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News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education

Sept. 12, 2006

The Standardization of College Teaching

By Shari Wilson

As an undergraduate at a state university, I read the schedule of classes long before I had to register. I scanned instructors’ names first. Next I considered courses, and finally I would take the action that would decide my class schedule — I went to the university bookstore and looked at the textbooks each professor required.

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Scanning the stacks, I was overwhelmed by the number of textbooks on the bookshelves. Every two or three books represented a semester’s worth of learning. And for 16 weeks, I would be married to that book. I looked at how the textbooks were written, the amount of reading necessary, and the different tools offered to help a student understand a concept. I knew myself. I knew my learning style. And after flipping through a few shelves of textbooks at the university bookstore, I was making choices that would give me a better chance — not only of passing the courses — but of actually learning and carrying that knowledge with me into later courses.

When I became an instructor myself, I marveled at the autonomy of the job. To some degree I could make my own hours. As long as I aligned my courses with the course objectives set up by my department, I would receive positive peer evaluations and approval by the administration. At these campuses, I chose a textbook from the list provided by the department’s textbook committee. At two campuses where I worked, the department chair told me that textbooks not on the list were often approved by the committee chair quickly enough that they could be used that semester.

When I moved to teach at a large urban community college, I faced something that looked like too much freedom. For one freshman composition course, I was given a choice of 59 textbooks to choose from. At the next level of composition, the list of approved textbooks was 104 titles long. Dazed, I contacted trusted colleagues and skimmed their textbooks.

Finally, I reverted to my old undergraduate habits and visited the college bookstore. This time, however, I was making a bigger decision. I now had to commit to a textbook that would serve three sections of a particular composition class. That meant that 99 students of varying academic abilities would have to live with my decision. And even though I could change the text the next semester if I needed to, there would be 16 long weeks with a book that did not serve our needs as well as it should.

Finally I would make my choices — and start the laborious process of ordering desk copies and passing paperwork on to my department chair. It was exhausting, but tremendously rewarding. After all, I was able to choose a text that, for the most part, aligned with my own beliefs. I would be challenged to teach some new material and learn some new teaching techniques with this choice — and my students would benefit.

In contrast, this week, at the university where I am on contract to teach full-time, my supervisor told a roomful of composition faculty which textbook they will be using for Fall 2007. To stunned silence, he held up three textbooks that he had chosen for what he called a “one year experiment.” One text was to be used for incoming freshman taking composition; the next semester’s instructors would have the choice of one of the remaining two textbooks. Refusing any discussion, he indicated that part of the reason for this change was the administration’s edict that freshman students be given a “uniform
experience” in our composition courses.

There was not a sound as more than 30 professors left the room. It was not until the next day that I first heard their collective unbridled response. One professor who had worked at this university for over a decade stopped our director in the copy room and said, “So, since you’re choosing the textbook, are you going to give us standardized lesson plans, too.” When his supervisor did not respond, the professor made one last attempt to communicate his disappointment, “Hey, why don’t you just come in and teach my courses for me?”

“It’s just the beginning,” another professor told me. “This university has bought into the idea that education is a business.” Sighing, he said, “The next step will be classes of a thousand with PowerPoint presentations instead of lessons.” At the time I thought he was just being sarcastic and reactionary; yet I later wondered if he was on to something.

“Student as consumer” has become a driving force at many colleges. In the last few decades, a number of provosts, presidents, and chancellors have buckled under pressure from students, local businesspeople, and voting citizens to think of education as a simple equation — quickly deliver the students information, get money. In some cases, accreditation boards have tried to hold the line; in other cases, they seem to be in collusion with this move toward efficiency at all costs. In any case, the art of teaching has been relegated to a much lower status — or in some cases, completely disregarded.

Slowly and quietly, the freedoms that not only made teaching enjoyable, but effective, are being taken away by an administration that is more interested in uniformity — as if education was a drive-through fast-food product. Perhaps they’ve forgotten that even the drive-through provides choices: a hamburger or cheeseburger, a chicken sandwich, a fish sandwich, chicken fingers, fries, curly fries, a few salad choices, a baked potato — the list may be too big to fit on one menu board. Yet in something as important as education, some are thinking, “the fewer choices, the better.”

I’m not sure if they’re really thinking primarily of the students. True — students would be reading the same material across the board. But perhaps this is the answer that receives less resistance from those concerned. Perhaps administrators have other motives as well. It would be less work for their secretaries if they only had to order one book. And standardization often makes it easier to assess students’ learning. That means increased claims of success — and a better shot at funding. And, of course, departments would be easier to manage with fewer variables. Whether they are pressed into service or welcome the chance, administrators need to spend time fund raising, informing the public, creating events that will reflect well in press releases, shaking hands at groundbreaking ceremonies, and attending mayoral functions; why not scale back in an area that already causes them concern?

After all, with the massification of education, universities are serving more “consumers.” Many feel it is better to get as many students as they can in and out of the educational system quickly and show our culture that we have “produced” the workers we had promised. Yet in the short seven years I’ve been teaching, every professor I’ve come in contact with has expressed concerns: 1) that we are stooping to lowered standards; 2) that many students infer that memorizing facts and spilling them back to a proctor is enough; 3) and that certificates and programs are being created not because of student demand — but because of pressure from those who fund the campus. These worries, among others, have made many professors aware that the pressure to provide a quality educational experience falls almost solely to them. And when they have an administration that does not support this goal, it becomes almost impossible to attain.

Last semester, administrators at my university told English composition faculty that they are going to implement a standardized syllabus in the near future; perhaps lesson plans will be faculty’s own — yet policies previously set by faculty will soon be dictated by the administration. This semester, my department chair dictated the textbooks that faculty will use in 2007. Will the next move be lesson plans created by administrators? Standardized testing? By removing the creativity and style that individual instructors provide, couldn’t we, in effect, move to a system simply supervised by proctors? Some administrators will wince at this suggestion; I guarantee a few will actually gaze up at their office ceilings and think about it — if only for a moment. And even if administrators do not instigate this kind of plan, moving toward overt control (or even elimination) of faculty can be a piecemeal business.

Yet in many disciplines, the use of standardized materials and lesson plans is already problematic. Because the materials were not developed for a particular course or student population, many students feel detached from the material. In liberal arts, especially, faculty must be in place to personalize the learning experience for students — otherwise students feel as if their input is worthless. Faculty are of infinite value here; taking away their ability to teach well cannot be a recipe for a successful educational experience.

While writing this, I admit that I am feeling reactionary. In a few weeks or months, I may be less angry — yet in that time, won’t these edicts still be in place at my university? Yes. And my ability to teach in the way that I think works best will be curtailed more and more. I will feel less like an instructor and more like the employee of a corporate machine. I am reminded that I spent a decade in Silicon Valley purchasing semiconductors, and another decade in advertising, writing copy for products and services that I didn’t care about. In these positions I felt useless — and at times, degraded.

I moved to higher education because I believed in the service we provided. And I remembered the choices I was allowed to make as an undergraduate — not only in major, but also in courses within that major. Those courses were represented by a textbook and, most importantly, a faculty “face” that helped me interpret that textbook and often inspired me to go beyond the classroom.

Perhaps I am an anomaly. I did not go to college under pressure from family or even the society that surrounded me. The pressure was from within. For me, college was not a “product” to be bought — something to ensure my business future with promotions and 50-cent-an-hour raises. It was a challenge that I needed to meet to find out what I was capable of.

And, of course, I was interested in learning. In a way, not much has changed. I am still interested in learning — not only my students’ learning, but my own. And the freedom to choose my own textbook, create my own assignments, and pace my courses are a form of learning. I am constantly evaluating my teaching methods and pressing for improvement. I make notes on my course outline about each lesson, “good, students applied knowledge from last assignment,” “met with little discussion — rewrite or discard,” or “connected to writing topic — keep.” I attend conferences in my discipline and read articles and books in and out of my discipline. I talk to colleagues and post to an online discussion board, constantly rooting around to find different ways to teach the objectives that my department has set out for me to achieve. It’s my hope that in an age of diminished expectations, campuses will leave the art of teaching to those best suited to perform this challenging and unwieldy task: faculty.

Shari Wilson, who writes Nomad Scholar under a pseudonym, explores life off the tenure track.

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Comments

Sorry to resurrect an old thread of commentary, but my university has just gotten around to the standardized syllabus. I don’t mind a limited choice of books because one is just about as bad as another. Well-meaning academics assemble readers with material that students should care about (the usual roundup of ethical and social concerns) but that students at my school generally don’t care about. Our standardized syllabus results from one associate vice president’s opinion regarding accreditation review, filtered through the freshman English chair’s belief that the Georgia Regents’ essay exam emphasizes narrative questions, though a few minutes’ research shows that it plainly doesn’t. Our book choices are limited because our book store, operated by an external contractor, cannot handle multiple text orders. Our administration hammers at us about accountability; we are constantly told that if a student fails our courses, it’s our fault. This attitude on the part of those who sign our checks has inevitably led to grade inflation. Add to accountability and grade inflation the last decade’s push for assessment and suddenly you have administrators, few of which have real academic degrees, drawing the erroneous conclusion that faculty aren’t doing their jobs. Our book store this semester ordered 60 books for a course that enrolled 750 students, then ordered 60 more when the first batch sold out. We have over 30 in a comp class, despite NCTE’s recommendation that we have no more than 20. Our average SAT for new freshmen is only around 800; half our students fail the Georgia Regents’ reading test, which students must now take in the first semester of enrollment. Our financial aid office is so far behind in processing applications that about half of my students still have not bought their books after four weeks of school. Many students have not yet paid their fees because of financial aid snafus, and these students are instructed (by state law I’m told) not to attend class until their fees are paid. How do we solve these problems, er, I mean, um, challenges? If only we had a standardized syllabus. . . .

Craig A. MillimanAssoc. Prof. of English

Craig A. Milliman, Fort Valley State University, at 9:05 am EDT on September 16, 2008

Excellent essay. My opinion? Hire good teachers, tell them the objective, and give them the freedom and authority to exercise their own best judgment.

Bob Schenck, at 8:25 am EDT on September 12, 2006

So, now we have an inflammatory article written under a pseudonym. If you have something to say, please do so in the full light of public, or at least, collegial, scrutiny. The academy is not well served with this kind of approach. Your university may be struggling with this issue, but many, many colleges continue to provide great latitude to the faculty for textbook selection, course outlines, and related areas. Perhaps you would like to write an article about the poor quality of teaching that occurs, even with the latitude that currently exists for the items above. It appears that you condemn the entire academy with this kind of article. How unfortunate, and how sad.

Dan, Vice-President for Instruction at Mohawk Valley Community College, at 8:25 am EDT on September 12, 2006

I polled forty-two colleagues at other campuses (granted, not a big survey); of them, 30% said that their campus had a required textbook; 10% of those said that there was leeway for an unapproved text to be used; the remaining 70% indicated that their college has no such rule. I know that this is different for individual disciplines, but as far as I can tell, an enforced use of one text is not terribly common in English composition. I could be wrong—as I said, it was an informal poll done of less than 50 colleges.

I realize this is a controversial subject. After talking to a dozen professors in my department that are very upset about this edict, I think what angers them the most is that this was not a committee decision. It was a decision from our supervisor based not on any direction from university upper management—but on his own desire to see what the outcome would be. And many faculty find it very difficult when adminstration steps into an area of their teaching where they have enjoyed academic freedom for years and makes choices for them. I know that when I was hired, my choice in use of textbook was a “perk” for this position. Now that has been removed, and I can’t help but feel disappointed—in addition to be concerned about students losing their ability to choose a textbook that they like when signing up for a course.

A colleague who teaches foreign language at a campus nearby indicated that it’s quite common for a campus to use one book for many sections—but instructors know that coming in. And he said that those who don’t like the selection often end up on a textbook committee. So there is a change approximately every three years at his campus. So in a way, there is a choice.

I can’t help but feel that accepting a position at a campus where there is no choice of textbook for the discipline you are teaching is a very different experience than being told mid-career that you will not have a choice. I have great empathy for the dozen colleagues who had geared their syllabi for a textbook they wrote to be told that it is no longer an appropriate choice. In the end, I think learning a new textbook can a positive experience for faculty (after all, I changed one of my texts this year)—yet it is much wiser when a discipline-wide change like this comes through committee or department rather than from one individual.

Shari Wilson, Nomad Scholar, at 9:15 am EDT on September 12, 2006

“Massification”

There are many issues in this editorial with which I’m sympathetic. And some with which I’m not.

Variation of the learning experience in multi-section courses is a distinct problem for many institutions where faculty autonomy is a higher priority than a broad focus on student learning. Part of my job is considering syllabi for multi-section courses, and the range in the level of expectations of students, the number of assignments, the type, and so forth, is so extreme that “comparable learning experiences” can’t exist. Faculty leadership with peers is a way to reduce this, but against faculty autonomy, without accountability “leadership” fails. It would be nice if administrators didn’t have to step in, admittedly. Has Professor Wilson asked about whether the administration is concerned about disparate learning experiences for students, so much so that it has been forced to step in? Is this likely to be a more reasonable underlying cause than that the secretary won’t have to do as much work? Does she know the grade distribution across sections of her multi-section class? Does she know whether assignments and expectations are comparable? Has she considered whether students are being adequately prepared for the next course in the sequence or program? Does she have any evidence of this? These are precisely what administrators have to know, and senior faculty ought to be concerned about. No, I’d be frustrated by the straight-jacket she describes, too; but I think I’d try to find out what problem the solution was trying to fix.

A different issue is the “massification” of higher education mentioned in the article. We complain about the “lower quality” of students enrolling in our programs, without thinking very seriously about the extension of college into larger and larger percentages of high schoolers. It’s true that we’re “digging deeper” into this pool, and that we’re certainly not in an age of “elite” education. This is a systemic issue, and both administration and faculty are complicit.

And this has happened, to some extent, not because we’re concerned about educating the next generation of skilled workers and citizens. At my most cynical, I realize that most American institutions are over-extended—they must have increasing numbers of students enrolled in order to support themselves. We’re Walmarting ourselves, focusing on our year-over-year growth, and dependent on that growth to pay for the programs and facilities we’re offering. No growth: no hiring, no raises, no new computers, etc. No growth: no way to pay off the debt the institution has incurred on facilities. And this is true for publics as well as privates. Market share is driving almost everyone.

Two examples, both top-tier US News institutions, popular in different regions, suggest this to me. One institution I know of has nearly doubled the number of faculty employed in the past dozen years. Raises have been consistent, tenure available, promotions frequent. Enrollment has increased by 50%. Innovation in programming and delivery model characterizes this school. Buildings are going up every 18 months, including residence halls and classroom space. Times are challenging, but good. But they’re dealing with debt, and growth is essential. Faculty and administration work together, although not always easily.

A second institution has about the same number of faculty and students it had a dozen years ago, by choice, mostly. Tenure is reasonably easy to get, and promotions available. Raises have been infrequent, however, and supplies budgets and equipment budgets stagnant. The classical, traditional general education program hasn’t changed in 25 years, and neither have most courses. The quality of instruction is generally excellent; the faculty resist innovation in delivery model and increased diversity of learners and programs. They’re highly engaged with their students, mentoring, guiding, advising. This second institutution is on the verge of financial implosion, with decaying facilities, equipment, and programs. They’re not dealing with debt; instead, they’re slowly sucking the endowment dry. But they haven’t “massified” the institution. Faculty and administration have been consistently adversarial, with rare exceptions. In 30 years, 8 presidents and a dozen deans.

Things are a lot more complicated than this, of course. But a central lesson that emerges is that institutions that are not growing and where administration and faculty do not share the same vision will not be able to hire the Shari Wilsons who come into the profession. The economic climate of higher education, whether public or private, is very different than even just a few years ago. Blaming the states or the federal government for not supporting higher education won’t do.

Faculty have a major role in how the institution is perceived: autonomy doesn’t guarantee broad success in student learning, and that’s what our clients, their parents, and the legislatures care about. Until we focus together deliberately on student learning and building success in our students—not just some, but all—and can demonstrate it, don’t expect either the financial climate or the instructional micro-climate to get better.

Rich, Dean, at 9:35 am EDT on September 12, 2006

Far from being an anomaly, Ms. Wilson’s perspective is probably in line with the majority of faculty members in higher education. Most of them genuinely want to do right by their students, but the culture that defines them is so instructor-centered that it is almost impossible for them to truly put their students’ interests first. The absence of institutional frameworks for measuring student learning on most campuses is perhaps the most obvious example. Comprehensive assessment of every nuanced pedagogy is not cost-effective, and never has been. However, it makes a lot of sense in high-impact courses like first-year composition, where well-researched and evaluated instructional techniques can be applied across multiple sections in the interest of improving learning for all students. The typical instructor’s reaction to any hint of standardization is to decry the inevitable commoditization of education. In fact, there is a lot of middle ground to be explored on the continuum between mass production and the laisser faire approach to instructional oversight so dominant today.

Bob Henshaw, UNC-Chapel Hill, at 10:45 am EDT on September 12, 2006

The cost of choice

By adopting standard texts for courses with broad enrollments, institutions can put pressure on textbook pricing. Ask your students: are they more concernced about their instructors’ academic freedom or the price that they, the students, have to pay for textbooks? It’s an ugly situation. For lower-level courses, I suspect that cost trumps freedom.

Joseph J. Esposito, President at Portable CEO, at 10:51 am EDT on September 12, 2006

Not One-Or-The-Other

I think one thing that has been absent in some of the responses is an engagement with the question at hand. Simply put, do you need a standard textbook to create a standard set of goals, expectations, and assessment tools? I have taught at universities where a single textbook was required for all composition classes. I have also taught at schools where there was not a common textbook. All of these institutions had required items that appeared on the syllabus.

If, for example, all Freshman Comp sections had to write three essays of a specific type (for the sake of argument,let’s say persuasive, comparrative, and descriptive), do you need to use the same book across all sections? What pedagogical advantage is gained by having a common book as opposed to having instructors choose books they are familiar with and contain material, themes, and/or questions that excite them?

Personally, I suspect that students are more engaged with material that their professors are engaged with. Now, I have had books that, no matter how excited I was, did not “work.” All textbooks contain articles and sections that will suffer from this.

There are a number of ways to guarantee that there is a common means of assessment that offer facutly members the freedom to play to their strengths. These options, however, can only exist where there is not an attempt to dictate a single approach.

I hope this helps.

Matt

Matt DeForrest, Assistant Professor of English at JCSU, at 11:30 am EDT on September 12, 2006

I agree with much of the author’s position that faculty autonomy has been undermined by a poorly-handled book selection process. However, in many fields the same books are used in all courses on a subject because the course is, in effect, about the book. That is certainly true of many literature courses, for some courses in philosophy, political science and other fields, and for entire programs in the case of Great Books schools such as St. Johns or Gutenberg.

The goal of giving all students a similar experience is not a bad one, as it can lead to broader discussions among students. Some colleges assign one “summer book” to read for what I take to be similar reasons.

I certainly deplore the tendency of higher education to move toward mechanical models run by bean counters, but the idea of a more unified curriculum is not without merit, although composition seems one of the least likely places for such an approach to be helpful. It may be more educationally beneficial to prescribe a significant part f the curriculum, even at the book level, than to simply let students loose in what amounts to the aisles of a big box store to pick what they want to.

Alan Contreras, Oregon Degree Authorization, at 12:45 pm EDT on September 12, 2006

admins know best?

One thing missing is evidence that students not receiving a “standard” experience is somehow harmful to them or their education, or that receiving a standard education is beneficial. My sense is that good teachers will teach well, and students will learn, if faculty choose the text or they don’t; likewise, crappy teachers will teach poorly whether they choose the text of they don’t and students won’t learn.

The thinking/logic seems to be that if students all read from book x and write essays of type y that there education will be standardized, but this itself is a crock and/or deluded illusion. Rather, dictacting texts or syllabi, or whatever, is merely another step in attempting to “teacher proof” the institution and education, to exert overt control because faculty apparently aren’t capable in the eyes of admins, the all too common worker/managment relations we’ve come to see in the broader workaday world. Admins can’t make good teaching happen by choosing books or dictating syllabi any more than they can ruin good teachers, except by driving them from the profession with stupid choices of this sort.

Based on what I’d say is somewhat of a reactionary reaction from a couple of admins so far, the author is right to write under a psudeonym to protect her place in the workforce while also being a clear indication as to why tenure remains essential. As long as education moves toward commodification, toward credentialing rather than educating, and as long as admins don’t support faculty who resist this neoliberal movement, we’re all in trouble, be we student, faculty, admin or taxpaying citizen in the street.

bradley bleck, instructor at Spokane Falls CC, at 12:46 pm EDT on September 12, 2006

The REAL impetus?

First, I agree with the previous writer who believes the essayist has a perfect right to operate under a pseduomym. Things are not so steady these days that words don’t “get around.”

However, all the arguments regarding whether the shared text idea is “instructor-centered” or “student-centered” misses the point: this new movement is given its energy from the extension of parent-centered ‘concern’ from secondary schools into colleges and universities.

Grades and their determination are the focalpoints. It used to be that a professor’s ‘word’ on failure was enough; now that is not true. If administration can defend its instructors and deflect the encroachment of parents into the process by suggesting that all of its professors are “on the same page” (excuse that), then life in the classroom can go on relatively unimpeded by selective challenges from ‘the outside.’

Where I work, we publish the standards by which our instructors are to grade and the goals for each class. Each instructor’s syllabus is observed with these in mind. We share one reading text and one handbook, but the rest is our own decision. I still feel free to teach from my strengths, but even the commonalities don’t stop ‘helicopter parents’ from trying to intervene.

If the various role players of a college can be of one mind regarding this very real phenomenon behind all this bickering and try to ‘team up,’ perhaps all can have their wishes and the college/university experience can remain a singular, satisfying professional entity.

Jeff Cebulski, First-year writing Instructor at Uiversity of West Georgia, at 1:25 pm EDT on September 12, 2006

Standardized Testing for Higher Education

Anti-intellectualism has a long history in the United States. The Bush Administration’s new higher education plan will require universities to teach to the test. Wilson’s article reminds us what will soon be loss.

The failed NCLB moved students away from critical thinking to simple recall level thinking. A great skill for pushing buttons on a screen at McDonald’s, but of minor importance for analysis and synthesis. Unfortunately, analysis and synthesis are the two skills most needed for higher education. Now, Ms. Spellings wants to do the same for higher education.

Daniel Pedroso, at 3:00 pm EDT on September 12, 2006

There are many variables floating in this discussion: standard choices for textbooks for large courses taught in multiple sections by different faculty; how textbook choices are to be made—content; style; cost; one’s relationship to the author (as in your book, or your uncle’s or your mother’s or your advisor’s); utility of supporting materials — instructor’s manual??? :), etc.

When I was a freshman at Northwestern University in the early 1960s (which, for the guidance of younger colleagues, is just after the glaciers receded), the Freshman Composition course was taught by the combination of a set of lectures by English department faculty, with multiple sections taught be virtually all of the English faculty. We had standard textbooks because, in theory we would all be having a shared experience of particular works of literature, plus the experience of learning how to write or discuss literature in section. I can still recall that students soon sorted out the varieties of experience that went with a given faculty member or other.

I think that the goal of “standardization of education on what might be called “Fordist” principles is not going to succed in improving education, but it will provide some ’shared experiences’ —which likely will make students even more cynical about learning than they are when they arrive in the hallowed halls.

Just remember, students don’t know what they don’t know, and the same goes for professors. Those who think otherwise are wrong!!! (maybe)

As for whether the original post was inflammatory, I get the sense that life must be very dull at Mohawk Valley to think that the “Sheri Wilson” post was a call to the barricades.

Frank ConlonNorthwestern ‘60

Frank Conlon, Professor Emeritus at University of Washington, at 8:00 pm EDT on September 12, 2006

We need more context.

While many choices made by administrators in contemporary universities are certainly business-minded, there is another angle to the textbook issue that S.W. doesn’t address. Numerous academic (not business) critics coming from academic (not business) perspectives feel that the university has become a multiversity, and that this leads students into a bewildering array of disconnected choices with no common college experience and little sense of anything beyond jumping through hoops set by some Authority.

Such academic critics coming from academic perspectives honed by years in academia sometimes find themselves in a position in which they can do something to bring back a common experience (such as just about all universities in the US would have had 40 years ago). Typically the idea is that such a common experience is most crucial at the Freshman level, on the academic (not business) understanding that what happens in the first year sets the tone for the student’s engagement throughout the college years. (There’s no suggestion that all classes are becoming “standardized"— only that all first year students are required to read the same book in one class).

And this idea of the importance of the First Year Experience is reinforced by numerous academic (not business) folk coming from academic (not business) perspectives honed by years of experience in academia (not business).

Incidentally, if student retention is aided along the way, and this helps the Company Bottom Line, is this a bad thing? Seems to me that helping students to stay in college is something that faculty should get behind EVEN IF it sounds suspiciously like it would be Good For Business.

So my question for the author is whether some beancounter with an MPA or CPA has decided the textbook issue on the grounds of corporate efficiency... or whether it emerged as the product of academic discussion on the part of faculty?

If the latter, she is still perfectly entitled to disagree with the policy. But the tendency to label everything with which one disagrees as some sort of Corporate influence obscures far too much. And in the case of the “common experience,” if someone else is willing to do the research then I’ll bet money that at most colleges such an impulse is coming from academic rather than business types and for academic rather than business reasons.

Milton, at 7:50 am EDT on September 13, 2006

Choice as Catalyst toward Efficient Creativity

My colleague “Chester” said that “The free choice of materials in a course, is as important as the array of options for seasonings to a chef, the stock of paints and brushes to an artist...” I myself, taught English 101 on a totally open syllabus (only nr. of papers & pages to be read were specified). This latitude let me custom-compose best materials for getting difficult concepts across. [Horrors, I even taught poetic figurative language thru—"graffiti of the Sixties,” and it worked.] Most of my colleagues seemed tepid, wan, indifferent to this issue.

B. K. Beck, implementeur

Brian Kevin Beck, at 10:00 pm EDT on September 17, 2006

What’s the purpose of a textbook? The instructor’s job isn’t to read the textbook back to the students, so one assumes they’re expected to read it themselves. But how much does it matter which particular textbook they use, or whether they use any? The point, after all, is that they learn the subject matter, which in my field (biology) can be done about equally well with any good text, or even with none. The top students may get more out of selected primary references, review articles, and other outside readings. Agreed, the average student needs firm ground to stand on and a textbook provides that. Its role as a security blanket is not to be denied. But so long as the exams in the course truly test for knowledge of the subject, and are not just an attempt to trip students up on whether they’ve read certain captions under figures in a particular text or can recall particular facts and phrases from that text, themselves insignificant in the broader view of the subject, the choice of text is somewhat arbitrary. Therefore the one who has to use it should be one to decide which one to use. Forcing an instructor to adopt an unwanted text may justifiably be met with strategic compliance. That may be the text on the shelf in the bookstore, but students can’t be forced to buy it. And an instructor who dislikes the text will find other and better ways to cover the material.

pete biesemeyer, professor of biology at north country community college, at 10:40 am EDT on October 5, 2006

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Loyola College in Maryland

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History and Culture Noncredit Adjunct Faculty Pool
Howard Community College

Howard Community College is building a pool of applicants for adjunct faculty positions in Continuing Education in the areas ... see job

Project Scientists — School of Physical Sciences, Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of California, Irvine

The Department of Physics and Astronomy anticipates openings for all levels of the Project Scientist series. Positions in the ... see job

CYTOPATHOLOGIST — Clinician-Educator
University of Pennsylvania

The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine seeks candidates ... see job

Lecturer
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

The Department of Mathematics seeks applicants for a position in Mathematics and Mathematics Education to be effective on or ... see job

Assistant Professor
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

The University of Minnesota is a premier employer and a talent magnet attracting leading faculty and staff from around the ... see job

Nursing Instructor
Waubonsee Community College

We open doors, spark imaginations, and enlighten lives through learning. see job