Monday, March 11, 2002
By TED HIPPLE and TRICIA MCCLAM
The Chronicle of Higher Education
 
  
"This university doesn't help its professors to teach better. It just expects them to." So observed a colleague recently. She went on: "In my department there is no attention to teaching, no regular meetings devoted to it, no special symposiums or outside experts or seminars. And that seems pretty true of the entire campus. The university-wide student evaluation schemes are of little help, and the peer evaluation is of no help at all; we just all say that each other is doing fine.
 

 "What I want are some specific, usable ideas," she added. "I may reject them, but I'd like to hear about the techniques -- even the gimmicks -- other professors are using." We've decided to take up her challenge, to offer a few techniques -- gimmicks maybe to some readers. Our suggestions are not couched in scholarly prose, nor are they supported by data that suggest that learning improves 17.4 percent each semester with the use of these methods. Many of them are informed more by common sense than by academic accoutrements.
 
 We've gleaned them from a variety of sources: reflections on   our own teaching, discussions with colleagues, our
  observations of other professors, our reading about classroom   strategies. Our search for ideas has been focused on answering   one question: What are some of the things that good college  teachers seem to do?
 
 They go to class 5 or 10 minutes early.
 
 The stereotype, we fear, is all too common: the harried professor dashes into the classroom just after the session is   supposed to start, throwing his briefcase on the desk, digging   through it for today's notes, taking a breath and beginning
  his lecture.  Such a picture conveys what we believe is a   counterproductive notion about the importance of teaching --
  that this instruction stuff I'm doing isn't as valuable as the   research I just left or even the committee meeting I was in.
  No wonder our students question our commitment to teaching.
 
  Getting to class a few minutes early allows you to ease into   the teaching, to relax a bit. It gives you the opportunity to
  chat informally with your students. And we'll bet you a baked   potato in the university cafeteria that, if you begin getting
  to class 10 minutes early, you'll discover that many of your   students are getting there early, too.
 
  They not only have a syllabus, they have a visible plan for  the day.
 
  Although a few professors argue against the value of a  syllabus, we think its advantages are many and significant.  The syllabus functions as a road map through the course,  highlighting the shared journey you and your students will be  taking. You can put material into a syllabus that you then  don't have to spend as much class time on: course objectives,  evaluation criteria, attendance policies, your office hours.

Good instructors of our acquaintance also have daily lesson  plans that achieve at least two objectives: They suggest what  the instructors hope will occur during that class meeting and,  possibly of greater worth, they convey to the students that
  their professors have thought about the session and its  activities.
 
  Professors tend to be able to speak well and long  extemporaneously (doubt us on this and we'll invite you to a
  faculty meeting), and can get by with little preparation  beyond thinking, "Today I'm on the Battle of Blenheim" as they
  open the classroom door. But good teachers seem to believe  that that kind of preparation is simply not enough, no matter
  how sparkling the Blenheim lecture. Advance planning is  needed.

  But they get off the syllabus and the daily plan now and then.
 
 
  In our teacher-education classes we sometimes explain about  the Tennessee Instructional Model, called "TIM" in the state's
  elementary and secondary schools. TIM provided a lesson plan  format that teachers in Tennessee were expected to follow as
  their classes were observed by principals and supervisors.  Points were taken off if these teachers were guilty of
  "birdwalking," the term used when teachers strayed from the  plan of the day. But good teachers we've known often birdwalk,  sometimes intentionally. They occasionally relate an anecdote  about a recent trip to Europe, or tell the class that they're  a bit sleepy because a junk novel kept them up until 1:30 last  night.
 
  Episodes of birdwalking of this sort permit breaks in the  classroom routine. They reveal you as a person of many
  interests, among them, of course, the subject you are  currently teaching. But you're also a European traveler, a
  reader of junk novels, a person of broader horizons than the  mechanical engineering or the political science that is your
  first love. And letting students see that your first love is  one of many may, in fact, enhance its appeal for them as well.
 
  They vary their routines.
 
  A biggie, this. Good teachers seem to have a lot of different  activities going on in their classrooms, not concurrently, of
  course, but over time. True, they lecture, they have class  recitations. But they do a lot of other things too:
 
 
  They have students give occasional oral reports, say of three  or four minutes in length. These might open the class and lead
  in to the professor's presentation.
 
 
  They pause for what we'll call the "instant group activity."  The math professor says, "Let's stop here and look at the
  problem on page 119. Get with the person next to you and solve  it." The literature professor interrupts her remarks about the  structure of the novel being studied to ask students to group  themselves and find details that support this notion of the
  structure. And after the problem is solved or the details are  suggested, there follows a general classroom discussion. These
  kinds of interactions are more than a bit worrisome for many  professors -- trained themselves in the lecture method and
  long practiced in continuing its campus dominance. They ask,  "What if my students don't say anything?" A technique we've
  found is simply to move away from the lectern, approach the  students, and say, "Please talk with me." This courteous
  request usually elicits responses and it conveys to students a  sense of, "Look, gang, we're all in this teaching-learning
  business together; let's help each other out."
 
 
  They vary the furniture arrangement if they can. If the chairs  move, they move them, in a semicircle one day, rows another, a  circle a third. And if they use seating charts, they change  them every so often.
 
 
  They bring in occasional guest speakers, a colleague in their  field or someone from beyond the university's walls, to
  provide variety in presentation and viewpoint.
 
 
  They sometimes give collaborative assignments. Universities  are highly individualized places, with classroom competition
  the norm, even though we know that many of our graduates will  enter an economic world where cooperation is often demanded of  them. Why can't professors provide their potential graduates  with some group experiences, asking them to prepare debates to  be delivered in class, to write joint papers, to create  dramatic presentations that augment what the class is  studying?
 
 
  They allow different modes of intelligence to operate.  Although we pledged no footnotes in this column, we can't
  resist a mention of Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind: The  Theory of Multiple Intelligences, first published in 1983, and
  his later books in which he posits that, in addition to the  verbal and quantitative intelligence so privileged around the
  campus, students also possess other kinds of intelligence that  instructors should think about when they teach -- spatial,
  musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal,  naturalistic, and existential. Can you develop activities and
  assignments that might tap into these other modes of  intelligence that your students bring to class?
 
  Good college teachers help students get to know each other.
 
  University classes are frequently impersonal kinds of  societies where no one knows anyone else at the beginning of
  the semester -- or at the end. Good teachers recognize the  rich resource that friends, and  acquaintances even, can be in
  a classroom and set aside time for students to get to know  each other. Use first names when you talk with students in
  class. We like to use manila folders, with the student writing  her name on the outside with one of those
  visible-at-forty-yards markers and then hanging the folder  over the edge of the desk so that we and the rest of the class
  can see it.
 
  They expect good work from their students.
 
  Teachers who regularly receive high marks from their students  about their teaching are often very demanding; they aren't
  teaching the gut sections. These professors recognize that  teaching and learning are serious enterprises, and they convey
  that recognition to their students in many ways and not  simply, we hasten to add, by harsh grading. They give
  challenging and insightful homework assignments, make up  imaginative assessments, provide a variety of exciting
  in-class activities that provoke student thinking and  encourage student involvement.
 
  They expect good work from themselves.
 
  The many good teachers we know are a diverse bunch, but they  all possess one trait -- they work hard at their teaching.
  'Nuff said.
 
  They consider how they grade.
 
  We all want our grading to be seen as "fair." But in fact, to  be fair, we should remember that grading is always somewhat
  subjective, even on the most objective-appearing tests. How  many points off because the decimal is placed one digit over
  in an otherwise correct answer? Do we grade the physics exam  on an absolute scale, below 60 equals "F," no matter the
  number of students above or below that pre-set standard? Do we  use curve grading, even in advanced classes made up of juniors  and seniors majoring in the subject?
 
  Good teachers think about their grading and discuss it with  their classes, not to its overemphasis but enough so that
  students, too, understand the mysteries of describing what a  student knows and should be able to do with an "A" or any
  other grade.
 
  They talk to their students about teaching.
 
  Just as good professors talk with their students about grading  specifically, they also talk about teaching generally --
  about, for example, their planning and motivational  techniques, their desire that students learn, their hopes that
  students will be frank with them about the class. One fine  professor we know urges his students to tell him about his
  teaching whenever they feel disposed to do so, what's good and  what's not. He uses a mid-term evaluation of his teaching so  that the very students he has that semester can benefit from  the recommendations they make, in contrast to those
  end-of-term evaluation instruments that may aid posterity and  next year's students but do little to modify the class of
  those who complete the forms. The suggestions he gets in the  middle of the semester he can use to shape his teaching right  then and there.  And his students develop a useful sense of  participation in the teaching of his classes.
 
  They talk with their colleagues about their teaching.
 
  Most of us share scholarly accomplishments with faculty  members in our departments, being sure to mention the article
  that is about to be published, the paper that was given, the  pending book contract. We even talk about our service on this
  committee or that task force. How often do we talk about our  teaching, about the problems we are having, about our
  classroom success stories? Would such talk over lunch or an  afternoon beer make a difference? To us? To our colleagues? To
  our students? We think it would.
 
  And how about asking a colleague to visit your class, with a  proviso that you later visit hers? For professors who have
  seldom, if ever, been observed by anyone but their captive  students, such visits may require advance preparation of the
  Valium sort, but the experience can be valuable. What your  colleagues can tell you -- the good, the bad, and the truly
  ugly -- can help you become a better teacher.
 
  They reflect on their teaching.
 
  Good teachers think about their teaching -- all of it, their  own classroom behavior, the plans they have, the activities
  they use, what and if their students are learning. We  professors are often given to contemplative moments; good
  instructors urge that the contemplation be, on occasion, about  teaching.
 
  Ted Hipple is a professor of theory and practice in teacher  education, and Tricia McClam is a professor of educational
  psychology and counseling in the College of Education at the  University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

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