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Sunday afternoon as I drove back from a meeting with my student mentee—assigned through the graduate program in which I teach — I reflected about the impact of our sector, higher education. This was triggered by a statement she made about not liking school, a view largely shaped by her undergraduate experience. No other industry has such deep reach and profound effect on people. We educate, shape minds and beliefs, raise consciousness, empower, nurture, and help people attain, maintain, and improve their social status, among other things that we do. We prepare them to lead and live as citizens and professionals. Sure, there are doctors, human rights lawyers, researchers of cures for diseases whose contributions also rise high on the list of impactful careers. We, in higher education train them also.
The Challenge of Teaching
Just as we can lead students to espouse classroom and experiential learning while they are enrolled in our institutions and arm them with life-long learning skills, we can also turn them off to school. As I drove the hour-long ride home, the negative side of our potential impact as educators led me to think more about engaging and effective pedagogy as the Leadership class I am teaching this summer has now been changed to a 6-week intensive, online-only format. I want my online class to mirror the in-person engaging experience that students would have if I and they were together. I want to foster and sustain an intellectually vibrant environment and to push them out of their comfort zones to create new knowledge and generate their own theories of leadership, not just consume content from their books, articles, videos, podcasts, and from me. After all, it is a graduate level course. The level of academic rigor has to be higher. I want to get to know each of my students so that I can personalize my approach to maximize their individual and collective success in the class.
The Evolution and Challenges of Online Teaching
Planning for my online course this summer has taken much more of an investment of time. I have not implemented the backwards design approach with as much fidelity and intentionality as I have this year. I keep asking myself not only about the knowledge and skills but also about the affects and dispositions I want them to acquire, and the impact that I want the course to have on them professionally and personally as they continue to develop as leaders.
When I began my undergraduate studies, the internet had just been invented (not by Al Gore!). Throughout my doctoral studies, learning management systems were supporting tools. They served as a convenient repository for documents, not as THE learning platform. I even used the one at my institution as a student, Teaching Assistant for the Multiple Regression course in my department (I can only imagine the challenges of teaching this subject in an intensive online-only format), and for the Classroom Assessment course that I taught to teacher education majors. Online learning has come a long way!
In Praise of Full-Time and Adjunct Faculty
The world has changed and segments of our industry are adapting. Online learning is one of the ways we have evolved. Advances in technology, changing and broadening consumer preferences brought that along. Many adult learners want intensive, online, short courses that they can finish to succeed in the real world and raise their income status. Many younger students want the glitzy and shiny new facilities with some mirroring resorts rather than the traditional brick and mortar facilities and they are willing to pay for it. While we can automate some actions and achieve efficiencies in so doing (not that modern and pedagogically-sound online environments are not without their human and physical capital costs), we cannot replace the teacher. Artificial intelligence has come a long way, but it will never replace our faculty members.
As I thought about my role as an adjunct faculty member this weekend, I reflected on what I bring to my students in the classroom as a scholar practitioner. I also thought about the discourse about the status and compensation of adjuncts in the academy. I know that what I bring is different from what my colleagues who are not executives in their fields, who are not challenged daily with leadership dilemmas bring to the classroom. What I bring to the classroom as a practitioner is valuable and different from that which my full-time colleagues bring. What I bring to the classroom as a scholar practitioner builds on what my full-time colleagues live and breathe. Their research through their peer-reviewed scholarly papers and books help ground what I bring into a theoretical framework. It provides systematically-gathered empirical evidence to support or refute my own theories that are based primarily on anecdotes—my experiences and those of a few other I know. We complement each other in skills and experiences. What full-time and adjunct faculty bring together give students the rich and meaningful knowledge and experiences that allow them to succeed at and beyond our institutions.
Again in Praise of the Academy
Our institutions comprise more than just students and faculty. The administrative, support, and facilities staff and others provide a profound service to society that is ultimately measured in our inventions, the new knowledge we generate across a wide range of industries, the diseases we cure and living things we care for, among other ways in which impact can be assessed. No other industry has the potential to impact society in the profound ways and at the scale that we do daily. Despite their imperfections, the service and impact of our sector remain unique.
