might go beyond even your own
understanding of those ideas. When the
latter happens, when you see something
for the first time because a student
tells you about it, you have received
perhaps the greatest reward that the
classroom has to offer.
There are many ways to test your
students, but the best way, certainly the
most immediate, is to listen to them.
Listening is an art. As a teacher, you
have to be listening and thinking at
the same time. This procedure will
require all of your concentration. I can
summarize its importance through a
subordinate premise: it is extremely
hard to figure out what your class
knows. Indeed, I’ll add a subsidiary to
the subordinate premise: it gets harder
to figure out what your class knows
as you get older. One of the incipient
signs of old fogyness in the teaching
profession is that frequent complaint
that students know less than they once
did. In all likelihood, it is not a matter of
knowing less but of knowing something
different from what you expect them
to know. Get beyond your feelings
of depression about your students’
presumed ignorance as fast as you can.
Find out what they do know and learn
to work with it. This is the foundation on
which you build.
increasingly separates where it once
united.
Let me explain what I mean from an
incident in class just this week. I have
a student, a good one, who is writing
on T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land . We
were discussing the second section, “A
Game of Chess,” in which two young
women in a pub discuss a third as part
of a whole series of images of debased
sexuality:
You ought to be ashamed, I
said, to look so antique
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said,
pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring
it off, she said.
My student, a child of the eighties,
automatically assumed that the pills in
question were birth-control pills. The
Waste Land , of course, was written in
1922, and there were no birth-control
pills in 1922. The section is about
pills that force a miscarriage or an
abortion. My point is that I will never
teach the passage in quite the same
way again because of my conversation
with this student. I have learned from
his ignorance. Don’t underestimate that
resource. The truth in teaching is always
As a young, beginning teacher, your
a complex thing. I remind you of Henry
sense of what your students know is the Thoreau’s comment on the importance
one area where you have a tremendous of dialogue. “It takes two to speak the
advantage. You have a shared
truth,” writes Thoreau, “one to speak
experiential context with students
and another to hear.”
who are only somewhat younger
than yourselves in music, history, film,
6. Never answer your own
style, and general culture. Use that
questions. —Rule number six follows
experience. As an older teacher, you
from number five. Never answer
must learn to compensate. The seminal
your own questions. It took me quite
event of my student days was the
awhile to learn this one, but I now try
assassination of John F. Kennedy. For
to abide by it faithfully. If you answer
the student of today, that event might as your own questions, your students
well be the assassination of Abraham
will quickly appreciate the pattern,
Lincoln. The longer you teach, the
and they will wait for your answers
harder you have to work at reaching
instead of thinking about the problem at
your students across the history that
hand. The great difficulty with the sixth
THERE are many ways to test your
students, but the best way, certainly the
most immediate, is to listen to them.
Listening is an art.
8
commandment is
EDUCATION
that you must be
is a
prepared to wait
for answers. You
speculative
must not be afraid
venture.
of silence, or, as
a colleague has
expressed the
idea, learn to make silence work for
you instead of against you.
Accepting silence, enduring silence
upon occasion, has been my hardest
lesson as a teacher. The natural
impulse is to leap right in or to move
on. But I would remind you that a
good question—one worth asking—is
not easily answered. Moreover, you
are not usually interested in the first
thing that comes tripping off of the
tongue. Take some comfort, when these
silences arise, from Eliot’s lines in “Ash
Wednesday”:
Where shall the word be found,
where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not
enough silence.
But if you are not poetically inspired or
are still faint of heart, let me suggest
a few strategies. I will sometimes
reformulate the question in a more
leading way. Sometimes, if I think
the question is crucial, I will turn
around and write it on the the board
and just leave it there for the class to
think about. Sometimes, I will simply
say, “This is a difficult question. Take
your time in thinking about it.” Very
occasionally, I will even say, “This is
perhaps too difficult a question for us
to consider at this moment,” and we
will move on without further comment.
Invariably, you find that your students
return to the question on their own at
the proper time.
There are important compensations
for this technique. Some of the most
rewarding moments that I have
experienced as a teacher have
come when a group of students have
come to me about a raised query.
“All right,” they will say,” we have
thought about it, and this is what we
think. Now, what do you think about
it?” The goal, as always, is intelligent
thought. Emerson puts the matter best
for me: “One must be an inventor to
read well. There is creative reading
as well as creative writing. When the
mind is braced by labor and invention,
the page of whatever book we read
becomes luminous with manifold
allusion.”
7. Take a few calculated risks in
your class and, now and then,
even some uncalculated ones.
— Number seven must be understood
with special care: take a few calculated
risks in your class and, now and then,
even some uncalculated ones. You
must allow for spontaneity for your
own sake and everyone else’s. As a
beginning teacher, you are likely to feel
the greatest sense of conflict between
your agenda and classroom discussion.
You will have that agenda in front of
you, and you will be tempted to follow
it too mechanically. Obviously, there
are things that you must accomplish in
a given class—that is your agenda—
but don’t be too slavish about it.
Experienced teachers probably try to
accomplish less in an agenda, but they
work much harder to have that agenda
emerge in a seemingly spontaneous
and integral fashion. Don’t be in such a
hurry to tell the truth. Benjamin Franklin
was right when he says that people
learn best when they think that they
have thought of it themselves. Taking
risks is also an important mechanism
for sustaining your own interest in the
teaching process. That class is best
where you also learn something. You
want to be receptive to the good,
unexpected response, the point that
takes a lesson in a different though
still valuable direction. Oh yes, there
is one last thing about taking risks.
Sometimes you are going to fail. That
is in the nature of taking risks. But you
will be astonished by the generosity of
your students on this score. More times
than not, they will emphasize their own
excitement in the chance that has been
taken.
8. Welcome change. —My eighth
suggestion is a real commandment.
I am prepared to have it written in
stone for Charlton Heston to carry
off of the mountain. I can give it in
just two words: welcome change. Try
different things as a teacher over time.
Embrace new possibilities. You don’t
really need to hear this commandment
right away as a new teacher, but I
want to warn you that universities and
colleges and high schools are filled
with once vital teachers who have
turned into hollow men and women
by delivering the same canned classes
year after year. The canned lecture
is to learning what rust is to metal. It
disturbs and undermines the integrity
of the vital substance. No one expects
an entirely new preparation every year
for every class session, but the line of
demarcation here is sharper than most
realize. There is a world of difference
between knowing your class notes and
knowing your subject. If you know your
class notes, you are prepared to say
what you said before. If you know the
substance, you are ready to engage
in a fresh understanding. Your students
always deserve the latter. The first is
always possible, but it is also a cheat.
My personal rule of thumb for insuring
change is to teach at least one new
course every year. Collaborations
with other teachers in group courses is
another insurance policy. At the very
least, make sure that you have changed
your texts in existing courses. It will be
easier not to change the texts, but no
Richards, the father of practical criticism
and a major figure in literary circles
generally throughout the first half of the
century. Richards was then in his late
seventies, and my friend was busily
engaged in working up a lecture on
Oliver Goldsmith. Richards asked my
friend what he was going to do and
received a rather lengthy analysis of
the ins and outs of the situation, the
organization of the lecture, the goals of
the class, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
When my friend was finally finished,
Richards responded that he had
forgotten one thing. “You have forgotten
the most important thing,” Richards
said, “make sure that they enjoy it.”
So the ninth commandment is just
that: make sure that they enjoy it. The
greatest compliment that students can
pay you is to tell you that they are
sorry when the course is over. When
a C student tells you that, you can
have some hope that you may have
been doing your job. Your students
should look forward to your class. They
should want to be there. Learning is an
innately enjoyable process. If it is not
in your classroom, then something is
wrong. Indeed, the institutionalization
of learning threatens the primal truth
that learning is enjoyable. Institutions—
habit, schedule, convention—turn the
classroom into a requirement instead of
a privilege.
I am a teacher of literature, and
this status gives me an inestimable
TRY different things as
advantage in trying to create interest,
a teacher over time.
excitement, and pleasure in the
classroom. As Samuel Johnson has put
Embrace new
the matter, “A book should teach us to
possibilities.
enjoy life or to endure it.” The problem,
alas, is that too many teachers assume
that great literature will necessarily
one ever said that good teaching was
do that all by itself. It might, in fact,
going to be an easy matter.
but you cannot afford to trust to that
hope. You will hear professors tell
9. Make sure that they enjoy it.
each other and their students that “on
—My ninth commandment did not come the college level we assume interest.”
from direct experience, but it struck
Nothing could be more benighted.
me so forcefully when I first heard of
Never assume interest! Part of your
it that I do not conduct a single class
task, always, is to engender interest
without thinking of it. A friend of mine,
and to keep it alive. Professors have a
as a young beginning teacher, had
bad habit of assuming the importance
the experience of getting to know I. A.
of their subject. You may assume it, but
9
don’t forget to demonstrate it along the
way. I try to keep in mind Montaigne’s
aspiration that “the gain from our
study is to become better and wiser by
it.” The aspiration will mean different
things on different levels—a different
thing for a high school student than for
a professor of graduate students. Still,
as you prepare a class, it is not a bad
idea to think about what “better and
wiser” might mean in the particular
context of your classroom. This may
sound like a heavy burden, maybe
even a pretentious one, but I find it to
be an indispensable concern. Students
will have their own reasons for taking
your class, but, if and when you are
asked for a reason—in a moment of
uncertainty or perhaps of challenge—
you want to have not just an answer
but the best answer of which you are
capable.
91⁄2. It is what your students
take outside of the classroom,
not what they do within it, that
counts. —We’ve come to the final
half commandment that I promised,
and I hope that you will view my
fraction as more than a conjurer’s trick
to hold your interest. As I said at the
beginning, the half indicates, in part,
an open-endedness, a lack of closure,
a need for you to set up your own rules
in keeping with your own personality
and experience. But I also call it the
ninth-and-half commandment because
it extends wildly outside of the frame of
reference that we have been discussing:
namely, your performance in the
classroom. Not to make a mystery of it,
the last commandment states that “it is
what your students take outside of the
classroom, not what they do within it,
that counts.”
I mean for this knowledge to be
rather humbling. Your brilliance in the
classroom counts for nothing if your
students don’t remember something
after the experience. You want to
think very hard about what they are
to remember. What they do remember
can be quite bizarre. A quick example
should suffice here. Last year, in
teaching The Iliad , I happened to
mention that marvelous moment of
IT is my own
personal belief
that students
learn more from
each other than
from their
teachers.
closure near the end of Homer’s
epic where Achilleus’ divine mother,
Thetis, comforts his grief and tries
to return him to everyday life. “Go
back to your women,” says Thetis,
“and sleep with them as you did
before.” On the examination, about
two-thirds of my freshmen observed
that “Achilleus’ mother said it is all
right for him to sleep with anyone
he wishes to . . . and this makes his
life happy again.” This response
was my failure. There will always be
some throwaway comment in one of
your classes that your students will
cling to and that will come back to
haunt you. What they remember can
be frighteningly insufficient by your
standards.
What I would emphasize, however,
is that to instruct and to educate are
not synonyms. “To instruct” means to
put in, it means to inform, it means
to furnish with knowledge and
information. “To educate,” from the
Latin educare, ex-ducare, means to
YOUR brilliance
in the classroom
counts for nothing if
your students don’t
remember
something after the
experience. You
want to think very
hard about what
they are to
remember.
10
bring out of, or to lead forth. Instruction,
in other words, leads on to education,
but they are not the same. You instruct
your students, but you hope that
they educate themselves through that
instruction. I think that it is Pascal who
says that the definition of an educated
person involves one who can happily
spend time alone in a room—someone,
that is, who has the resources to
entertain the self through thought and
reflection.
It is my own personal belief that
students learn more from each other
than from their teachers. If you are
lucky, they will listen to what you have
to say, and they will, in some instances,
even seek you out for confirmation or
even an extension of the thought in
question. But they will truly test what
they know by arguing about it amongst
their peers. Whether it is a math
problem set, an essay assignment, or
the interpretation of a book, the refining
process of what they know takes place
in those debates within their own
generation. You can see that process
at work in just about every conference
room of Regenstein library on a given
night.
One way of thinking about your task
as a teacher is to ask yourself exactly
what they should remember from a
class. What can you say to keep them
thinking about the subject? Or better
yet, what can you say or what can you
do that will keep an idea or work alive
for when they will actually need it?
When the Pequod finally sinks beneath
the waves at the end of Moby-Dick on
some Thursday afternoon late in the
winter quarter, it has indeed sunk in
vain unless your student, sometime later,
argues with someone about the nature
of “the predestinating head” that put it
there.
Of one thing you can be certain. If your
students leave your class with nothing
else, they will leave it with some
image of you, their teacher. The word
“professor” is often a term of respect
and sometimes one of derision, but
the image that you want to leave your
students with is the original meaning
that we have lost sight of. Originally,
to profess meant to make a public
statement of what one believed, it
meant to declare one’s faith openly,
to make a religious statement of one’s
convictions in a way that conveyed
one’s knowledge and integrity. I would
submit that this is still true if properly
understood. You want to convey your
passion for what you are doing but not
with the object of appearing as some
idealized individual or saint.
If you have demonstrated the integrity
of your subject matter with all of your
involvement behind it, you can hope
that your student will identify with
the thinking process and not with the
thinker. You will have taught three
things because each is useless without
the other two. You will have conveyed,
first, the true complexity of your subject,
second, the high worthiness and
pleasure of thinking about that subject,
and third, the ability, despite every
complexity, for actually thinking about
it. You will have led your student into
that proverbial empty room with enough
capacity for thought to remain there—at
least occasionally. You can even hope
that, if another enters this room, that
something interesting might be said
there.
Robert A. Ferguson is the former
Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the
Humanities, Department of English
Language and Literature and the
College, the University of Chicago.
He is currently George E. Woodbury
Professor, Department of English and
Comparative Literature at Columbia
University. This article has been
reprinted with the permission of the
author.
OWL
(ONLINE WRITING LAB)
Melissa Spore, Instructional Designer, Extension
Division, has been spending part of her time at the
GMTLC mainly working on the OWL (Online Writing
Lab) pilot project for the Extension Division. We are
pleased to have her at the Centre part time. The following is an excerpt from the OWL website. For more
information call Melissa directly at 966-5861.
What is OWL?
The Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers students personal help developing their writing assignments via e-mail writing tutorials.
Students are assigned a tutor who reads their writing assignments,
answers their questions, and makes suggestions. Through e-mail
exchange, the student and tutor discuss improvements to the written work. The responsibility for the student’s academic work always
rests with the student.
The OWL is a project of the Extension Division and available to
students enrolled in:
• online courses
• televised courses
• independent studies (print correspondence) courses
• multimode courses
• off-campus face-to-face studies
The Online Writing Lab (OWL) also provides:
• workshops to students at the Regional Colleges throughout
Saskatchewan
• reference materials and links
• consultations with faculty on devising, marking, and juggling
writing assignments.
For more information please see
http://www.extension.usask.ca/owl/
Characteristics of an effective instructor:
Knowledge of and enthusiasm for the subject matter and teaching
Good organization of subject matter and course
Effective communication
Positive attitudes toward students
Fairness in evaluation and grading
Flexibility in approaches to teaching
(The Guide to University Teaching, http://www.usask.ca/tlc/teaching_guide/utl_teaching_environment.html)
11
ENERGIZING YOUR CLASSROOM DELIVERY:
SOME HELPFUL HINTS
Dr. Jennifer MacLennan
D.K. Seaman Chair, Technical and Professional Communication
College of Engineering, University of Saskatchewan
Barriers to a Lively Classroom Style
• physical layout — fixed desks, a lab table, a raised dais — that distances
the instructor from the class
• subject matter — amount of material to be covered; hierarchic discipline
structure
• class time — too early, too close to lunchtime, too late in the day
• students — lack of background, motivation, or interest; uncertainty about
goals
• physical distractions — noise, heat or cold, disruptive student behaviour
• fear— stagefright, agoraphobia, “communication apprehension,” face
risk, performance anxiety, feeling of nervousness, a sense of losing control
of the situation (or of yourself), hiding from the group
Recognizing Stagefright
FEAR is one of the main barriers to effective classroom delivery.
Because it takes on many appearances, it may be difficult to recognize for
what it is. Even after the physical symptoms of nervousness disappear, we
may continue to manage anxiety through the following strategies:
• Relying too heavily on copious lecture notes
• Interaction with notes, slides, or boardwork; little interplay with class
• Overusing large numbers of overheads
• Cultivating a stern classroom demeanor, especially when it’s combined with a
friendly office manner
• Static posture and little movement
• Lack of eye contact
• Little voice variety
• Outright dislike of or hostility toward the group
• Uncontrolled or unfocused energy, humour, or movement
Remember: All really good communication involves an element of
interpersonal risk!
What Creates Energy?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
movement
facial expression
effective gesture
interactive visuals
focus and direction
personal engagement
structure
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
volume
eye contact
pattern
visual and aural variety
rhythm
humour
enthusiasm
All of these elements are factors that either create (or undermine) the level of
energy you create. The class must detect a patterned movement toward an explicit
goal. Let them know where this journey is taking them, and help them to build
enthusiasm as you go. Show them how they can actually use the materials you’re
teaching them, let them see how much you love your subject, and eventually they
will come to value the learning itself as an end.
12
To Add Energy to Your
Delivery:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
smile
encourage questions from them
make eye contact
ask lots of questions
speak loudly
minimize overheads
use large gestures for emphasis
repeat main points
vary your voice tone
maintain your pace
walk among the students
talk to the class, not at them
get out from behind the podium
use narrative patterns
throw away your notes
wear comfortable clothes
prefer the board to prepared visuals
focus on your audience, not yourself
incorporate humour naturally
identify your goals (destination)
commit yourself to the interaction
reduce uncertainty with predictable
structure
Visit the Rhetoric and Technical
Communication Web Site at
http://www.engr.usask.ca/dept/
techcomm/
Questions? Dr. MacLennan may be
reached at jennifer_maclennan@engr.
usask.ca
Creating Energy in the
Classroom
with
Jennifer MacLennan
was offered during
TLC Days
January 2005.
PLANNING FOR CHANGE:
THE FOUNDATIONAL DOCUMENT ON TEACHING & LEARNING
As the university prepares to enter
a new planning cycle the Office of
Integrated Planning is concentrating
part of their time on creating the
Foundational Document on Teaching
& Learning. The purpose is twofold – it
will affect planning within colleges and
departments individually, but it will also
identify key planning directions on how
teaching and learning is practiced and
supported at a university wide level.
The development of a Foundational
Document on Teaching and Learning
was called for in the Integrated Plan for
the entire university (A Framework for
Action: The University of Saskatchewan
Integrated Plan 2003-2007, page 26).
As stated in the Integrated Plan, the
Foundational Document
… will address the University’s
commitment to teaching and
learning, outline expectations of
all faculty in the area of teaching,
describe best practices in teaching
and teaching methodologies,
indicate appropriate technologies,
and highlight evaluation systems.
The general goal will be to help
create ways in which to enhance
the undergraduate learning
experience at the University of
Saskatchewan.
(A Framework for Action: The
University of Saskatchewan
Integrated Plan 2003-2007,
page 26)
In the last few months several experts in
the field of teaching and learning have
been invited to our campus and there
have been opportunities for
administration, faculty and staff meet
with them and hear how their
institutions have addressed issues
surrounding teaching & learning. These
guests included Dr. Trudy Banta, Vice
Chancellor for Planning and Institutional
Improvement and Professor of Higher
Education, Indiana University-Purdue
University, Indianapolis; Janet Donald,
Professor, Centre for University
Teaching & Learning, and Department
of Educational and Counselling
Psychology, McGill University; Thomas
Angelo Director of the University
Teaching Development Centre at
Victoria University in Wellington,
New Zealand and Michael Ridley,
Chief Information Officer and Chief
Librarian McLaughlin Library, University
of Guelph. During presentations and
meetings they shared their views on
the changes they have seen at their
institutions to enhance student learning
and improve methods of supporting,
improving and rewarding teaching.
The reorganization of teaching
support units into a new “Learning
Centre” is also outlined in the
Integrated Planning document. “As
this Foundational Document is being
constructed, organizational changes
will be made to enhance our capacity
to help faculty meet their teaching and
learning responsibilites.” (Page 26) It
is expected that the GMTLC will be
joining with other units on campus from
Extension, ITS and DMT in order to
coordinate and expand the work all of
these units do to support teaching on
campus.
Michael Atkinson, Vice-President
Academic and Provost; Bob Tyler,
Chair of the Instructional Development
Committee of Council; Walter Archer,
Acting Director of the Gwenna Moss
Teaching & Learning Centre; Pauline
Melis, Director of Institutional Planning;
Cecilia Reynolds, Dean, College of
Education; Tom Steele, Associate Dean,
College of Arts & Science; and John
Thompson, STM. Master Teacher Award
Recipient comprise the membership
for the Drafting Committee for the
develpment of this document, chosen
from a larger Steering Committee.
Content and directions detailed within
the document will be taken from
13
conversations and feedback from all
interested parties on campus. Students,
both graduate and undergraduate,
Deans and Department Heads, all
faculty members, administrative staff
members, librarians and interested
persons from ITS AND DMT amoung
other units, will be invited to contribute
their ideas and respond to the
document while it is in development.
In December 2004, the Terms of
Reference for the Foundational
Document were completed. They are
available in pdf format at http://www.
usask.ca/vpacademic/integratedplanning/. The document will be ready
in draft format by early in the spring
and it is hoped that it can be completed
and approved by council for the fall
of 2005. As stated in the Integrated
Plan, the document will be written using
a “broadly based and consultative
process.” Comments are welcome
and encouraged. People who wish
stay informed during this process are
encouraged to check the website
(http://www.usask.ca/vpacademic/
integrated-planning/plandocs/
foundational_docs.php) to view updates
on the document. For more information
contact Pauline Melis by email at
Pauline.Melis@usask.ca.
If you are given an
open-book exam
you will forget your
book. If you are given
a take-home exam
you will forget where
you live. (Variant of
Murphy’s Law)
Felder, Richard,
“Speaking of Education.”
Chem. Engr. Education,
27 (2), 128-129 (Spring 1993).
HUNTING FOR RESOURCES
Active Learning and Teaching by Inquiry: Two Books from The Gwenna Moss
Teaching & Learning Centre resource library
Joel Deshaye, Program Coordinator, GMTLC
Walter L. Bateman. Open to
Question. San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1990.
Chet Meyers and Thomas B.
Jones. Promoting Active Learning.
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1993.
One of the central challenges of higher
education in our culture is the inertia
of student apathy combined with the
professorial habit of lecturing. The
students, the immoveable objects in
this equation, and the professors, the
irresistible forces, hammer against each
other in a seemingly futile battle of
wills, or lack of them. Years after their
first skirmishes, the students convocate
and the professors bid them farewell,
not always fondly. Because no equation
is perfect in real life, the immoveable
objects did weather a little; their
erosion might have been noticeable in
their tight smiles at convocation, and
their professors might have felt a little
less energy than they did three, four,
six, or ten years ago when that batch of
students enroled.
This admittedly mixed metaphor is an
exaggerated and deliberately
dichotomous way of describing one of
education’s undesirable outcomes,
which, in this case, is caused when
professors stubbornly insist that they are
the only authority figures and when
students stubbornly refuse to take
authority over their own educations.
Many students, for their part, are
schooled to accept - even demand - the
passive approach. If school itself is not
responsible for their passivity, then their
parents and the culture of “media
literacy” (based mainly on television
and magazines) might be. According to
registered nurses and medical doctors
writing for the University of Michigan
Health System, “the average child
spends more time watching TV than in
school” and “[o]n average, kids spend
about 20 or more hours each week
watching TV, which is more time than is
spent in any other activity besides
sleeping” (Boyse, McCuiston, and
Song, 2004). Furthermore, the average
person will spend seven to ten years
(sic.) of his or her life watching
television.
If this remarkable influence on most
young people is indeed an accepted
explanation for what some veteran
professors see as a growing cohort of
poorly prepared students, then perhaps
we shouldn’t be surprised by the
response of some professors: lecture to
them even more, fill them with all the
cultural history they have missed, and
14
expend even more energy trying to
engage them with enthusiasm. This
solution is ineffective. The library
of books documenting the general
failure of the lecturing method grows
yearly. I have yet to see a book that
offers a realistic argument for the
total abandonment of lecturing, but
the consensus seems to be that even
the best lecturing reinforces student
passivity when used as the only mode
of delivery.
Two helpful books from The Gwenna
Moss Teaching & Learning Centre
resource library acknowledge the
uses of lecturing while encouraging
different approaches. The first is Meyers
and Jones’ Promoting Active Learning
(1993), which offers some context for
lecturing. They begin with Cashin’s
suggestion (1985) that lectures are
useful for transmitting, dramatizing,
and organizing information; contrasting
views; and modelling critical thinking
(qtd. in Meyers and Jones, 14-5).
However, citing a variety of research
from the mid-1980s, Meyers and
Jones summarize the methodological
problems that lecturers might not want
to hear: students pay attention for only
60 percent of the lecture; they retain
70 percent of the information from the
lecture’s first ten minutes and 20 percent
from the last ten minutes. Based on
the results of one study, they suggest
a frightening possibility: when your
course ends, what if your students only
demonstrate slightly more knowledge
than people who have never taken that
course?
Their proposed solution is for professors
to integrate their legitimate authority
(the kind that derives from knowledge,
not power) into a format that demands
the students to be responsible for their
learning. Depending on the focus, these
formats or methods are known by many
names, such as active learning, inquiry
teaching, and problem-based learning.
A book that advocates for inquiry
teaching is Bateman’s Open to
Question (1990). Bateman explains:
[This is] the basic formula for
inquiry teaching: Give students a
set of facts and slip the leash. They
speculate, they create new
concepts, they apply old concepts,
they test, they reject, they ask for
more evidence. And the more of
this process you can have students
verbalize, the more conscious
students will become of the way
they are learning to infer, to test, to
reject, to accept, and to help each
other learn. (Bateman 18)
Ask a question, wait for an answer,
and be patient until someone offers
something tentative. Bateman refuses
to talk except to ask students, one
at a time, if they agree. “Whatever
response you get, keep on throwing it
back until someone starts supporting a
position with facts and argument. Then
the question is getting sharpened, and
they begin to see that it is a question
of importance. Urge them to develop
several tentative answers. After that
you can lecture” (Bateman 36).
He suggests that the students have
to begin by talking, because if the
teacher begins by naming concepts
and explaining facts, then the students
stop wondering (Bateman 23). They
think that the work is done for them.
Teachers have already done the work,
but the ownership of the knowledge
will not transfer to the students until
they begin the process of discovering
for themselves and applying
knowledge to their lives.
Meyers and Jones echo Bateman in
justifying the importance of this kind of
student-centered approach.
Active-learning strategies help
students connect what they are
studying to their personal lives.
Teachers who employ active
learning are not giving students
disembodied facts, figures,
theories, and methodologies, but
are sharing the practical ways
historians, physicists, philosophers,
nurses, and social scientists go
about working in their disciplines.
Ideas and theories come alive as
students and teachers struggle
to see the practical implications
of academic disciplines through
small-group discussions, case
studies, simulations, and
cooperative projects. (Meyers and
Jones 156-7)
In their book, the authors review the
methods they mention above and
show ways of applying them in class.
Bateman’s book is more anecdotal, but
speaks from more experience in using
active-learning strategies than Meyers
and Jones. His approach is also more
personal: one section, on discovering
our own bias, helps to clarify how our
own rigid assumptions can restrain
our intellectual development. He also
personalizes and activates the topic
by building small puzzles and often
witholding his declarations until the
readers have considered and evaluated
examples that demonstrate his
arguments very well - far better than the
article you’re now reading and better
These books are not
about apathy, but they
both offer ideas for
encouraging student
enthusiasm, which should
help to dispel the apathy.
than most academic texts you’re likely
to read.
Although Bateman’s book focuses on
one aspect of active learning rather
than various strategies like in Meyers
and Jones, his book is more practical.
He is interested in dialogue and he
is adept at simulating it in writing, so
his book demands and demonstrates
engagement.
15
He suggests that engagement in
dialogue is the key component of
active learning for scholars, scientists,
and lifelong learners: “In real scientific
research [or any research], the
approval comes from one’s peers. You
can’t peek in the back of the book or
just ask the teacher. In real research,
the approval comes when the criticism
dies down” (Bateman 131).
Hence, Bateman suggests, let students
agree or disagree with each other
until the class is satisfied. In my own
experience teaching first-year English
students, the class is often soon satisfied
by almost any idea. They are uninitiated
in discourse. Many are apathetic. Some
are nervous. Quoting earlier research
by Meyers later in the book, Bateman
repeats that “monologue is less risky
than dialogue” (181). Students do not
want to take risks. However, Meyers
directs this statement at teachers who
are comfortable with lecturing, not
at students. If you are comfortable,
as university teachers often are, then
the class has to contend with two
monologues: the teacher’s audible one,
and the students’ inward monologues:
“I’m bored.” “She’s cute.” “The funeral’s
tomorrow.”
These books are not about apathy, but
they both offer ideas for encouraging
student enthusiasm, which should help
to dispel the apathy. Meyers and Jones
offer one solution that echoes a section
from Bateman’s book: writing. Because
“writing clarifies thinking” (Meyers and
Jones 23), asking students to begin by
answering questions on paper will help
them know what they want to say
before speaking in class. I frequently
ask my students to write before
beginning a discussion. As Craig
Nelson said in his address to the
University of Saskatchewan on May 1,
2003, asking students to write first will
guarantee 100% participation. The
nervous students (we hope) have
something to bolster their confidence,
the divergent thinkers have something to
focus on, and the bored are forced to
think.
Besides writing, Meyers and Jones
name talking and listening, reading,
and reflecting as the four elements
of active learning (32). Listening is
probably the most neglected of those
skills because it is often (erroneously)
seen to be the least active. However,
listening actively is possible through
body language, questioning, and
encouragement. Meyers and Jones
state that “poor listeners, whether they
are students or teachers, will not work
together smoothly and raise discussions
to a high level” (114). This high level
- comprised of clear communication,
rigorous analysis, innovative
approaches, and more - is the goal for
higher education.
The last word should go to Bateman,
whose idealism reinforces the
importance of higher education.
Following his consideration of Piaget
and Perry and their description of
stages of critical thinking, Bateman
suggests that higher education needs
to produce people who can manage
uncertainty and dispel the traditional
view of professors as authority figures
who know facts with absolute certainty.
He writes:
Many of us cannot face a fully
rational and scientific attitude
of believing that we are right
yet admitting that all beliefs are
tentative in some way. [....] It is the
ultimate freedom, and those who
cannot accept the painful decisions
of freedom are legion. Seeking
authority is the common escape
from the fear of freedom. A society
that strives to be democratic needs
many citizens who need not escape
because they do not fear freedom.
(Bateman 40)
Being comfortable with less authority
will help professors engage their
students in meaningful learning.
Furthermore, the resulting learning
environment will be more cooperative
than competitive - and if Bateman is
correct, then we might approach the
rarely-realized ideal of a democratic
society.
References
Bateman, Walter L. Open to Question.
San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
Chet Meyers and Thomas B. Jones’
Promoting Active Learning: Strategies
for the College Classroom. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993.
Kyla Boyse, R.N., Maia McCuiston,
M.D., and Ellen Song, M.D. Edited
and updated by Kyla Boyse, R.N.
Reviewed by Richard Solomon, M.D.
http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/
yourchild/tv.htm . Updated July 2004
Both
Open to Question
and
Promoting Active Learning
are available in the
reference section of
The Gwenna Moss
Teaching & Learning
Centre Resource Room.
Although not available
for loan, we can help
you find a quiet place
here to read or browse.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY WEEK
“Writing it Right”week took place October 18th to 22nd, 2004. This
week-long series of events and discussions about academic integrity
and what it means for students and for faculty was organized by the
Office of the University Secretary and coordinated by Cathie Fornssler.
The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre was very pleased to be
able to assist with the event and work with them to encourage faculty
and students to attend events. Cathie reported that attendance was
encouraging at most events and she is confident that the workshops and
speakers made a significant contribution to informing people on the many
issues surrounding academic honesty.
The Keynote speaker was Olympic Gold Medalist Catriona LeMay Doan
who spoke on “Honest Competition”.
Other events for students and faculty included workshops on:
• Writing A+ Essays using the Internet
• Teaching Students about Academic Integrity
• Crossing the Line – the drama students’ video about cheating
• What “Professionalism” means for students
• Natural Justice and Fair Proceedings
• How graduate students deal with integrity as both teachers and
students
• Intellectual Property at the U of S: Ethical Considerations
Planning is already underway for the 2005 “Writing it Right” week. If
you have questions about this event or are interested in learning more
about what the policies are at the U of S regarding academic honesty,
please visit the website of the University Secretary at http://
www.usask.ca/honesty/. The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning
Centre also has resources on this topic so please call us at 966-2231.
16
UNABRIDGED
An interview with recent Master Teacher Award recipient – Dr. Terry Matheson
The Unabridged interview series returns
in this issue with Dr. Terry Matheson,
recent winner of the University of
Saskatchewan Master Teacher Award.
Dr. Matheson is a professor in the
English department and the author of
Alien Abductions: Creating a Modern
Phenomenon (1998). Dr. Matheson was
interviewed by Joel Deshaye.
After getting that finished, I applied for
a one-year position at the U of S, and
after a bunch of years on one-year and
sessional contracts, I finally squeezed a
permanent position out of the university
(with lots of help from the Faculty
Association and the CAUT), and here I
am.
1) Tell me about one of your best
teaching experiences.
4) Persuade me to take, not to drop,
your class.
I only remember the bad ones,
precisely, but I recall times when I knew
I was getting through to a class (you
can tell by a kind of recognition in
their faces, that you’re communicating).
2) Do you have a teaching role model?
My first-year English teacher at the
University of Winnipeg, E. E. Reimer.
He was colloquial, funny, and yet
deadly serious in his love of the
discipline and sense that what he was
imparting was very meaningful
knowledge. His enthusiasm was
infectious (this sounds so cliche-ridden,
but it was true: if anyone had told me
in high school that I’d be an English
teacher I’d have thought them
certifiable. Lamentably, the ones I’d had
before university were a pretty tired and
worn-out bunch who never imparted
the sense to me that English was about
anything meaningful (but that might
have had a lot to do with the ridiculous
curriculum that the School Board
imposed on teenagers back then - we
studied fun stuff like “The White
Company” and dolorous poems by
Tennyson. A teacher probably would
have lost his job if he’d been caught
teaching e.e.cummings).
3) Why did you become a teacher?
I actually drifted into it on a year by
year basis. I originally had no idea
what I wanted to do. Then I recall
getting a form letter from the English
department saying “your grades this
April are good enough for you
to consider Honours” - so I went into
Honours English, because I’d been
told I could be a department head in
a highschool with an honours degree.
Then, in my final year of Honours, I
was encouraged to consider an MA,
because with an MA I could teach in
a junior college (you could, then). So
I got my MA. When I was finishing
that up, one of my teachers said “hey,
there’s a sessional position at Alberta;
why don’t you apply for that and see if
you’d like university teaching” - so I did,
and got the job (sessionals at Alberta
were fulltime teaching positions then,
but limited to eight months a year for
two years, as I recall). Then, after two
... if anyone had told me
in high school that I’d be
an English teacher I’d
have thought them
certifiable.
years of that, someone said “why don’t
you apply for a teaching assistantship?
You’ve already got notes from your two
years teaching,and you could enrol in
the Ph.D. program”. So I did. Then, I
sort of drifted into my comps, and woke
up one day to find I’d been
recommended for a dissertaion
fellowship (the first thing I ever won
outright). So I sat down with my
typewriter and wrote my dissertation.
17
I would never persuade anyone to take
my class; if they need persuading, I
don’t want them.
5) What do students think about
teaching?
I haven’t the slightest idea, but I suspect
they minimize the amount of work that
goes into university life, judging by how
available for lengthy talks they think I
am.
6) How have you adapted your
teaching as students change over the
years?
I’ve dumbed it down. There are works
that I would have taught routinely
years ago that I wouldn’t touch now
for anything, because only a very few
could read the prose.
7) What is your favorite book or movie?
Favourite movie: Alien; favourite book,
I don’t know, there are so many. One
novel that teaches very well year after
year is The Great Gatsby. Another is
As For Me and My House. My favourite
author is probably Poe, for all the levels
of irony and ambiguity.
8) Have any of your students ever been
abducted by aliens?
Ha Ha. I wish some of them had been.
A Quick
Comparison
of PAWS and
Wilson, Curriculum Studies
WebCT Jay
College of Education
Bridges
Online
Bridges
On-line
Traditionally we publish a print and an online
version of Bridges. However, March and
September of 2004 were only published
online so you may have missed reading some
of the articles they contained. To access any
of the articles listed below go to
http://www.usask.ca/tlc/bridges_journal/.
Happy Reading!
Most instructors find the World Wide Web a great way to
support their teaching and students enjoy the flexibility of
communication and the easy access to useful resources.
Now that PAWS has become an alternative to support
courses at the U of S, I am being asked more and more if it
is better or more appropriate than Web CT. Both Web CT
and PAWS provide similar supports in terms of links to
course files, web sites and online resources; communication
tools such as e-mail, discussion boards, and chat rooms;
and the security of password protected access for course
members. Web CT does offer more online evaluation and
the ability to track student access and use patterns. PAWS
integrates into the larger campus-wide portal so students
can get access to all of their information in one location. If
you are new to using the web in teaching, PAWS is the
best place to start. It is more user-friendly than Web CT
and your time commitment to get your course going is not
as great. Most instructors can get up and running with
PAWS in an afternoon. Web CT is more appropriate for
those who need to support students at a distance or who
need online evaluations such as quizzes and selfassessments. The assessment and student evaluation
systems in Web CT work very well but they take a long
time to prepare. In Web CT you must create your content
in HTML and for some this means learning a whole new
language. PAWS allows you to upload Word documents,
Power Point files, and images in their native format. There
is no need to modify them, just upload them and they are
ready for student use. The best advice is to spend some
time with those who are using the two systems. They will
be able to demonstrate how they use the tools and this
knowledge can help you in deciding which tool is best for
you and your students. For a more detailed look at how to
choose between Web CT or PAWS take a look at Kevin
Lowey’s paper on the ITS web site at:
http://webct.usask.ca/documents/
choosing_course_tools.html
March 2004:
In This Issue...
From Kaleidoscopes to Collages: Bringing Closure
to a Course
The History Department and Teaching Assistants
Doctor Ped’s Advice Column: When Many
Students Fail a Test
Unabridged: An Interview with Carolyn Brooks
The English Department’s (Anti-) Plagiarism
Road Show, Part II
September 2004:
In This Issue...
Recalculating the Teaching Equation
Is My Fly Open?
Navigating the Course
How Does a Nurse Become a Teacher? My GSR
989 Experience
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Introduction
to University Teaching
Jay Wilson presented a workshop
on this topic during the GMTLC Fall
Teaching Days Series, November 2004.
The Pitfalls and Promises of the Doctoral Degree
18
2004-2005 GMTLC
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre
would like to welcome to the 2004-2005 Advisory
Committee for the GMTLC.
Zaheer Baber
Jeremy Bailey
Jim Basinger
Marcel D’Eon
Gordon Desbrisay
Ric Devon
Linda Ferguson
Danielle Fortosky
Linda Fritz
Louise Humbert
Keith Jeffrey
Roger Maaka
Steve Reid
Melissa Spore
Linda Suveges
John Thompson
Terry Tollefson
Lisa Vargo
Julita Vassileva
Sociology
Veterinary Medicine
Geology
Medicine
History
Medicine
Nursing
DMT
Library
Kinesiology
ITS
Native Studies
Chemistry
Extension Division
Pharmacy
St. Thomas More
Soil Science
English
Computer Science
The GMTLC Mission Statement
The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre, in collaboration with other
units and individuals, offers programmes, services, and resources to
encourage, enhance, and support teachers, teaching and the scholarship of
teaching and learning at the University of Saskatchewan.
19
New to
the GMTLC
Resource
Library
We have copies of the
videotaped presentations
made by Dr. Thomas
Angelo, University Teaching
Development Centre (UDTC)
Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand, in
October 2004, available to
borrow from our library.
• Doing Assessment As
If Learning Matters Most:
Seven Transformative
Guidelines From
Research and Best
Practice (October 25,
2004)
• When Will We Ever
Learn? (To Use What
We Know): Guidelines
From Research and Best
Practice (October 26,
2004)
(Please see the list of
upcoming workshops listed
on page 20 for information
on a session we are hosting
which will highlight topics
discussed by Dr. Angelo and
will be facilitated by Dirk
Morrison and Diane Janes ,
Instructional Design Group,
Extension Division.)
TO REGISTER
All registration is online.
To register please
visit our website at
www.usask.ca/tlc
If you are a graduate
student and are
interested in taking our
workshops to earn the
Scholarship of Teaching
& Learning Certificate
(SoTL), please visit
our website for more
information.
SPRING
TEACHING DAYS
MAY 2005
THE TEACHING
PORTFOLIO
EILEEN HERTEIS
E-PORTFOLIOS
ANGIE WONG
Details will be available
in the next issue of Bridges
and on our website
www.usask.ca/tlc.
TLC DAYS
Friday, January 28, 1:30 - 3:30 PM
Energizing your Classroom Delivery
Jennifer MacLennan, College of Engineering, D. K. Seaman Chair
Thursday, February 3, 1:30 - 3:30 PM
What is Good Teaching?
Len Gusthart, College of Kinesiology
Friday, February 4 , 1:30 - 3:30 PM
“Making Noise About Teaching & Learning” Panel Symposium
The U of S Process Philosophy Research Unit
Friday, February 25, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Inquiry Method of Teaching
Heather Kanuka, Centre for Distance Education, Athabaska University
Thursday, March 3, 1:00 - 3:00 PM
Tips for Teaching with WebCT
Kathy Schwarz, Instructional Design Group, Extension Division
and Kevin Lowey, ITS
Friday, March 4, 1:00 - 3:00 PM
Diversity in the Classroom
Deirdre Bonnycastle, Instructional Design Group, Extension Division
Friday, March 11, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Mixing and matching online and face-to-face teaching: Blended learning and
teaching from principles to practice
Walter Archer, Acting Director, GMTLC, Angie Wong, Director, Centre for
Distributed Learning
Thursday, March 31, 1:30 - 3:30 PM
Alternative Methods of Assessment: Discussing the Thomas Angelo Presentations
Dirk Morrison and Diane Janes, Centre for Distributed Learning, Extension Division
Friday, April 1, 1:30 - 3:30 PM
Academic Integrity
Joel Deshaye, GMTLC
GRADUATE STUDENT DEVELOPMENT DAYS
Monday, January 17, 2005, 3:00 -5:00 PM
Graduate Student Teaching in Science & Engineering
With Ron Steer, Chemistry
Thursday, February 10, 2005, 1:00 -3:00 PM
Conflict & Emotion in the Classroom
With John Thompson, Sociology
Wednesday, March 2, 2005, 9:00 -11:00 AM
Teaching Metaphors
With Ron Marken, English
20