November 2 0 0 3 Vo l . 2 N o . 3
Reflecting the Scholarship of
Teaching and Learning at the
University of Saskatchewan
In This Issue:
Compassion for Integrity
...
Let’s Hear It for
Internet Plagiarism
The English
Department’s
(Anti-) Plagiarism
Road Show
Integrity and Teaching
Evaluations
Effective Library
Assignments
Teaching & Learning—
Research & Scholarship
A Summary of the
May, 2003 Symposium
Unabridged: Reflections
from Award-Winning
Teachers
COMPASSION FOR INTEGRITY . . .
By Eileen M. Herteis
The Sweets of Pillage can be known
To no one but the Thief,
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief
Emily Dickinson
Ask a structural engineer about integrity, and you will quickly discover that without
it buildings on which we depend and rely are unstable, dangerous, essentially
worthless—and if they do not collapse, will likely be condemned.
In an academic environment, integrity ensures that the marks we give students
reward their actual learning, that our research is ethical, and that the papers we
publish and degrees we confer are valid and valuable.
Integrity is—well—integral to the university. Without it, what we value will
collapse, and we will be condemned.
Earlier in the fall, the University of Saskatchewan devoted an entire week to
academic integrity, honesty, and “Writing It Right.” Dr. Nancy Olivieri delivered
the keynote address on research ethics and participated in panel discussions,
while U of S faculty, students and administrators presented and attended sessions
on the many faces and places of integrity in the institution.
Our January 2003 issue of Bridges focused on academic integrity, and it was
lauded by readers (See http://www.usask.ca/tlc/bridges_journal/v1n3_jan_03/
v1n3_cover.html). This issue of Bridges again turns the spotlight on integrity: an
English department initiative to educate first-year students about avoiding
plagiarism, ethics in student ratings of instruction, and a surprisingly positive
essay on internet cheating. Other articles in this issue include an introduction to
giving your students effective library assignments, highlights from some of the
TLC’s online resources, a summary of our TEL-sponsored May Symposium, and the
return of our popular Unabridged column, featuring an interview with Dr. Silke R.
Falkner from Languages & Linguistics.
The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre
37 Murray Building • 966-2231
November 2003
Vol. 2 No. 3
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!
Ron Marken
TLC Director
Phone (306) 966-5532
ron.marken@usask.ca
Eileen Herteis
TLC Programme Director
& Bridges Editor
Phone (306) 966-2238
Fax (306) 966-2242
eileen.herteis@usask.ca
Christine Anderson Obach
Programme Coordinator
Phone (306) 966-1950
christine.anderson@usask.ca
Corinne Fasthuber
Assistant
Phone (306) 966-2231
corinne.f@usask.ca
Joel Deshaye
Instructional Technology Consultant
(306) 966-2245
joel.deshaye@usask.ca
ISSN 1703-1222
LET’S HEAR IT FOR
INTERNET PLAGIARISM
Russell Hunt, St. Thomas University, New Brunswick
This provocative excerpt from a longer
article, which you can find in draft form
at www.stu.ca/~hunt/plagiary.htm, is
printed here with the permission of the
author. Russ invites you to send your
comments to him at hunt@stu.ca.
The “information technology revolution”
is almost always presented as having
cataclysmic consequences for education
— sometimes for the better, but often, of
course, for the worse. In postsecondary
circles, perhaps the most commonly
apprehended cataclysm is “Internet
Plagiarism.” When a university
subscribes to turnitin.com, the local
media invariably pick up the story —
“Students to Learn that Internet Crime
Doesn’t Pay” — with the kind of alacrity
usually reserved for features on political
sex scandals or patronage payoffs.
When the newest cheating scandal
surfaces at some prestigious southern
university known for its military school
style “honor code,” the headlines leap
across the tabloids like stories on child
molestation by alien invaders.
questioned by people who are
concerned with how learning and
assessment take place, and can be
fostered, and particularly with how the
ability to manipulate written language
(“literacy”) is developed. The
assumption that a student’s learning is
accurately and readily tested by her
ability to produce, in a completely
rhetorical situation, an artificial form
that she’ll never have to write again
once she’s survived formal education
(the essay examination, the formal
research paper), is questionable on the
face of it, and is increasingly untenable.
If the apprehension that it’s almost
impossible to escape the mass-produced
and purchased term paper leads
teachers to create more imaginative,
and rhetorically sound, writing
situations in their classes, the advent of
the easily-purchased paper from
schoolsucks.com is a salutary challenge
to practices which ought to be
challenged. One good, clear example
of the argument which can be mounted
against generic term paper assignments
and in favor of assignments which track
that writing process and / or are
specific to a particular situation is in
Tom Rocklin’s online “Downloadable
Term Papers: What’s a Prof. to Do?”
Many other equivalent arguments that
assignments can be refigured to make
plagiarism more difficult — and offer
more authentic rhetorical contexts for
student writing — have been offered in
recent years.
It’s almost never suggested that all this
might be something other than a
disaster for higher education. But that’s
exactly what I want to argue here. I
believe the challenge of easier and
more convenient plagiarism is to be
welcomed. This rising tide threatens to
change things — for, I predict and
hope, the better. Here are some specific
practices that are threatened by the
increasing ease with which plagiarism
I’m unconvinced that we can address
can be committed.
the problem by assuring students that
“they are real writers with meaningful
The institutional rhetorical writing
environment (the “research paper,” and important things to say,” or invite
the “literary essay,” the “term paper”) is them to revise their work where we can
see the revisions, as long as we
challenged by this, and that’s a good
continue giving them more
thing. Our reliance on these forms as
decontextualized, audienceless and
ways of assessing student skills and
purposeless writing exercises. Having
knowledge has been increasingly
1
2
something to say is — for anybody
except, maybe, a Romantic poet —
absolutely indistinguishable from having
someone to say it to, and an authentic
reason for saying it. To address this
problem, I believe, we need to rethink
the position of writing in student’s lives
and in the curriculum. One strong
pressure to do that is the increasing
likelihood that empty exercises can by
fulfilled by perfunctory efforts, or
borrowed texts.
2
The institutional structures around
grades and certification are
challenged by this, and that’s a good
thing. Perhaps more important is the
way plagiarism challenges the
overwhelming pressure for grades
which our institutions have created and
foster, and which has as its
consequence the pressure on many
good students to cut a corner here and
there (there’s lots of evidence that it’s
not mainly the marginal students in
danger of failing who cheat; it’s as
often those excellent students who
believe, possibly with some reason, that
their lives depend on keeping their GPA
up to some arbitrary scratch). An even
more central consideration is the way
the existence of plagiarism itself
challenges the way the university
structures its system of incentives and
rewards, as a zero-sum game, with a
limited number of winners. University
itself, as our profession has structured it,
is the most effective possible situation
for encouraging plagiarism and
cheating.
University itself, as our
profession has structured it,
is the most effective
possible situation for
encouraging plagiarism
and cheating.
incentives or motives anyone cares
about are marks, credits, and
certificates. We’re not entirely
responsible for that — government
policies which have tilted financial and
social responsibility for education
increasingly toward the students and
their families have helped a lot — but
the crucial factor has been our
insistence, as a profession, that the only
motivation we could ever count on is
what is built into the certification
process. When students say — as they
regularly do — “why should I do this if
it’s not marked?” or “why should I do
this well if it’s not graded?” or even “I
understand that I should do this, but
you’re not marking it, and my other
professors are marking what I do for
them,” they’re saying exactly what
educational institutions have been
highly successful at teaching them to
say.
important fact about written texts, which
is that they are rhetorical moves in
scholarly and social enterprises. In
recent years there have been periodic
assaults on what Paolo Freire (1974)
called “the banking model” of
education (and what, more recently,
Tom Marino [2002], writing on the
POD email list, referred to as
“educational bulimics”). Partisans of
active learning, of problem- and projectbased learning, of cooperative
learning, and of many other “radical”
educational initiatives, all contend that
information and ideas are not inert
masses to be shifted and copied in
much the way two computers exchange
packages of information, but rather
need to be continuously reformatted,
reconstituted, restructured, reshaped
and reinvented and exchanged in new
forms — not only as learning processes
but as the social basis of the intellectual
enterprise. A model of the educational
enterprise which presumes that
knowledge comes in packages (one
reinforced by marking systems which
say you can get “73%” of Renaissance
literature or introductory organic
chemistry) invites learners to think of
what they’re doing as importing prepackaged nuggets of information into
their texts and their minds.
Similarly, a model which assumes that a
skill like “writing the academic essay” is
They’re learning exactly the same thing, an ability which can be demonstrated
with a different spin, when we tell them on demand, quite apart from any
that plagiarism is a moral issue. We’re
authentic rhetorical situation, actual
saying that the only reason you might
question, or expectation of effect (or
choose not to do it is a moral one. But
definition of what the “academic essay”
If I wanted to learn how to play the
think about it: if you wanted to build a
actually is), virtually prohibits students
guitar, or improve my golf swing, or
deck and were taking a class to learn
from recognizing that all writing is
write HTML, “cheating” would be the
how to do it, your decision not to cheat shaped by rhetorical context and
last thing that would ever occur to me. It would not be based on moral
situation, and thus renders them tonewould be utterly irrelevant to the
considerations.
deaf to the shifts in register and diction
situation. On the other hand, if I wanted
which make so much plagiarized
The model of knowledge held by
a certificate saying that I could pick a
undergraduate text instantly
almost all students, and by many
jig, play a round in under 80, or
recognizable. The best documentation
faculty — the tacit assumption that
produce a slick Web page (and never
of the strangely arhetorical situation
expected actually to perform the activity knowledge is stored information and
student writing lives in that I know of is
that skills are isolated, asocial faculties
in question), I might well consider
in the work done as part of the
— is challenged by this, and that’s a
cheating (and consider it primarily a
extensive study of school-based and
good thing. When we judge an essay
moral problem).
workplace writing at McGill and
by what it contains and how logically
Carleton Universities (Dias, Freedman,
it’s organized (and how grammatically
This is the situation we’ve built for our
Medway & Paré, 1999; Dias & Paré,
it’s presented) we miss the most
students: a system in which the only
2000).
3
3
4
But there’s a reason to welcome
this challenge that’s far more
important than any of these — more
important, even, than the way the
revolutionary volatility of text mediated
by photocopying and electronic files
have assaulted traditional assumptions
of intellectual property and copyright by
distributing the power to copy beyond
those who have the right to copy. It’s
this: by facing this challenge we will be
forced to help our students learn what I
believe to be the most important thing
they can learn at university: just how the
intellectual enterprise of scholarship and
research really works.
Traditionally, when we explain to
students why plagiarism is bad and
what their motives should be for
properly citing and crediting their
sources, we present them in terms of a
model of how texts work in the process
of sharing ideas and information which
is profoundly different from how they
actually work outside of classroombased writing, and profoundly
destructive to their understanding of the
assumptions and methods of
scholarship.
When you look at the usual set of
examples of plagiarism as it occurs in
student papers, for example, what you
see is almost invariably drawn from
kinds of writing obviously and radically
identifiable as classroom texts. And
how classroom texts relate to or use the
ideas and texts of others is typically
very different from how they’re used in
science, scholarship, or in other
publications. There are many such
explanatory examples in print and on
the Web that offer explanations of how
to do an acceptable and properly
credited paraphrase, Northwestern
University’s “The Writing Place” site, for
example:
(Key words and phrases in the original
are in boldface. The changes in
wording and sentence structure in the
paraphrase are underlined.)
Original
But Frida’s outlook was vastly
different from that of the Surrealists.
Her art was not the product of a
disillusioned European culture
searching for an escape from the
limits of logic by plumbing the
subconscious. Instead, her fantasy
was a product of her
temperament, life, and place; it
was a way of coming to terms with
reality, not of passing beyond
reality into another realm.
Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of
Frida Kahlo (258)
Paraphrase
As Herrera explains, Frida’s surrealistic
vision was unlike that of the European
Surrealists. While their art grew out of
their disenchantment with society and
their desire to explore the subconscious
mind as a refuge from rational thinking,
Frida’s vision was an outgrowth of her
own personality and life experiences in
Mexico . She used her surrealistic
images to understand better her actual
life, not to create a dreamworld (258).
conversations (Schank et al. 1982), and
narrative discourse generally (Prince
1983), definitions of point are hard to
come by. Those that do exist are usually
couched in negative terms: apparently it
is easier to indicate what a point is not
than to be clear about what it is.
Perhaps the most memorable (negative)
definition of point was that of Labov
(1972: 366), who observed that a
narrative without one is met with the
“withering” rejoinder, “So what?”
(Vipond & Hunt, 1984)
It is clear here that the motives of the
writers do not include prevention of
charges of plagiarism; moreover, it’s
equally clear that they are not — as
they would be enjoined to do by the
Northwestern Web site — attempting to
“cite every piece of information that is
not a) the result of your own research,
or b) common knowledge.” What they
are doing is more complex. The
bouquet of citations offered in this
paragraph is informing the reader that
the writers know, and are comfortable
What is clearest about this is that the
with, the literature their article is
writer of the second paragraph has no
motive for rephrasing the passage other addressing; they are moving to place
their argument in an already existing
than to put it into different words. Had
she really needed the entire passage as written conversation about the
part of an argument or explanation she pragmatics of stories; they are
advertising to the readers of their
was offering, she would have been far
article, likely to be interested in
better advised to quote it directly. The
paraphrase neither clarifies nor renders psychology or literature, that there is an
newly pointed; it’s merely designed to
area of inquiry — the sociology of
discourse — that is relevant to studies in
demonstrate to a skeptical reader that
the psychology of literature; and they
the writer actually understands the
phrases she is using in her text. Without are establishing a tone of comfortable
more context than the Northwestern site authority in that conversation by the
gives us, it’s difficult to know exactly
acknowledgement of Labov’s
how the paragraph functions in a larger contribution and by using his language
rhetorical purpose (if it does).
—”withering” is picked out of Labov’s
article because it is often cited as
But published scholarly literature is full
conveying the power of pointlessness to
of examples of writers using the texts,
words and ideas of others to serve their humiliate (I believe I speak with some
authority for the authors’ motives, since
own immediate purposes. Here’s an
I was one of them).
example of the way two researchers
opened their discussion of the context of
Scholars — writers generally — use
their work in 1984:
citations for many things: they establish
To say that listeners attempt to construct their own bona fides and currency, they
points is not, however, to make clear
advertise their alliances, they bring
just what sort of thing a ‘point’ actually work to the attention of their reader,
is. Despite recent interest in the
they assert ties of collegiality, they
pragmatics of oral stories (Polanyi
exemplify contending positions or
define nuances of difference among
1979, 1982; Robinson 1981),
4
competing theories or ideas. They do not use
them to defend themselves against potential
allegations of plagiarism. The clearest
difference between the way undergraduate
students cite and quote and the way scholars
do it in public is this: typically, the scholars
are achieving something positive; the students
are avoiding something negative.
The conclusion we’re driven to, then, is this:
offering lessons and courses and workshops
on “avoiding plagiarism” — indeed, posing
plagiarism as a problem at all — begins at
the wrong end of the stick. It might usefully be
analogized to looking for a good way to
teach the infield fly rule to people who have
no clear idea what baseball is.
References
“Avoiding Plagiarism.” The Writing Place,
NorthwesternUniversity.
www.writing.nwu.edu/tips/plag.html
Dias, Patrick, Aviva Freedman, Peter
Medway, and Anthony Paré, eds. Worlds
Apart: Acting and Writing in Academic and
Workplace Contexts [The Rhetoric, Society
and Knowledge Series]. Mahwah, N.J.:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999.
Dias, Patrick, and Anthony Paré, eds.
Transitions: Writing in Academic and
Workplace Settings. Cresskill, New Jersey:
Hampton Press, 2000.
Freire, Paolo. The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed. New York: Seabury, 1974.
(Translated from the original Portuguese
(1968) by Myra Bergman Ramos).
Marino, Tom. “Re: How many minutes per
class day does the typical student study?”
Professional & Organizational Development
Network in Higher Education
<POD@listserv.nd.edu>, 28 May 2002.
listserv.nd.edu/cgibin/
wa?A2=ind0205&L=pod&O=D&P=14486
Rocklin, Tom. “Downloadable Term Papers:
What’s a Prof. to Do?” www.uiowa.edu/
~centeach/resources/ideas/term-paperdownload.html
Vipond, Douglas, and Russell A. Hunt. “PointDriven Understanding: Pragmatic and
Cognitive Dimensions of Literary Reading.”
Poetics 13 (June 1984), 261-277.
www.stu.ca/~hunt/pdu.htm
5
THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT’S
(ANTI-) PLAGIARISM
ROAD SHOW
By Joel Deshaye, TLC Technology Assistant and
Sessional Lecturer
In the past two years, a little over a
hundred cases of suspected
plagiarism and cheating were brought
to the College of Arts & Science
committee on academic dishonesty.
Each year, some of the cases are
taken to the University Secretary for
appeal, but most are handled by
the committee, whose members
(including one student) consider their
job both a duty and a hassle. No one
wants to spend time in hearings, but
the hearings themselves are part of the
pursuit of integrity.
However, while instructors deserve
accolades for their vigilance in
detecting cheating, their success implies
that there is a problem that
hasn’t been solved. When students and sometimes faculty - cheat or
plagiarize, the collective reputation of
the university’s faculty,
administration, current students, and
alumni is tarnished. And there is
certainly a fiscal consequence: dollars
are swallowed whole by the
bureaucracy needed to manage the
complaints, the tribunals, the
discipline, and the public relations
efforts to counteract the
perception of a lack of integrity on
campus.
...the other approach
is to consider every
student as potentially
- or, more accurately,
probably - honest.
As instructors, we cannot be certain
why the rate of plagiarism
allegations is increasing. Perhaps
students are cheating more
frequently; perhaps professors are
detecting them more easily. Indeed,
with the widespread use of the Internet
for research, students are
often tempted by the ease of finding
thoughts on their assigned topics
and of copying those thoughts into their
essays. There was a time when
it was necessary to spend time reading
books in the library or negotiating for
recycled essays. Now, the potential
cheater is immersed in an instantly
responsive and immense virtual library,
where the texts and thoughts are far
less likely to have been screened by
prudent and educated editors or
librarians. The material that students
find on the Net might have already
been plagiarized.
The perceived prevalence of cheating
has led university teachers and
administrators to talk of students, as we
did a moment ago, as “potential
cheaters.” However, the other
approach is to consider every student
as potentially - or, more accurately,
probably - honest. Hence, the University
Secretary’s Office sponsored Academic
Integrity Week in late September, and,
for the first time, the Department of
English has enthusiastically brought the
call for honesty to every first year
English class. As a portal through which
almost every university student must
pass, the Department of English has a
special opportunity to prevent
plagiarism on the front lines.
This fall, the Department of English
asked me and my friend and colleague
6
...all the honest
students (who are
the vast majority)
want a degree that
has integrity.
Jon Bath to visit over 60 freshman
English classes to demonstrate how
easy it is for instructors to detect
cheaters. In one of our examples, we
first steal part of an essay from one of
the many free essay sites. Then, using a
few key words from that essay and a
Google search, we simply rediscover
the essay. Elapsed time: 2 minutes to
steal and recover the same material. If
only the police could work so efficiently!
There are more sophisticated Web
search options, such as turnitin.com,
which offer professors a way to catch
less obvious infractions. But most
cheating students are lazy, desperate,
or both, and detecting their crimes is
easy. Those who might work diligently
to disguise their plagiarism might not be
caught so quickly, if at all, but when
they are told that it’s especially stupid to
work so hard to be dishonest when
honest work has both immediate and
long-term rewards, they will probably
think twice.
Then we tell at least one tale from the
crypt. Every teacher has a story about a
promising student whose academic
career was ruined after being
discovered cheating. Even professionals
- engineers, accountants, journalists have lost their jobs for failing to uphold
a code of ethics. When students hear
these stories from us, we deter them
from risking their futures for the sake of
an assignment’s quick fix.
We are sure to tell them, too, that
whatever they steal from the Net could
be pathetically wrong and not worth
including in an essay. If there is no
author’s name, no date, no print
publication, and the site is an academic
one (which are often designated with a
.edu URL for college sites in the United
States), then one is better to search the
deeper web (of library archives and
electronic journals) or the library stacks.
When literature is the topic, then it’s
even more important for students to
return to the text itself to generate their
own ideas.
To explain the difference between their
own ideas and plagiarism, we offer a
definition that includes impermissible
collaboration, unattributed
paraphrasing, and simple copying.
History, too, is an asset: the original
Latin term, plagiarius, meant kidnapper.
When shown how words are like minds
and how stealing thoughts is criminal,
students are far less likely to cheat
because of ignorance of the rules or
apathy to the ethics. So we sympathize
that it’s not easy to learn all the rules
and to cope with the pressures of
academics and standards, but show
that there are many reasons for not
cheating - and that all the honest
students (who are the vast majority)
want a degree that has integrity.
compared to in-class writing and
conversation. Students worry that they
will be accused of plagiarism if their
take-home essays are more
sophisticated than their in-class writing,
but instructors can assure them that
some discrepancy is normal. In fact,
sometimes in-class writing is better!
Regardless, the student must simply
demonstrate a basic coherence in style
and train of thought to avoid
accusations, since coherence is
probably not worth the time or effort for
most plagiarists. Normal discrepancies
rarely lead to accusations or threats of
punishment.
Unfortunately, we realize that
deterrence has to be part of the plan.
When students learn that instructors can
no longer punish their grade in private,
they realize that pleas for “getting off
easy” are unlikely to succeed. Now any
punishment that affects a student’s
grade must be brought to the prying
eyes of a tribunal, and people want to
avoid bad publicity. We hope that the
university’s efforts will help the students
and, in the process, prevent students
from harming their own education - not
During the question period at the end of to mention the public perception of a
the visit, students often ask how it is
university that’s meant to serve the
possible not to plagiarize when every
people.
imaginable comment has already been
made about many of the classic works
In the next issue of Bridges, I will write
of literature. The answer is that one
about how these visits were received by
needn’t be original to avoid plagiarism. professors and students.
Write a coherent essay that
demonstrates a reasonable sequence of
thoughts in response to a text’s critical
issues and, voila! You have learned
"The University is a very
something, regardless of whether
protected environment in
someone else learned it before you.
And teachers evaluate learning. If the
which to learn how to live in
learning leads to what is usually called
the world. Of those who
“common knowledge” (but what might
don't get caught cheating
be more accurately called “context
here, many will get caught
knowledge”) then there is usually no
later, and that will be the
fear of allegations of cheating.
Another common question concerns the
detection process. What are the cues,
students wonder, that prompt a reader
to search for a source of a phrase or
idea? The cues arise when there are
striking discrepancies in vocabulary,
maturity, and style in take-home essays
end of promising or
successful careers."
Professor Nathan Sivin,
Sociology Department,
University of Pennsylvania.
7
WHY I
TEACH
They ask me, “Why I teach?”
And I reply, “Where can I find
more splendid company?
There sits a statesman,
strong, unbiased, wise,
a later Webster, silver-tongued.
Beside him sits a doctor, whose
strong, steady hand
will someday mend a bone,
or stop the life-blood’s flow.
Over there sits a builder;
upward rise the arches of a
church he builds
Wherein that minister will preach
the Word,
and teach some stumbling soul
to touch the Christ.
And all around the room are
farmers, merchants,
teachers, nurses,
Men and women from every
walk of life,
Men and women who pray and
plan and build
into a great tomorrow.
I may not eat the food he grows,
Or feel the healing hand,
Or hear the Word he speaks
But I can say, “I knew him once
when he was but a boy.”
Or, “I knew her once
when she was but a girl.”
They ask me why I teach?
And I reply“Where can I find more splendid
company?”
Anonymous
This poem was a favourite of Edwin
Marken, a devoted teacher for
most of his 93 years, who died in
September 2003. We reprint it in
celebration of his life; in honour of
the legacy that endures in his son,
Ron; and finally because its words
will resonate with teachers
everywhere.
INTEGRITY AND TEACHING
EVALUATIONS
Eileen Herteis, TLC Programme Director
The view that there is a direct, causal link between measurement and improvement permeates society and has now
infiltrated university campuses. The same driving impulse that propels the overweight to their bathroom scales seduces
universities into believing that, by developing ever more elaborate means of evaluation and mandating their use, we will
improve teaching.
Any rancher will tell you that you don’t fatten cattle by weighing them any more than you can improve teaching by
assessing it. Many scholars (Seldin, 1999; Braskamp, Ory & Brandenberg, 1984; Cross & Angelo, 1993) insist that
evaluation leads to improvement only when it reveals something new to the instructor; when the instructor is motivated to
improve; when the instructor knows how to improve.
To this excellent list, I would add my own condition: that evaluation leads to improvement when the instructor and the
students have confidence in the process. Assessment that is poorly designed and implemented will be seen as punitive and
intrusive rather than positive and enhancing. Assessment that is poorly timed will have little effect—for example, end-ofcourse teaching evaluations are too late to result in improvement this semester or to result in positive outcomes for the very
students who are filling in the questionnaires. Assessment that asks students to comment on or rate items beyond their
scope, for example, the currency or mastery of the professor’s content knowledge, is unreliable.
For the most pernicious example of teaching assessment devoid of integrity, look at rateymyprofessors.com, a treacherous,
tabloid travesty that allows students, anonymously and with impunity, to call professors “arrogant” or “the worst I ever had.”
How bad is this site? One of the key ratings is for “easiness”; but if that’s not bad enough, students can award chili peppers
for a professor’s sex appeal—the hotness rating. As an aside, can you imagine submissions to the URC from candidates
determined to prove just how hot and easy they are? I digress.
We can be sure that no self-respecting teacher would place any credence in an evaluation tool that has all the credibility
and gravitas of Mary Walsh as the slatternly mother and Greg Thomey as the dim-witted son crying “That show sucks!” on
This Hour Has 22 Minutes.
Web sites like this are doubly distasteful because they perpetuate the increasingly prevalent and dangerous mindset that
students are consumers or clients of education rather than partners in it. Let’s stipulate for the record that tuition fees are
growing at an alarming rate and many students and their families are making personal sacrifices to pay for university. Let
us also stipulate that we are ethically and contractually bound to give our students the best learning experiences that we
can. That said, education is not a consumer good, and our relationship with our students is not a mercantile one. Students
may be paying high fees to attend our classes, but that does not guarantee their success in the same way that paying more
for a pair of shoes implies that they will last longer.
Students and teachers are partners in education. Blaming a teacher alone for my poor performance in a class is as logical
as blaming my priest because I didn’t get into Heaven.
The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre is not involved in the summative evaluation of teaching, done for personnel
reasons such as promotion, tenure, and merit decisions; our domain is the formative evaluation of teaching, that is,
evaluation for teaching enhancement.
Formative evaluation has many benefits, including the following:
It can be conducted several times during the course
It leads to changes that can be effected during the course
Its aim is to enhance teaching and learning
So if you would like to acquire some comments from your students during the course, while you can still make changes that
impact positively on the class, here are some suggestions.
8
Mini-Forms
Try designing some mini-forms (Cross & Angelo, 1993) that ask your students to comment on a few instructional items, for
example, things that are important to you and the class, innovations you’ve tried, something you’re not sure is going well.
Format the questions so that the students can circle a score on a Likert scale and add written comments. Include up to five
questions on one of these forms:
Example
How useful are the chapter summaries I distribute at the end of each class?
Not useful
0
1
2
3
4
Very useful
5
Comments:______________________________________________________________
One-Minute Papers (Cross & Angelo, 1993)
Minute papers are simple to design, quick and easy to administer, and should take only a minute (or two) for students to
complete. The auxiliary benefit of minute papers is that they involve students in a short writing exercise that encourages them
to reflect on what they’ve just learned. Use minute papers if
you have tried a new instructional technique
you have covered a lot of difficult material
you want the students to reflect on what they’ve learned.
Examples
What was the most useful thing you learned in today’s class?
What was the most important topic in today’s class?
What questions remain uppermost in your mind after today’s class?
Stop-Start-Continue (Garner & Emery, 1994)
Based on the traffic light, this is the simplest of all the formative evaluation techniques. Ask your students three questions:
What would like us to stop doing in class because it is not helping your learning?
What would you like us to start doing because you believe it would be beneficial to your learning?
What would you like us to continue doing because it’s working?
Students’ Responsibilities
Finally, if you want to emphasize to your students that they too have a role to play in their own education, try using a form
such as the Perceptions of Learning Environment Questionnaire developed at Queensland Technical University (Devlin,
2002). This form asks students who or what they believe is responsible for their learning. They allocate any percentage
(including 0% or 100%), but the total must add up to 100%.
From the following list, record the percentage of responsibility you think each has for your learning.
a) Your fellow students
________________%
b) You
________________%
c) Your instructor(s) ________________%
d) Other people (specify) ________________%
e) Other factors (specify) ________________%
Total
100%
Caveats
The information gleaned from formative evaluation is the teacher’s, and the teacher has no duty to disclose it to deans,
chairs, or other administrators unless she chooses to do so. The teacher does have an ethical obligation, however, to
disclose the results of the evaluation to her students, preferably at the very next class. Remember: Do not ask students what
you should change unless you are willing to change it—or at the very least explain why.
In Conclusion
The benefits of all of these approaches are clear. The teacher receives the feedback she wants about things that matter. She
can tailor the evaluation form to meet her and her students’ needs, she can administer it when she wants to and when she
9
can do something about the comments she receives, making mid-course changes if necessary. Formative feedback can also
have a positive effect on those end-of-course summative evaluations. Teachers who conduct formative evaluations can
diagnose and treat minor problems quickly before they become real stumbling blocks to learning and result in poor scores
on summative evaluations. For more information about any of the approaches mentioned here, or others, please contact the
TLC. As for your hotness rating, you’re on your own!
References:
Angelo, T. & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, (2nd ed.). San
Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Braskamp, L., Brandenburg, D. & Ory, J. (1984). Evaluating Teaching Effectiveness: A Practical Guide. Beverley Hills, CA:
Sage Publications.
Devlin, M. (November 2002). An Improved Questionnaire for Gathering Student Perceptions of Teaching & Learning.
Higher Education Research & Development, 21 (3). Carfax Publishing.
Garner, M. & Emery, R. (Novemebr, 1994). A “Better Mousetrap” in the Quest to Evaluate Instruction. The Teaching
Professor. Madison WI: Magna Publications.
Seldin, P. & Associates (1999) Changing Practices in Evaluating Teaching. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.
Bridging the Gaps: Highlights from the TLC’s Online Resources
By Eileen Herteis
The Gwenna Moss Teaching & Learning Centre subscribes to a number of online journals that University of
Saskatchewan users can access from our web site. If the following excerpts and highlights from recent issues whet your
appetite, spend your next lunch hour browsing through our resources at http://www.usask.ca/tlc/journals_licensed.html.
Six Major Assumptions to Learn by in Technology-Enhanced Classrooms
Laura L. Bush, Veronica Pantoja, and Duane Roen, Arizona State University
1. Follow the Proper Order of Things
Learning outcomes in technology-enhanced classrooms are best achieved by carefully designing curriculum and
instruction.
2. Celebrate the Joy and Prepare for the Woe
Although we believe in the power of technology to enhance and promote effective learning, we recognize that
technology is in its infancy and is still under development. Problems with technology hardware and software will
inevitably occur for both teachers and students.
3. Cultivate a Positive Attitude
Teachers and students will be most successful using technology if they enter a technology-enhanced learning environment
with an open mind and a willingness to experiment, play with, and imagine possibilities and solutions
4. There’s No Shame in Seeking Support
Making a course available online or enhancing a course using technology requires a team effort. Teachers and students
need technical, pedagogical, and administrative support.
5. Learn Technology by Doing Technology
People have many different ways of learning and many different ways of learning technology (and at differing speeds!).
Therefore, from experience, we believe the most effective method for helping students and teachers learn to use a
particular piece of software is through immersing them in activities using technology.
6. Learning and Teaching Is a Process
We don’t expect perfection from teachers, students, or from ourselves. Technology-enhanced learning is a relatively new
field and we, too, are relatively new to using technology in our classrooms.
The complete version of this article is available in National Teaching & Learning Forum, 12 (4), May 2003.
10
Effective Library
Assignments
Shirley Martin
Library Instruction Coordinator
University of Saskatchewan Library
We know that many students come out
of high school believing they can find
all the information they’ll ever need on
the Internet and that print is hopelessly
old fashioned and boring. Since
libraries are full of old-fashioned,
boring print, many students think they’re
never going to have to bother with
them. Professors and librarians know
these are false assumptions and that we
need to teach our students to use and
appreciate print and to be more
discriminating in their use of online
sources. One way to do this is to give
them library or research assignments.
Reference librarians are always happy
to see students and help them with their
assignments. However, it can be very
frustrating for both groups to have to try
and interpret unclear or poorly
conceived assignments.
A member of the Library Instruction
team would be more than happy to talk
to your class and demonstrate search
tools and techniques. Contact the
Liaison Librarian for your subject or
Shirley Martin, the Library Instruction
Coordinator, to make arrangements.
If your class schedule is just too busy to
make time for a library class, a good
assignment can help make up for that.
However, good assignments are not
easy to throw together. This article
includes some general cautions and
suggestions for constructing a library
assignment.
The ideal library assignment is one that
leads into the major paper for the
course. If students know that the library
assignment is an integral part of the
course, they’re much more apt to pay
attention, and retain the information
they’ve learned. “Treasure hunts” for
very specific items are rarely helpful in
giving students a feeling for how they
will do real research for their courses.
Guiding them into the research for their
major assignment for the course tends
to be much more effective.
Using the World Wide Web
Most students come to their first year
believing they know all about the Web
and how to find information on it. They
also believe that everything they’ll ever
need to know is on a web site
somewhere. Generally, they need an
introduction to the idea that information
varies in quality, and instruction in how
to judge the potential validity of a web
site, article or book.
The Library’s instructional team is
prepared to meet your class and
demonstrate both searching techniques
and how to evaluate a web site. If you
cannot spare class time and prefer to
teach them about web searching
yourself, it’s much easier to demonstrate
than describe the techniques. The
Division of Media and Technology can
generally provide the equipment for a
demonstration in your regular
classroom.
Students need to know that there is a
big difference between the “Free Web”
and the “Deep,” or “Gated Web.” The
Free Web consists of all the openly
accessible sites mounted by individuals,
organizations, universities,
governments. The Gated Web consists
of proprietary information for which
subscription and licensing fees are
paid.
Searching and evaluating
the Free Web
Many students are unaware that what
they can access through Google, Ask
Jeeves, or any of the other common
searching tools is only a part of what’s
available on the Web. Remind your
students that most free web hosting sites
allow almost anything that’s not illegal
to be mounted on their servers. Hence,
a site on GeoCities or Tripod.com could
be anything from someone’s hobby or
an outright spoof to a serious scholarly
site.
11
Most of the criteria we apply to books
and journals also apply to web sites.
In lieu of publishers, web sites have
hosts. One can generally discover the
host or sponsor of a web site by
checking the domain name in the URL.
It’s helpful to students if you can
demonstrate this online by showing that
even the longest and least
comprehensible-looking URLs can
generally be erased back to a domain
name that will indicate the hosting or
sponsoring institution.
Look at these examples:
http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/
courses/Beo.Criticism.html is the URL
for a bibliography on Beowulf.
www.engl.virginia.edu is the domain
name which identifies the server as one
belonging to the University
of Virginia. U.S. colleges and
universities will have domain names
that end in .edu. Most Canadian sites’
domain names end in .ca regardless of
the type of site. The name of a
university is often recognizable in
the domain name, but erasing back to
the first single / will always show you
the hosting institution.
http://www.unites.uqam.ca/arche/
alaq/articles/MarieG_G_museum.html
is part of a site on 19th century
Québec literature mounted by the
Université du Québec à Montréal.
Working back to the domain name
brings you to http://
www.unites.uqam.ca, a server owned
by UQAM.
Also important, of course, is the author
of a web site. Just as with scholarly
books and articles, the authors of
scholarly sites generally identify
themselves and offer their credentials
and affiliations. The home page of a
web site often functions in much the
same way as the title page of a book,
and will generally give the name of the
author or authors.
Just because they’re on the web doesn’t
mean that sites can dispense with
scholarly apparatus. Notes and
bibliography should be included and
may often include links to other online
sources of various types.
S users are granted access to the
sources for which we’ve paid.
Students should also learn to look at the
tone and quality of information. Even
on the web, scholars don’t make
hyperbolic claims that cannot be
supported. If the information found on
a web site is quite different or
contradicts what they know from classes
or other sources, students need to learn
to be suspicious and to check. Sites
that claim great new discoveries or
secret information appeal to the
romantic in many people. Sadly,
students need to recognise that there
are more nutcases than unrecognised
geniuses in the world and the nature of
scholarship means that new or secret
information won’t be accepted until
other scholars can examine and assess
it.
It’s helpful to explain the system of peer
reviewing of journals so your students
understand how scholarly articles are
vetted. Explain that many scholarly
journals are now available on the web
and that the articles are exactly the
same as in the print versions.
Once you’ve shown your students how
to assess sites on the open web, their
first information gathering assignment
might be to find two good and two
poor Internet sources of information on
a topic that can eventually be refined
for their major paper for the class.
Have them print out a page or two from
each site, provide a correct
bibliographic citation for each, and
explain why they believe the sites are
good or bad. This allows them to work
in a medium with which they’re already
comfortable, and also introduces them
to the idea of looking critically at
information instead of just accepting it
at face value.
Many students have the notion that the
way to find journal articles is to browse
the actual issues on the shelves. This
may work for someone already familiar
with the important literature in a field
who only needs to browse the current
issues to keep up with new publications.
For students just beginning to learn their
way around the literature, browsing is a
very slow and inefficient way to search.
Explain the concept of journal indexes.
Most students like the idea that these
can be time savers for them. An index
allows them to search multiple journals
at the same time and then browse their
list of results for the most relevant
articles.
It’s easier to demonstrate searching
techniques and interpretation of the
results than it is to try to describe them
verbally. Show your students the most
important indexes in your field and how
to search them. Remember that
WebSpirs is the software on which
many indexes presently run, not the
name of any index. WebSpirs is not
the only software on which indexes run,
so it’s useful to show your students at
In most cases, a search on the free Web least one index that looks and works a
will turn up some information, but not
bit differently.
enough to write a university level paper.
They’re going to need to find other
Asking students to count how many
sources to give them the depth and
articles a database includes on their
background to produce a good essay.
topic is not a useful exercise.
Databases are updated frequently,
some as often as every week. If they
Searching the Gated Web
have several weeks to complete the
The Library pays licensing fees so that
assignment, they will almost certainly
U of S students, faculty and staff may
find more articles than you did, even if
have access to a variety of scholarly
material on the web. The web versions they reproduce exactly the same
search.
of standard indexes fall into this
category as do the online versions of
scholarly journals. Connecting through For many of the same reasons, it’s also
not a good idea to ask them to quote
the Library’s web site ensures that U of
12
the most recent article on a topic listed
in a database. Most databases list
results in chronological order with the
most recent articles first; some do not.
In some databases, it’s not easy to
ascertain the most recent article. If the
database has been updated since you
did your search, the students will find a
different most recent article than you
did.
Once your students have seen the
basics of searching the indexes, assign
them to find some scholarly articles
relevant to their topic. You may want to
use this assignment to introduce them to
the citation style used in your discipline.
Searching the Library
Catalogue
Remember that most first year students
have probably never seen a library as
large and complex as ours. Students
often assume that the Reference
Collection behind the Reference Desk
on the first floor in the Main Library is
the entire library collection. They come
to the desk to complain that they
“looked all over back there” and
couldn’t find the book they were
looking for.
Especially for first year students, it’s a
good idea to include fairly detailed
instructions and information on the
assignment sheets. Many students learn
better by reading information than by
hearing it, and having a written record
of your introductory remarks and
instructions will help them remember
what you want.
It’s very important to phrase questions
carefully so there’s as little chance as
possible of the students misinterpreting.
“How many times does the name
Charles Dickens occur in the library’s
catalogue?” is a poor question for
several reasons. Do you want them to
count the number of books of which
Dickens is the author? What about
books of which he’s the subject? Do
you want them to count the number of
subject headings which refer to him?
Depending on how the students
interpret the question, and what type of
search they try to do, the answer could
vary from 271 to 604.
ultimate assignment, they should be able to construct a word search that will lead
them to some books on their topic.
In general, it’s a bad idea to ask
students to count occurrences of
something. Not only is it easy to
misinterpret what you’re asking, but the
number of occurrences can change
between when you searched and when
the students complete the assignment.
The Library is continually buying new
books and adding them to the
catalogue. Older books are lost,
stolen, destroyed and their records are
deleted from the catalogue.
For further assistance with designing library research assignments, consult your
Liaison Librarian, or Shirley Martin, Library Instruction Coordinator. The Off
Campus Library Services section of the Library web site includes some good, brief
research guides which may also be helpful to you and your students: http://
library.usask.ca/offcampus/guides/guides.html
Instead, ask them to find a book written
by a named author and reproduce the
bibliographic information in the format
preferred in your discipline. They must
do an author search to find this, must
understand how to read the descriptive
entry for the book and how to use the
style guide. Asking where the book is
located and what its call number is will
encourage them to learn to read the
location section of the entry.
In literature especially, it’s important to
learn to distinguish between a person’s
name as author and as subject. A
second question might ask the students
to find a book about the same author.
To find books on a topic, it’s generally
best to use the Word search function in
the catalogue. Students have probably
done some word searching on the
Internet, but the catalogue is a good
database in which to learn proper
techniques. Students should know the
difference between word searching and
natural language searching, as well as
the basics of using Boolean Operators
to refine and control their results. To
keep the exercise relevant to their
“Many Students are
unaware that what they
can access through
Google . . . is only part
of what’s available on
the Web.”
MORE HUNTING FOR RESOURCES
Joined-Up Thinking in Assessment: An International Marketing Example
Andrew McAuley, Stirling University, Scotland
What can university teachers do, asks Andrew McAuley, to develop a
more holistic or “joined-up” approach to teaching, learning, and
assessment?
While assignment dates, at least, may be coordinated at the
departmental level, less attention is paid to students’ actual workload
and the skills that work is testing. Students writing essays in three
different classes or even in several units within the same class, for
example, may benefit more if the types of assessments and assignments
are blended to ensure that different skills are developed and the
workload varied.
Using his own International Marketing class as an example, Professor
McAuley found that his holistic approach increased student motivation
and improved learning outcomes. “The wider task,” he concludes, “is
to generate a larger debate on the skills being assessed across units
and programmes within the institution.”
The complete version of this article is available in The Successful
Professor, 2 (1).
Teaching with Case Studies: A Special Issue of the Journal on
Excellence in College Teaching, 12 (2)
The Journal on Excellence in College Teaching (JECT), a peer-reviewed
journal, frequently publishes special thematic issues. The most recent
focuses on using case studies, an active-learning approach that is
swiftly expanding beyond the boundaries of business and law schools,
its previous domain. The articles in the journal represent a variety of
disciplines, fields, and applications, including case use with web and
computer-based instruction; all find real benefits to using case studies.
Coming issues of JECT will be devoted to The Scholarship of Teaching,
Preparing Future Faculty, and Web-Based Teaching and Learning.
Consider sending your own articles on the scholarship of teaching and
learning to these respected publications. Information about submitting
manuscripts is available on each journal’s web site. Visit them all by
linking from http://www.usask.ca/tlc/journals_licensed.html.
13
TEACHING &
LEARNING—RESEARCH
& SCHOLARSHIP A
SUMMARY OF THE MAY
SYMPOSIUM
Ron Marken, TLC Director
Before the
symposium, a small
group of us –
organizers – made a
preliminary
agreement that every
session would be
attended by at least
one of us so we could
offer this synopsis of
events. Just before the concluding
banquet, we compared notes. I was
amazed by the diversity, the spectrum of
issues and subjects discussed during
those two teeming days. The following
summarises what the symposium did,
said, and achieved.
learning experience (not just the
computer interfaces). In his keynote
address, Dr. Arshad Ahmad reminded
us of the sometimes profound degrees
of scepticism about online learning,
especially that expressed by our
colleagues. Their thinking is sometimes
driven by fear of change or of novelty,
or by cynicism about governments, but
– more important – by their genuine
concern for quality. There were lively
discussions of the issues surrounding
attrition among online learners. The
statistics are, to say the least,
challenging. Some say the withdrawal
rate from courses offered on the internet
is 50%; some say it’s much more.
Large questions arose around the
scholarship of teaching and learning,
valuing this work, as one would value
traditional research. How can we
change the culture and climate in
various departments, colleges, and
committees? And how do we value
teaching itself? Whether online, in the
classroom, measuring a failing
freshman, or awarding merit, is
teaching at the University of
Saskatchewan still a principal concern,
In every presentation, teaching and
as the words of our Mission Statement
students came first. Rarely – if ever –
say? Further, what is the rationale for
were sessions technology-centred.
the tendency to make decisions based
Students were uppermost in everyone’s on assumptions that online publication
mind as each presenter prepared for this is somehow second-rate? If it meets the
symposium. Furthermore, there was no same criteria of peer-review, why not
polarization between the values of
accept it? Others noted that, given a
“traditional teaching” and “teaching
choice between publishing in peerwith technology.” Each rallied round
reviewed journals of pedagogy and
the other. Preparing courses for online
traditional peer-reviewed journals,
instruction, for instance, gave preparers committees hold the former in lower
important fundamental insights into how esteem. Why is that?
and why and what they teach.
An exciting session relating to online
We heard repeatedly that the time
courses in Women’s and Gender
commitment of preparing online courses Studies urged using the web to
is monumental. This is well worth
interrogate and challenge the web
remembering if one has never made
itself. This was a kind of cybersuch preparations in the past. But if the feminism, a web-quest that increased
time-commitment is a monument, be
students’ knowledge and critical
ready for the fact that it will likely not be understanding of what is out there in
recognized or much admired in the
that complex – often dank and
market-place of salary committees,
dangerous – net.
review committees, or hiring committees.
Many argued the essential need for an
A third point grows out of the first two:
institutional vision of how we are going
everyone is concerned about quality,
to integrate the development of online
and especially the quality of the
teaching with current practices. What
14
will be the effects on students,
colleagues, and administration? Will
the resources persist, or eventually form
another stress on the beleaguered base
budget.
Why is traditional teaching not
examined with the same powerful
instruments we use to examine
technological teaching? Is it only the
novelty of online teaching that makes us
cautious? Or is our reluctance to
examine it based on the assumption
that teaching should not be evaluated?
Or cannot be?
A musician reminded us that
“technology is what makes us human.”
Technology is not “stuff,” wires, mice,
housings, and monitors. Humanization
of technology is important, always
keeping in mind that pencils, chalk, a
piano, and the world-wide web are all
technology.
Robert Frost once described the formal
constraints of traditional poetry as
“moving easy in the harness.” Having
such constraints does not necessarily
make you less creative. Likewise, the
new online technology can be seen as
understanding how to move more easily
within the constraints of other kinds of
harness. Learning to drive a car with a
standard transmission, one is initially
clumsy and self-conscious, but soon you
will get over it and find ways to make
elegant what is now ungainly.
Others reflected on good practice,
good experience, and good theory.
When students are learning to write
using the internet, they must, in order to
get advice online, write! The result is
that they have to reflect on their writing
in order to improve their writing.
Online teaching means, in significant
ways, becoming a team player. This
co-operation is required, and it can do
a world of good for any teacher,
technician, or designer.
Finally, the last word goes to Eileen
Herteis, who reminded us all that
“technology is not an alchemy that will
turn base metal into gold.” It simply is,
as Dr. Ahmad said, “a process to get
things done.”
UNABRIDGED: REFLECTIONS FROM AWARD-WINNING TEACHERS
Dr. Silke R. Falkner,
who teaches
German in the
Department of
Languages and
Linguistics, received
the USSU Teaching
Excellence Award
earlier this year.
Silke has graciously
agreed to be the
second awardwinning teacher to
appear in our new feature, Unabridged.
Tell me about one of your best
teaching experiences.
When I explain complex concepts, be
they grammatical or literary, I need to
think them through beforehand in ways
that exclude all the information I have
but that my students do not. That is, I
put myself in their shoes as much as I
can, and I build a chain of conceptual
steps. It is very satisfying for me when
that works, when I can see the light go
on in the students’ eyes, so to speak.
Do you have a teaching role model?
My role models are the professors who
taught me, especially at Concordia
and McGill University. One technique
that has always impressed me is to lay
“time bombs,” placing something in a
student’s brain that causes a
marvellous insight or intellectual stride
at some point later on.
If I had to point to one particular
person as a role model, I would have
to name my PhD supervisor, Professor
Peter M. Daly at McGill. Talented and
liberal, he was a cultured, openminded and intelligent scholar,
supervisor, teacher and department
head. He combined high-quality
research with stimulating teaching.
From him I learned that active research
involvement is the basis for inspiring
teaching. I also learned how to
interpret visual images in conjunction
with text and convey the interpretation
to others.
Why did you become a teacher?
I always wanted to be a university
professor, both researching and
teaching. I can explore in depth topics
that interest me and at the same time
participate in the Enlightenment project
by way of education. Even though the
Enlightenment has failed (as signalled
by the Hitler-Fascism), it seems to me
that we have no better alternative than
education.
Persuade me to take, not to drop, your
class.
The answer to this question of course
depends on which class we are talking
about here, and whether the question
really is should you get a degree in
German.
This could be the place where I share
the employment success stories of
people with German degrees, but for
reasons of space I’ll stick to the more
general matters. You will eventually be
able to read your Porsche driver’s
manual in the original. Or, if your
interests are elsewhere, perhaps
Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus or
Schiller’s “Ode an die Freude” (‘Ode to
Joy’ which was set to music by
Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony). If
you are taking a language class, you
will learn German and more about your
mother tongue, as you reflect on
grammar and vocabulary in both
languages. For example, German (like
French) has two words to express “to
know” and they differ in meaning. That
is, the English “to know” encompasses
more than one concept. My students
usually become more aware of such
concepts and thus improve their logic
and verbal expression.
In language courses, and even more so
in culture and literature, you will be
exposed to and debate political, social,
environmental and historical concepts.
If you take third-year German, for
example, you get to read Franz Kafka’s
“Metamorphosis” and discuss issues of
the individual’s alienation in a
bureaucratic world. Besides learning a
great set of vocabulary in German (and
improving the English set at the same
15
time), you will look at the world with
new eyes, learn how to organize your
ideas and formulate your thoughts.
In all my classes, you will become
skilled at meeting deadlines, be
organized and, according to my
student evaluations, learn more than
you ever expected you were be
capable of. After finishing your first
semester language course, you will be
able to take part in a German
Immersion Retreat (Sprachwochenende),
where you play games, sing, party, and
make friends, all in German. After you
have gained some competence in the
language, you can take part in the
exchange programmes with German
institutions the University of
Saskatchewan offers. There are also
many grants you can apply for (such as
with the DAAD, the German Academic
Exchange Service) to study or carry out
research in Germany. Oh yes, and as
an English speaker, it will be a very
nice break for you to learn a language
with some logic in its spelling system.
This is a more “political” question.
Clearly, winning this teaching award
has been an honour for you, but do you
think that teaching awards in general
do have (or should have) a broader
impact? For example, is teaching given
the recognition it deserves at the
University of Saskatchewan? Should the
university capitalize more on the
strengths of its teaching award-winners?
It is difficult to “measure” teaching for
purposes of merit increases, promotion
etc. Teaching more courses per term, for
example, will not lead to better
teaching, but to less time spent on each
individual lecture or student. Teaching
awards may not always go to the very
best teachers but to those whose
students can most convincingly express
their opinions (which may reflect the
teaching abilities of the award winner,
but also might reflect other things, such
as age, maturity, student talent etc.). A
variety of evaluations ought to be used
to establish whether someone is an
average or superior teacher. I believe
strongly, though, that it is the
combination of research and teaching
that makes a good university professor.
If professors talk at international
scholarly conferences, they also hear
things at those conferences. If they have
a good networking system, they are
likely to know about trends and ideas in
their field, both with respect to their
specific research area and the broader
range of issues they are likely to teach.
Having said all this, of course, I believe
that the University of Saskatchewan
should capitalize as much as possible
on all its strengths, including teachingaward winners.
What is your favourite book and
movie?
The books I consult most are the
Grimm’s Dictionary, the Oxford English
Dictionary, the Duden (this is a German
dictionary) and the Bible. My favourite
piece of fiction, currently, is The Silent
Rider, a Parzivalesque grail-search
novel by the Swiss Gabrielle Alioth, a
contemporary writer who lives in
Ireland. My favourite movie is Priscilla,
Queen of the Desert. Why? I like to
dress up, and I love dancing!
Workshops
TLC Days 2004
The Sounds and Silences of Classroom Discussion
Eileen Herteis, TLC Programme Director
Friday, January 23, 1:30 – 4:00 pm
From Kaleidoscopes to Collages: Making the Last Day of Class Count
Sandra Bassendowski, College of Nursing
Thursday, March 18th 2-4 pm
Plain Figures: Using Graphs and Charts Effectively
Melissa Spore, Instructional Designer, Extension Division
Thursday, March 25th, 1:30 to 4:00 pm
Special - Focus on Teaching
Sweet and Informal Lunchtime Events
Tuesday, January 20. 11:45am – 12:45pm
The Scholarship of Teaching with Eileen Herteis
Dessert of the Day: Carrot Cake
Tuesday, February 10. 11:45am – 12:45pm
Teaching Metaphors with Ron Marken
Dessert of the Day: Chocolate Cake
Thursday, March 11. 11:45am – 12:45pm
Four Conceptions of Teaching with Eileen Herteis
Dessert of the Day: Nanaimo Bars
Grad Student Development Days
Sylvia Wallace
Sessional Lecturer
Teaching Excellence
Award
Please note the deadline
for nominations for the
Sylvia Wallace Award
has been extended to
December 1, 2003. For
more information about
the award and the
nomination process
please refer to our
website
www.usask.ca/tlc
Friday, January 16, 2004 1 - 3:30 pm
Teaching Portfolios for Grad Students
Eileen Herteis (Teaching & Learning Centre)
Monday, February 2, 2004 1 - 3 PM
Teaching Tips for Discussion Groups & Labs.
Sakej Henderson (Native Law Centre) and Valerie Mackenzie
(Department of Chemistry)
Wednesday, February 25, 2004, 9 - 11 AM
Creating Online Discussions
Richard Schwier (College of Education)
Tuesday, March 9, 2004, 4 - 6 PM
Your Teaching Identity
Ayten Archer (College of Commerce)
To register for any of the above
courses visit our website at
www.usask.ca/tlc
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