This post is part of a series examining the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (STLHE) “Ethical Principles in University Teaching“. Each post will focus one area and unpack it, raise questions, and attempt to further dialogue around how to teach ethically in the higher education classroom.
The fifth area on STLHE’s list is: Dual Relationships with Students.
This fifth area is both the most obvious and perhaps the most difficult to ascertain. Let me explain. As STLHE says, the most obvious example of unethical dual relationship is sexual encounters with students – most universities have policies in this area and staff are well versed in the repercussions. The second obvious example that STLHE gives is a “close personal relationship with a current student”. The line between close and too close perhaps needs to be examined and the difference between a close working relationship and a close personal relationship defined.
A close personal relationship is defined in most university policies as: family, sexual, romantic, past working/job relationships, or those with whom you’ve had close interpersonal conflict with in the past. It’s a relationship that extends beyond what is expected from you in your role as an instructor.
A close working relationship is a natural extension of your job as an instructor: it fosters an open and honest environment, it shows care for the whole student beyond their work output (especially important in the case of graduate students), and it provides mentorship and care. But it is still professional.
If you’re unsure about the nature of your relationship with a student, the best course of action is to discuss it with the head of your department; it is best to be open and honest. Many times policies around student relationships are seen as ways to protect students but they need to be viewed as equally important ways to protect faculty. As the STLHE document points out:
The perception of favoritism on the part of other students is as educationally disastrous as actual favoritism or unfairness.
You don’t want your actions called into question and this demands awareness of and caution in the ways in which relationships can be read by other students, other faculty, or anyone else. How to do this?
- Be transparent about intentions and communicate openly with students about your role so that there is less room for interpretation.
- Establish boundaries, especially between work and the rest of your life, and make sure students understand them.
- Beware what is said over email and how it can be read with the personal context removed. Once it is sent, anyone might read it and have their own spin.
It can be difficult, especially for beginning faculty, to figure out the lines between a mentor or instructor who is caring and committed to their students and an instructor who is trying to be a friend to students. I firmly believe that care for the whole student is an important method of deconstructing the fragmentation and competitiveness of the academy, but there is also a need for boundaries to be set – for both your protection and the protection of students.
Check out the rest of the series:
Part 2: Pedagogical Competence
Part 3: Dealing with Sensitive Issues
Principles for Effective Online Teaching
Based on Chickering & Gramson’s (1987) popular framework for classroom teaching, this fantastic article breaks down online teaching to provide seven guidelines or principles that all online teachers should think about. They are:
- Instructors should provide clear guidelines for interaction with students.
- Well-designed discussion assignments facilitate meaningful cooperation among students.
- Students should present course projects.
- Instructors need to provide two types of feedback: information feedback and acknowledgment feedback.
- Online courses need deadlines.
- Challenging tasks, sample cases, and praise for quality work communicate high expectations.
- Allowing students to choose project topics incorporates diverse views into online courses.
While some of them might seem obvious, the article goes into some depth as to how these elements should be incorporated into online teaching and are a good starting point for evaluating and reflecting on your own online teaching practices. Reflective thinking is even more important when teaching online because much of what is taken for granted in the classroom needs to more explicit and thought out when teaching online.
More and more universities and colleges are moving toward online classes and there is an increasing need for instructors to reflect further as to how this affects their practices.
This post is part of a series examining the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (STLHE) “Ethical Principles in University Teaching“. Each post will focus one area and unpack it, raise questions, and attempt to further dialogue around how to teach ethically in the higher education classroom.
The fourth area on STLHE’s list is: Student Development.
The most basic stated goal of this responsibility is to “design instruction that facilitates learning and encourages autonomy and independent thinking in students”. This perhaps seems obvious at a first glance, most instructors are likely aware, at least at some level, of the need to see development in students. The issues arise when we examine: how do we facilitate development and how do we assess student development?
First, what needs to be examined is how we define development? Is it critical engagement with the material? Learning a specified set of information? Communicating certain learning objectives? Deciding this is intricately tied into how we facilitate and assess student’s development.
Once it is defined, how do we facilitate this development? This was discussed briefly in the area of pedagogical competence, but can we expect students to practice and develop critical engagement skills when we solely model traditional teaching methods such as the lecture?
Beyond this, how can we assess development? Does it always reveal itself in writing assignments and class presentations, or are there other assignments and activities that may better aid in assessment? Are there other ways to measure development aside from assignments? How do instructors account for different developmental models and learning styles?
The STLHE article also makes an excellent points about the power dynamics between instructors and students:
Less obvious examples of failure to take responsibility for student development can arise when teachers ignore the power differential between themselves and students…
There are certain power dynamics in the classroom that at the very least need to be recognized rather than ignored; this is part of the responsibility for student development. Without recognition there is the opportunity for the abuse of power, the failure to see the value of student’s knowledge and contributions to the class, and a failure to value student’s individual development. The STLHE lists a number of individual behaviors that result from failure to take power into account: derogatory remarks, sexual harassment, failure to acknowledge academic debts to students, etc… but there is more to the power dynamic than this. How is your classroom facilitated and your course designed with this power differential in mind, or is it at all? How can you mitigate this power differential? As the teacher, there is no way to abrogate the power completely but for student development it’s possible that handing some of the power back to students is beneficial in their development.
Another aspect to consider in this is how far this responsibility extends. Can student development happen fully in the classroom? Is there a responsibility outside class hours, in terms of availability for discussion and guidance or in terms of individual support? Many nominating letters for teaching awards speak of how instructors went beyond the class hours to communicate, guide, support and inform students of opportunities for further academic and professional development.
Finally, a focus on how faculty can ethically develop graduate students. The STLHE states that faculty should avoid actions such as exploitation and discrimination that detract from student development. With graduate students there is often a fine line between exploitation and development when they are involved in your research projects or acting as your assistants. How much are you teaching or developing their skills and how much are you exploiting their labor and time? There needs to be a conscious effort to not simply assign tasks or research but to work with graduate students in these tasks, to develop research and writing skills and to mentor them.
Check out the rest of the series:
Part 2: Pedagogical Competence
The Value of Mid-Course Student Assessment
Whether you’re teaching a course for the first time or a season veteran, there is great value in doing at least one mid-course assessment. Often, there is a mandated student assessment of their instructors at the end of a course but any feedback given cannot be implemented in that course and, especially for beginning instructors, unsavory feedback can adversely affect your career. So, if something is wrong or if you’re simply not connecting with this group in the ways you thought you were, you could have perhaps fixed things with a mid-course assessment. It’s a chance to get feedback without the departmental implications.
A very simple assessment technique is called Stop, Start, Continue. Hand out index cards and have students write out one thing they would stop (something they don’t like) in the course, one thing they would start (a suggestion), and one thing they would continue (something they like). It will give you a brief snapshot of what’s working and what’s not, as well as allowing student input into the course.
A very detailed handout from the University of Colorado has many more suggestions for questions, such as:
- What topics interest you that are not currently being covered by the course?
- What teaching strategies in this class are most helpful for your learning?
- In what ways has the instructor increased your interest in the course content?
Of course, the catch with asking for mid-course student feedback is that you have to be willing to adapt and take that feedback into consideration!
What Teachers Can Learn from Kony 2012
The internet exploded last week over the release of Invisible Children’s new documentary film, Kony 2012, which documents the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony. The goal of the film was to “make him famous” and the video has indeed become a viral hit.
While their message has resonated with some, as evidenced by the 5 million dollars they raised in two days, others have been more critical, citing how the film doesn’t portray an accurate picture, how Invisible Children is poorly run, and how the premise is based on the White Man’s Burden of saving Africa.
Regardless of your take on the issue, I think there are some valuable lessons that instructors can take away from this.
- The Danger of a Single Narrative: There’s a fantastic TED talk out there by Chimamanda Adichie called the “The Danger of a Single Story” that is well worth a watch and highlights what I mean here, especially in terms of Africa. Kony 2012 is one story, told from the perspective of North American filmmakers – what other stories are not being told or are hidden by this narrative? Ugandans are criticizing the film for simplifying the situation, for using old footage that doesn’t accurately portray the situation, and for opening old wounds. In the classroom, reducing complex issues to simplistic answers is dangerous. It doesn’t encourage critical thinking and analysis. It reduces the complexities of the lived experiences that students bring to the classroom. It positions the teacher as able to distill complexity into simplicity, as if this were the end goal of knowledge. Teachers need to be willing to engage with different narratives, value them, and encourage students to bring their own stories into the classroom. Perspective matters, both our perspective as instructors, as well as the students’ perspective. Things like gender, race, sexuality, and disability matter in how they shape perspectives. Very few things in life or in the classroom are simple and to portray them as such does a disservice to the intelligence of the students.
- The Power of the Storyteller: When you stand in front of the class or behind the camera, there is great power in being able to tell the story in your words and in your way. By remembering this, teachers can understand the effects of what they teach (and how they teach it) but also, hopefully, remember to share the power, to let others (especially students) also have the power to tell stories in their way. As teachers, you are in a position of power – how are you going to use that?
- Knowledge is Political: Much of the discussion around the film has been about awareness, raising it being the specific goal of the film. But to what end? Awareness is good but what is the goal of that awareness? Much like the knowledge we teach, what is the end goal? Beyond test scores, what goals are we explicitly or implicitly looking to achieve with what we teach and how we teach? We can be more efficient in reaching our goals when we recognize them and, at times, when we reflect we can see how our methods actually detract from our goals.
- Know Your Audience: Much of the success of the film can be attributed to the filmmakers knowing their audience (North American, college aged, etc…); their use of social media targeted this and how they made the film played on this. As instructors, we also need to know our audience. What excites them? What will engage them in the topic? What medium is best to do this? When students care about the material they’re studying they engage with it – also, we shouldn’t necessarily assume we can make them care about something we care about or think is important.
Digital Storytelling in the Higher Ed Classroom
Since I’m off to present at a conference on digital storytelling this weekend, here’s a quick summary of what digital storytelling is. As instructors, we are always on the hunt for new assignments and projects that can engage students and most effectively meet the learning objectives of the class. Something you might consider using is digital storytelling.
Georgetown University has a fantastic site that overviews the research behind the process, gives some examples of digital stories and gives some reasons why digital storytelling might be useful in your classroom. Their definition of digital storytelling is this:
“Digital stories are multimedia projects combining text, images, audio and video files into short film clips…. In recent years, digital storytelling has turned college and university classrooms into spaces of creative critical multimedia production. Digital stories have proven to be a powerful medium for students to represent a theoretically-informed understanding of texts and contexts in a form other than “traditional” writing.”
The Center for Digital Storytelling adds the ‘nuts and bolts’ to the description:
“A digital story is a a 2-to-4 minute digital video clip, most often told in first person narrative, recorded with your own voice, illustrated mostly with still images, and with an optional music track to add emotional tone.”
More and more, students are comfortable using digital media such as video and music editing software and it is free and available on almost every computer, smart phone and online. It engages students with new media and with what they’re comfortable with. Tired of iPhones in class? Put them to work for your next class assignment!
How can you use it? Connect an important moment in family history to a major world event. Connect a childhood memory of school to how the student writes/wants to teach/sees authority/etc… Get the students to document a 2min clip of their week to highlight how politics or power affects them in material ways. Obviously, there are more fits with humanities and social sciences but I would be curious to see someone utilize it in more ‘rigid’ disciplines – the possibilities can be endless.
Beyond the media aspect of this, one of the great benefits of these storytelling projects is the chance for students to bring their own voice and stories into class, recognizing that students carry knowledge and experience prior to stepping into the class. It is a chance to collectively bring and share knowledge that is personal and important to the students. Often we expect students to remove the personal, to be objective learners and researchers, to scrub any taint of their personal opinion from their papers – this is a chance to flip the script, to show that their personal experiences, their histories, and their memories are an important part of the project of a collaborative learning place and of a pedagogy of inclusiveness.
To read more about digital storytelling, check out these texts:
J.B. Ohler – Digital Storytelling in the Classroom – New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity (2008)
J. McDrury & M. Alterio – Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education (2003)
The Role of Mentors in Higher Education
The academic life is often neatly broken down into segments and percentages; a half-time teaching position there, a percentage dictated for departmental service, time and money allotted for a specific research project. But we all know that when these neat models are applied to reality, they don’t really seem to fit or reflect what actually happens, there’s always more to do, tasks unaccounted for and each project seems to bleed into the other.
With all the (organized) chaos that academic life often seems to be, where does mentoring fit in? Or is mentoring even necessary? What does mentoring look like for faculty? Is it what happens when you agree to supervise a theses? Does it enter the classroom? Is it part of the relationship with other, perhaps junior, faculty?
An excellent article by Victoria based Janni Aragon argues that mentoring is necessary. She writes:
“When we become the experts or specialists, though, we need to remember our responsibility to take others with us. We cannot hoard our expertise and stingily mete out information or resources to a select few. Yes, the mentoring, sharing or sponsoring of students and colleagues takes time, but it’s worth it. This can help increase the presence of more diverse faculty, administrators, and staff on college campuses.”
What does this have to do with teaching? In the classroom there is so much more that goes on beyond the simple transfer of knowledge. Part of the role of the instructor is to mentor students, to give them opportunities to grow, to work with them on skills such as writing academic pieces, and sharing tips and opportunities. It involves a realization that your student’s experience is bigger than just your class, that you are one piece in the puzzle of their academic career. This understanding leads to finding ways to integrate your class and its goals into the larger picture. How can you help your students succeed not only in your class but in their larger goals?
Mentoring is also a very important aspect of what we do in supporting faculty and graduate students (future faculty?). A great article on Kosmos looks at the ‘ins and outs’ of mentoring but, importantly, mentoring is about relationships and community. It goes beyond supervision or making them feel welcome in their new environment/department. It is part of a larger thrust to build a knowledge producing and sharing community, as well as an integral part of critical pedagogy. It is very much about building relationships.It involves sharing knowledge, being available to answer questions and concerns, being approachable, being proactive in building skills in your students and colleagues, such as proposal writing, departmental practices, research protocols. Often higher education can be a terrifying and demoralizing project, one you know all too well – how can you make it less so for others?
Mentoring is not easy; it takes time and commitment. Time is often in short supply in the academic life but if we are serious about building community, building relationships and improving our academic and teaching spheres, mentoring is something that is worth the time and effort.
Another Take on Silence in the Higher Education Classroom
Every instructor has at least one: the student who never says a word in class unless directly asked to. To combat this perceived lack of engagement, often instructors build in a ‘Participation Mark’ to encourage dialogue and participation. Some instructors are sensitive to those who are afraid of public speaking but, especially at the university or graduate level, there is often a demand on these students to overcome their fears (and in the process dismissing all issues as ‘fears’ to be overcome) and to be an able debater.
But what if there’s more to the silence? A short article titled, “The Implications of Silence for Educators in the Multicultural Classroom” argues that the nature of silence is complex but often,
“Instructors sometimes falsely assume that non speaking students are not engaged in the learning. Some studies have reported that instructors incorrectly misinterpret students’ silence as disengagement when using conventional understandings of silence but those silent students were engaging through other means such as paying attention, taking notes, or thinking about the material presented in class”
The article argues that, depending on the culture that the student comes from, silence might be taken as respect or what is expected in traditional learning systems. Beyond this, many other writers have taken a postcolonial or anticolonial stance and looked at how silence is an act of resistance by minoritized students who don’t see themselves as appreciated or represented in the educational systems. It could even be that silence is an act of resistance or purposeful disengagement by students who don’t see their learning styles appreciated or represented in the pedagogy. It can also be a safety mechanism because their history has been one of rejection when they spoke up in class.
As an instructor, we need to be aware of the complexities of silence and not always fall back on the easy answer of disengagement or disinterest.
Blogs in the Higher Education Classroom: Public or Private?
Blogs, such as this one, are nothing new. No one is groundbreaking or cutting edge by starting a blog (unless, of course, this is the 1990′s!). Blogs are a full part of what has been dubbed Web 2.0, the cluster of interactive, user-driven social media and technologies on the web.
Still, the use of the blogs and other social media as pedagogical tools for the classroom has seen slower implementation, especially in institutions and with faculty that are wedded to more traditional styles and techniques. Others are more interested in the integration of technology and social media into the classroom as a way of challenging pedagogical models and as tools to enhance and further current models. So, with that, I want to look briefly at the use of blogs as a pedagogical tool in the classroom, their benefits, and one of the major questions that needs to be considered in their use:
Should blogs in the classroom be public or private?
To do that, I will use this article as a starting point: The Appropriation and Repurposing of Social Technologies in Higher Education (just click on the link to read it, not gated!)
Social media, Web 2.0 and blogs have been spaces that are oriented towards openness, collaboration and networking – all things that can be beneficial in the classroom. In the interviews collected in the above paper, some of the benefits of blogging, specifically, are:
- “I think it can encourage them [students] to learn more as a group, and to be more aware of each others’ engagement with the same materials” (p. 26).
- I think it also enhances the role of the teacher, of them becoming a facilitator rather than somebody who has an authority to speak on a particular topic” (p. 26).
- “A lot of the issues that students have with writing for assessment is that they do no really have a vision of who the audience is and blogging changes that….So the blog as an assessment tool brings back the notion of audience into the frame” (p. 25).
- “[The lecturer] can be more aware of what level of understanding the students have from the reading and what is required to engage with students’ understanding and to stretch it” (p. 27).
The paper examines and compares two styles of blogging assignments, which are:
- The blog remained private between the teacher and the student, allowing for intensive and formative one-on-one support and limiting much of the riskiness and volatility of ‘true blogging’.
- Each blog was open to fellow class members and teachers only. Students were required to take turns posting substantive blog posts on the weekly readings and other class members would comment on the posting. The content would then act as a starting point for the weekly class discussions.
There are a couple of points to consider when determining if a more public or more private blogging experience is appropriate for your class.
- “A group blog is more like a discussion board…people are having to think very carefully about what they say…whereas with a private blog…they can feel more relaxed” (p. 24).
- Private blogs allow for more intensive support and feedback and more security for the student but limit the connective and networking possibilities of Web 2.0 (p. 22).
There are a few more things to consider. With the more private blog model that is given above, the assignment is not dissimilar from a weekly response paper or journal assignment except that it is posted on the web in a paperless format. It is a way for instructors to monitor the step-by-step learning and engagement process of students, giving appropriate feedback and guidance along the way. But if it the collaborative and connective possibilities of social media that intrigue you, this model lacks those unless some sort of sharing or commenting is implemented.
One of the great things about social media is that it is a new tool to meet pedagogical goals. Technology is actually limiting if we implement it simply for the sake of using something new. Instead: outline your pedagogical goals and look for the tools that can best help you meet them.
If your goals is collaborative learning, critical engagement as a community, etc… social media, such as a blog, can be useful tools in meeting these goals.
You need to choose the model that is right for your classroom and the one that fits your pedagogical goals and, in deciding, questions of security, openness, and engagement need to considered.
Ethics of Teaching in Higher Education: #3 Dealing with Sensitive Issues
This post is part of a series examining the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (STLHE) “Ethical Principles in University Teaching“. Each post will focus one area and unpack it, raise questions, and attempt to further dialogue around how to teach ethically in the higher education classroom.
The third area on STLHE’s list is: Dealing with Sensitive Issues.
How do we define what becomes a ‘sensitive’ issue? Who defines it? Often, what becomes a sensitive issue – race, gender, physical disability, mental health, sexuality, class, and more – is actually an extremely important issue but the designation of ‘sensitive’ allows it to be infrequently talked about, or talked around rather than directly addressing the issues. How does this affect the ways we think about ‘sensitive’ issues in the classroom and why does this matter?
The STLHE suggests that ethical teaching is: “Topics that students are likely to find sensitive or discomforting are dealt with in an open, honest and positive way.” Much of what is deemed sensitive will depend on the student. Some will find dealing with certain topics honestly the discomforting part. For example, when discussions around racism happen in classrooms, often there is some discomfort from White students over having to face systems of domination that they are implicated within. While, for minority students, perhaps being honest requires discomfort on their part from reliving past traumas in uncertain spaces. Perhaps, if topics like racism are to be dealt with there is need for a certain amount of discomfort. ‘Sensitive’ topics are vested with all sorts of power relations and discussions that are not always easy to suss out in the classroom.
There are issues around ‘honesty’. Often people cloak their misinformation, prejudice or hatred within the guise of honesty or ‘straight shooting’. You might hear, “You might not agree but I’m just telling it like I see it,” or, “That’s just the way it is” when, in reality, there is very little that will appear the same and be ‘honest’ to a whole classroom, especially around such divisive topics such as race, gender or sexuality. So how can an educator in Higher Education be ethically responsible when it comes to such issues?
I believe that it begins with interrogating one’s own position on the issue. What are you opinions on the topic, where do they come from, and how has this positioning biased you in particular ways? There is very little that is subjective, especially around these issues. Knowing where you stand and how you got there will go a long way towards mediating discussion in your class and showing students the processes involved in recognizing their own positions. Part of being able to see your own position is recognizing the limitations of it. I remember an old episode of the once popular TV show Boston Public which was set in a Boston high-school. A White teacher was intent on interrogating the power of the “N-word” when used with and towards African-Americans. After some controversy, the Black principal of the show was quite clear in telling the teacher, “Unless you’ve experienced the power that the word has, you are not qualified to talk about its power.”
There is perhaps some truth in this, in recognizing how one’s positions can limit the discussions taken up. This is not to say that these discussions cannot happen but that there is a time to recognize our own limits as instructors and turn to the knowledge of the students or others to fill in the gaps. It is in discussions around ‘sensitive’ issues that there is a need for collective knowledge gathering and sharing, perhaps more than at any other time. There is a need to hear more voices than the instructors.
This in itself is filled with its own perils: How do you keep the discussion civil and productive? How do you ensure that students feel safe sharing their experiences, especially around topics that might leave them vulnerable? Is safety always productive?
There are no ‘set-in-stone’ answers but, as instructors, there is the need to think about these issues before hand and to locate one’s own position around the issues so that when they come up in the classroom (and they will) they are dealt with in productive rather than harmful ways.
Check out the rest of the series:
