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TABLE OF CONTENTS
A
meal of fried worms, paper snowballs, pop
quizzes: Professors are using whatever it takes
to liven up the classroom and help students
master and remember material. This collec-
tion describes innovative teaching strategies not just
high-tech ones, like webcast introductory courses, but
low-tech ones, like peer instruction, faculty learning
communities, and reconsideration of the canon.
Students toss snowballs crumpled wads of paper containing summaries of Gary Greens primary lecture points in his forestry
and natural-resources class at the U. of Georgia.
W
hen wadded-up papers start flying and uncrumpled twice, each one lists nine bullets
across the University of Georgia lecture to help students summarize the main ideas of the
hall where Gary T. Green is teaching, lecture.
it may look as if hes lost control of the class. But Mr. Green, a professor of natural resources, rec-
these are the times, he says, when his students are reation, and tourism, is always on the lookout for
most engaged. ways to energize his students and encourage the
Each time a snowball lands on a desk and a shy ones to speak up.
student unfolds it, the recipient writes down three Sometimes the students notes fly around the
points that he took away from a potentially con- classroom on paper airplanes or bounce from row
fusing part of the lecture. He in turn balls up the to row on Post-it notes stuck to beach balls. A typ-
paper and throws it to a classmate, who smoothes ical comment in his teaching evaluations, he says,
it out and adds three more points. is that the class was fun and we never knew what
By the time the snowballs have been crumpled he was going to do.
Each time a snowball lands, the recipient unfolds it, writes down three points from Mr. Greens lecture,
then balls up the paper and throws it to a classmate, who adds three more points. By the time the snowballs
have been crumpled and uncrumpled twice, each paper lists nine of the main ideas from the lecture.
Cynthia LaBrake, a lecturer in chemistry at the U. of Texas, often has her 400 students break into small discussion groups. Her
1970s-era classroom, which is scheduled for an overhaul next year, has desks bolted into the floor, posing a challenge. We crawl
over the space to reach them, she says. Its not ideal, but we make it work.
I
AUSTIN, TEX.
ntroduction to Psychology is about to begin. A student in the front
row of the studio audience cues her 23 classmates to give her professors
a rousing cheer. Cameras are rolling as the rest of the class all 910 of
them tune in from their dorm rooms, coffee shops, and study rooms at
the University of Texas flagship campus.
Over the next 75 minutes, theyll watch a weather report that maps per-
sonal stereotypes by regions of the country (red zones splashed across parts of
the Northeast mark areas of high neuroticism), and listen to an expert flown in
from Stanford University discuss what someones Facebook likes reveal about
her personality.
lecture knows
high-tech, like the web- often bamboozled into
cast psychology class, or thinking that students
they can be more rudi- are going to remember all
mentary, like breaking
big classes into small how you can be these pearls of wisdom
weve tossed at them, he
carried along by
brainstorming groups says.
or interspersing lectures Because the program
with snippets about just began in January,
students backgrounds
gleaned from surveys. a gifted lecturer its too soon to measure
success, but the factors
as they unspool
Regardless, the goals administrators will look
are similar: Make class- at include the number of
es feel smaller and more departments redesign-
personal.
Given economic pres- a story and ing their curricula, the
changes that result in
interpret it for
sures, the large class- higher grades in subse-
room is not going away, quent courses, and in-
says Kathryne McCo- creases or decreases in
nnell, senior director
for research and assess- the class. students satisfaction
with the quality of their
ment at the Association education.
of American Colleges & Much of the experi-
Universities. You can mentation taking place at
look at it from a deficit perspective and say, Heres Texas is coordinated through its Faculty Innova-
everything thats wrong with it. But what if we flip tion Center.
that and look at what the scope and scale of this The problem with lectures of over 50 has been
class could allow us to do? that its hard to know how students are doing and
very difficult to have a discussion, says Hillary
T
hree years ago, two professors of psy- Hart, a senior lecturer of civil, architectural, and
chology, James W. Pennebaker and Samuel environmental engineering who directs the center.
D. Gosling team-taught what they termed Sareena Contractor, a freshman who is enrolled
the first synchronous massive online course, or in the psychology class, says the pop quizzes and
SMOC, the precursor of the introductory psycholo- interactive exercises keep her focused, even when
gy class Mr. Gosling now teaches with Paige Hard- shes working from home and surrounded by dis-
en, an associate professor of psychology. tractions. I thought it was going to be like watch-
These intro classes, with their short, snappy seg- ing a TV show and Id be getting up and doing
ments, may be bigger, Mr. Pennebaker says, but stuff, she says. They keep you engaged.
theyre psychologically smaller. The start-up costs of setting up a studio like the
Teaching a small class of students while simul- one at Texas could run between $750,000 and
O
ne of the most popular trends in recent years tained.
has been the flipped classroom, which usual-
F
ly involves having students watch videos and ew people would disagree that getting stu-
read course materials outside the classroom so that dents more engaged in their education is a
class time is used for hands-on experiences and dis- worthy goal. But with so much focus today
cussions. on active learning, some faculty members feel like
But students dont always do the work before theyre expected to jump through too many hoops to
class, says Peter E. Doolittle, assistant provost for keep their students entertained. Theres something
teaching and learning at Virginia Tech. Quizzes and to be said, they argue, for getting multitasking, hy-
short writing assignments can help hold students perconnected students to sustain attention on a full-
T
ransforming a large lecture class into teresting to investigate, and while they tackle
a more personal, engaging experience the challenge, the instructor and assistant roam
doesnt have to involve high-tech gad- around the classroom, asking questions and send-
gets and a team of production assis- ing teams to help one another. Depending on the
tants. Plenty of other strategies work. enrollment, a classroom might have a dozen of
Here are a few of the approaches that have gained these tables.
traction. The acronym stands for Student-Centered Ac-
tive Learning Environment with Upside-down
FLIPPED CLASS Pedagogies.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technologys
Instructors seem to either love or loathe this version, known as Technology Enabled Active
approach, which reverses traditional teaching by Learning, intersperses 20-minute lectures in
giving students recorded lectures and lessons to physics with discussion questions, animations, and
access in the dorm or at home and using class time pencil-and-paper exercises.
for hands-on assignments or projects.
Many students like being able to stop, start, and
SMALL-GROUP EXERCISES
rewind a recorded lecture until they understand it.
In class, students learn from one another while the A more traditional lecture class can still be split
instructor circulates through the classroom, acting up intermittently into groups so that lectures are
as a facilitator or coach. delivered in 15-minute bursts rather than 50-min-
In order for this to go smoothly, students have ute orations.
to prepare extensively before they come to class. Professors might check in with students from
Faculty members who have struggled with the time to time using hand-held classroom response
approach say that doesnt always happen, and devices, or clickers. When the answers (or silence)
some have responded by giving graded daily indicate the students are confused, the professor
quizzes. might ask them to brainstorm with someone sit-
Variations of the flipped class abound. Many in- ting nearby.
structors flip only a portion of the class, or a few Some faculty members create working groups
sessions a month. The most successful often take at the start of the semester, aiming for a diverse
place in classrooms that have been redesigned to mix of class years, majors, and demographics. The
create collaborative work spaces. same groups meet throughout the year, so mem-
bers are encouraged to sit near one another.
SCALE-UP Other faculty members rely on ad hoc groups
that change each class. Students are often graded
One of the most ambitious efforts is the Scale- on group assignments, which creates peer pressure
Up approach, which is being used at more than for them to come to class prepared.
250 campuses, according to Robert J. Beichner, Collaborative learning works much better when
the professor of physics at North Carolina State seats swivel and desks arent fixed. On a growing
University who is perhaps its biggest champion. number of campuses, classrooms are being built
Nine students sit at a round table in three with this in mind. Existing ones are being recon-
groups of three, each with a laptop and white- figured to eliminate the long desks and bolted-
board. The instructor gives them something in- down chairs that are typical of lecture halls.
Evidence means different things in different disciplines. In Sally Radells Connecting the Mind to the Moving Body, primary evidence
is collected through physical sensations.
ATLANTA
T
ume, Eliot explained, was vital. The compendium
he essence of a university education presented the stream of the worlds thought, he
used to fit across a five-foot shelf. wrote, such that the observant readers mind shall
That was the space required for the be enriched, refined, and fertilized by it.
51 volumes of the Harvard Classics Spending 15 minutes a day reading the texts was
compiled by the universitys president, tantamount, Eliot argued, to a liberal education.
Charles William Eliot, and published in 1909. Many of the works made up the core curriculum at
Plato, Machiavelli, Milton, Darwin: Each vol- the nations leading universities.
O
survey of American history, for example, might be ne Wednesday this semester, students here
supplanted by a niche offering like Baseball in the at Emory stared up at a projected photo-
1950s, because either one can supposedly teach graph of an animals paw print in mud. An-
students how to think critically and write well. thony J. Martin, a professor of practice in environ-
And so course content becomes little more than a mental sciences, had snapped it that morning in
delivery device for skills. nearby Lullwater Park, a 185-acre preserve. Dirt
To be sure, colleges still care about specif- still clung to his mocs.
ic areas of knowledge: Most institutions have His course How to Interpret Behavior You Did
learning outcomes for the sciences, mathemat- Not See is on ichnology, the study of animal
ics, and the humanities, according to the Asso- traces. Evidence carries a particular meaning in
ciation of American Colleges & Universities. But that field: Its making inferences about animal be-
learning outcomes for writing, critical-think- havior using indirect evidence like tracks and scat.
ing, analytical-reasoning, and quantitative-rea- Mr. Martin rarely misses an opportunity to high-
soning skills are now even more common, al- light the reasoning process.
most universal. The image on the screen included the professors
In short, skills have become the new canon. yellow, pocket-size spiral-bound notebook. He
The structure of higher education and the train- handed it to a student in the front row and asked
ing and motivations of most faculty members, him to measure it, so the class could judge the size
however, tend to operate under the old assump- of the print.
tions. Content and disciplines are still mainstays. Mr. Martin then followed with a series of ques-
Students still take courses from the mathematics tions about the mark: its shape, the placement of
faculty, not the quantitative-reasoning depart- the heel pad, the track pattern. What did those
ment. And course material has a depth and allure things say about the animal? Could it have been
that skills dont. Analytical reasoning doesnt pulse agitated, running, based on how far apart its
with the mind-expanding genius of Einstein. Lov- tracks were?
ers swoon to poetry, not oral-communication pro- A few of his students thumbed through their
ficiency. copies of the Falcon Guide to Scats and Tracks of
If skills are the new canon, curricula as theyre the Southeast. They reasoned that the tracks size
now configured often fall short of instilling them. and oval shape strongly suggested a coyote.
Educators and associations have called for change. Thats our hypothesis, Mr. Martin said, citing
Nicholas Lemann, dean emeritus of Columbia the first step in the scientific method. But what
Universitys Graduate School of Journalism, ad- else could it be?
vocated in a recent essay in The Chronicle Review The track was too big to be a foxs. He pushed his
for a canon of methods, like the interpretation of students to consider other sources of data, like the
meaning, numeracy, visual and spatial grammar preserves topography, soil, vegetation, and hydrol-
and logic, and information literacy (see Page 38). ogy. The prints appeared by the side of the road, so
Unless theyre explicitly designed to teach such maybe a dog had made them. Water was pooled in
methods, most courses may not do the trick. Mr. the impressions. How recently had it rained? Was
Lemann argued for developing courses that are the creature nocturnal or diurnal? You want to be
Students at Emory U. learn the skill of evaluating evidence in various ways, including through physical
sensation.
E
careful, he said, about confirmation bias. morys focus on evidence grew out of what
Mr. Martin has taught this course for more than could have been an exercise in bureaucratic
a decade. His original goal was to get students out- box-checking. The university had to develop
doors and paying careful attention to the natural a quality-enhancement plan for reaccreditation by
world. the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Then Emory started its campuswide The faculty committee developing the plan
skills-teaching effort, the Nature of Evidence. widely solicited ideas for how to improve student
Mr. Martin, intrigued, volunteered to retool the learning, winnowing 170 responses. After brain-
course. His is one of 27 freshman seminars across storming with a fellow art historian, Bonna Daix
22 departments now offered in the efforts first Wescoat proposed emphasizing primary evidence
year. Each one puts evidence at the forefront, ex- and original thought. Evidence is foundational
ploring how a discipline defines, uses, and evalu- to every discipline, she said. Not a single person
ates it. The courses make teaching and learning would be left out.
evidence the explicit goal. A few faculty members balked, arguing that pri-
Instructors receive a $3,000 stipend to redesign mary evidence was too narrow a topic or irrelevant
a course, participate in workshops, and submit to their discipline. The idea became The Nature of
graded assignments for assessment. Emory is also Evidence: How Do You Know?
surveying students and faculty, analyzing assign- Students can now watch short videos on the sub-
ments, and administering the Watson-Glaser test ject, attend a town-hall event, take part in debates,
of critical thinking to students before and after the even wear a T-shirt. At the center of the effort,
course to chart their growth relative to a control first-year students can choose an evidence-themed
group of other freshmen at the university. course as their required freshman seminar.
Mr. Martin tries to foster skills like careful ob- One reason evidence gained traction is that
servation and evidence-based reasoning, and the faculty members across disciplines seemed to
habits of taking in new information and revising quickly grasp its importance to their teaching
assumptions. We constantly ask students, How and research, says Tracy L. Scott, a senior lec-
would you evaluate this evidence? he says. What turer in sociology and director of the universitys
would you need to support this interpretation quality-enhancement plan. Its something theyre
and how can it be wrong? thinking about all the time.
R
broad significance, according to a survey by the obert Goddard used to focus on teaching
university. Most students said the term referred to the content of his course Tourist Meets Na-
legal proceedings. tive, which examines tourism as both an
With the mushrooming of information on the economic and a cultural experience. If students
Internet, students arent very savvy about figuring developed skills along the way, it was through os-
out how they know anything, says Ms. Scott. Is mosis. And if they didnt, Mr. Goddard, a senior
what they see online true or false? Where does it lecturer in Latin American and Caribbean stud-
come from? ies, would tell himself that sometimes you get kids
This generation of students is faced with this who get it, and sometimes you dont.
overload of infor- This semester,
mation, she says. emphasizing the
They dont know skill of using and
how to distinguish
good evidence
One of the things evaluating evi-
dence has made
from bad.
Yet undergrad-
uates may assume
were doing is losing it plainer to see
when students are
struggling. Mr.
they can already
judge evidence.
common cultural Goddard set out to
teach two methods
DeVonnae Wood-
son-Heard, a se-
nior sociology and
reference points. of understanding
evidence, quanti-
tative (analyzing
psychology ma- hotel bookings and
jor, found Emorys growth rates) and
whole endeavor unnecessary when she first heard symbolic (grounded in cultural criticism).
about it as a member of the campus advisory com- Few of his students could pull off symbolic anal-
mittee. What do you mean? she remembered ysis, he says. And the new approach has reframed
thinking to herself. We do this all day. his thinking. Maybe Im not presenting it success-
The more she thought about it, the more she re- fully, he says.
alized that using evidence was just an assumption In a recent class, he discussed how some Carib-
in courses, not often explicitly taught. This year bean states had shifted their economies from min-
she has noticed a ripple effect: Even professors ing bauxite to harvesting sugar to serving tourists,
who arent teaching the freshman seminars are and cited gross-domestic product as a barometer
more deliberately discussing evidence. of economic health.
The topic has spilled out farther, which is es- Is GDP really the best measure of a nations
pecially handy during a presidential campaign. economic health? a student asked, referring to
We didnt want it to just be this thing in the sky the human-development index, which measures
that you philosophize about, says Ms. Wood- average life span, health, standard of living, and
son-Heard, and then leave in the classroom. years of schooling. Mr. Goddard thought for a
For the effort to work, Ms. Scott has found that moment but dismissed GDP as less transparent,
flexibility matters, with faculty members defin- then moved on.
ing what evidence means in their own disciplines. Reflecting on the question a month later, he
In the humanities, thats often supporting an ar- wondered if the class should have lingered more on
moments like that one. He realized he was teach- smiling face thats used to sell a drink by that
ing too broadly, a mile wide and an inch deep. name, was an important piece of evidence to un-
As the semester has unfolded, he has changed derstand Senghors elegy to the sharpshooters. It
direction. Instead of asking students to study some brought to the surface decades of Senegalese rage
aspect of tourism in the Caribbean, he narrowed and frustration that lurked beneath the surface of
the focus considerably. Inspired by a chance meet- his ode.
ing with a marine biologist here, Mr. Goddard as- Ms. Xavier showed her students more primary
signed a research project on the impact of tourism sources: recruitment posters from the turn of the
on coral reefs. The tighter focus, he thinks, will last century that depicted a white French soldier,
give students a better opportunity to engage more in boots and a helmet, next to a Senegalese one,
deeply with evidence. with no shoes and a simple red hat.
At the same time, he is ambivalent about what That red hat became iconic in marketing Ba-
happens when skills take precedence. I wonder nania, a breakfast mix of banana and chocolate
if we are doing a disservice to the students by not popular in France and its colonies for more than
having a more coherent, uniform body of content a century. Students examined an advertisement
to deliver, he says. One of the things were doing from 1915, when the product started using an im-
is losing common cultural reference points. age of a Senegalese soldier, smiling with a bowl of
Banania in a lush field. A student said it made the
L
ike many professors at Emory, Subha Xavier soldier appear heroic but childlike.
says basing a course on evidence hasnt re- Ms. Xavier projected another ad from 20 years
quired wholesale changes as much as tweaks. later. This time, the image was more cartoonish.
Her focus is still on constructing and defending an One more, from 2000, still with the red hat, was a
argument. She just uses the word evidence more full-blown caricature.
than she used to. The students split into groups. Use what weve
During a recent meeting of Paris: City of Lights learned about the advertisement to analyze the
or Darkness?, a cultural-studies course on race, text of the poem, Ms. Xavier told them.
Ms. Xavier guided her students through a poem, Putting one text over another, she said, like a
To Senegalese Sharpshooters Who Died for magnifying glass, can make things evident that
France, by Lopold Sdar Senghor, a soldier and you wouldnt have seen before.
cultural theorist who was the first president of Ms. Xavier has no love for the traditional canon.
Senegal. Her course features the kinds of material left out
To make sense of the poem, Ms. Xavier, an as- of Eliots volumes: African poetry, films, and mu-
sistant professor of French, offered an overview of sic, and ephemera like posters and ads.
the sharpshooters, who fought on behalf of France But her goals arent far from Eliots either. The
against other Africans resisting colonization. She point is to produce college graduates who can
described their recruitment, equipment, and mor- think, analyze, and write whether their subject
tality rates. She also brought in other texts, includ- is Beowulf or Banania.
ing a stanza from Senghors anticolonialist Limin- If Ms. Xavier doesnt simply lead her students to
ary Poem: I will tear off the Banania grins from the works Eliot described as inevitably education-
all the walls of France. al, it means she does something at least as import-
The Banania grin, an illustration of a soldiers ant: teach.
Originally published on April 3, 2016
ELIZA GRINNELL, HARVARD JOHN A. PAULSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES
Eric Mazur photographs a car that students created in an active-learning lab. Designing and carrying out
experiments, not sitting through lectures, was how Mr. Mazur came to understand and appreciate science.
I learned physics through apprenticeship rather than through courses, he says. Thats when I discovered
the joy of science.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
E
ric Mazur could barely contain his excitement. His teaching evalua-
tions had just come in, and they were glowing.
He was still untenured, an associate professor of physics and ap-
plied physics at Harvard University. Eager to share his good news,
he phoned his friend and mentor, Albert Altman, then a professor of
physics at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
His students, Mr. Mazur crowed, had rated him about as highly as they
could.
An uncomfortable silence hung between them.
Eric, Mr. Altman finally said. This is the kiss of death.
That conversation, some 25 years ago, was a clarifying moment for the Har-
T
he signals Mr. Mazur received as a young scribbled on his otherwise stellar teaching evalua-
professor pointed to one conclusion: He tions. The subject is boring, some students wrote.
rocked. Physics sucks.
His lectures were clear and well received. His Mr. Mazur reflected on how he had come to
students could solve complex problems about rota- learn physics. It wasnt during lectures, when his
tional dynamics by calculating triple integrals. professors would turn their backs to the students
His serene confidence was shaken by an unusual and solve problems on the board. That was how he
source: the Force Concept Inventory, a test of basic taught, too.
understanding of Newtonian physics, which was No, it was in his third year, when he worked in a
then making the rounds among physicists. lab, designing and carrying out experiments, that
Mr. Mazur had heard about the tests results at he came to understand and appreciate the subject.
other colleges. Students generally showed a poor I learned physics through apprenticeship rather
grasp of underlying scientific principles, whether than through courses, he says. Thats when I dis-
they took seminars or large lectures, were taught covered the joy of science.
ELIZA GRINNELL, HARVARD JOHN A. PAULSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES
Eric Mazur listens in as his students discuss the concept of momentum. If youre only delivering information,
youre doing it wrong, he says.
H
signed to one faculty member. is narrative of discovery has struck a
Custom is another. Professors and students can nerve.
each walk away from a lecture convinced theyve It is a staple of his lecture, Confessions
gotten something out of the exchange, even if they of a Converted Lecturer, that has helped turn him
havent. Mr. Mazur often likes to cite education re- into an academic celebrity. His message, that pro-
search suggesting that students overestimate how fessors must move away from the lecture, is one
much they learn from a smoothly delivered lecture. that some faculty members are reluctant to em-
The lecture creates the perfect illusion, he says. brace. But hes been asked to deliver more than
1,100 talks about teaching since 1990.
Mr. Mazur tailors his pitch carefully.
Id taken something
People dont like to feel pushed or told that
what theyre doing is wrong, so he grounds
his talk in his own experience. I essentially
broken, the lecture, and make a fool of myself, he says.
The demand for his speeches also reflects
E
plinary group. His lab employs some two dozen re- ven as peer instruction became widely ad-
searchers, most of whom work on projects involv- opted, Mr. Mazur was restless for change.
ing short laser pulses and black silicon (he main- In studying data on his students, one point
tains a separate, and smaller, project on education bothered him. Although peer instruction produced
research). gains in conceptual understanding, his students
Still, being a teaching evangelist has proved lu- sense of competence, or self-efficacy, dipped. It
crative. He and two partners developed software wasnt as bad as in traditional courses, he says, but
called Learning Catalytics, a cloud-based assess- it was still a decrease.
ment system, which they sold to Pearson in 2013 I felt crushed, says Mr. Mazur. He thought
for a reported $10 million. And in 2014, Mr. Ma- back to how he once felt as a 5-year-old in the
zur won the inaugural $500,000 Minerva Prize, a Netherlands, where he grew up. His grandfa-
no-strings-attached grant recognizing his work in ther gave him a book about astronomy that cap-
the classroom. tivated his imagination. When he entered Leiden
But every evangelist needs an audience of doubt- University, he declared his major in that subject
ers to convert. Mr. Mazur estimates that the vast but dropped it six weeks later. The big questions
majority of faculty members are still content to that once animated him had been replaced by the
ELIZA GRINNELL
The Harvard physicist and education innovator Eric Mazur discusses momentum and potential energy with
students as they demonstrate their Rube Goldberg machine. Learning, he says, is not a spectator sport.
drudgery of equations about star positions. learning on students; the advice is that they should
He wanted to help his students regain that sense be a guide on the side instead of a sage on stage. In
of wonder. Peer instruction did little more than his new course, Mr. Mazur has moved himself far
make the best of an inherently flawed model, he offstage; he missed about 40 percent of the meet-
realized. Id taken something broken, the lecture, ings this past semester. Class just rolls on without
he says, and tried to make it better. him.
He decided to build a course from scratch. After During a recent visit, students huddled around
persuading his dean to let him take time off to re- tables near whiteboards. They designed spectrom-
think his teaching, he dug into education research eters, figuring out which lenses had the right focal
and took a tour of other campuses to study what length. They chose materials and argued over di-
they were doing. He concluded that two things mensions. Teaching assistants walked through the
needed emphasis: students motivation and the so- room, dispensing advice here and there. Dont just
cial dimensions of education. go off and build, one said. Draw up a plan.
The result is Applied Physics 50, a yearlong Mr. Mazur reconceived homework for the
course designed to fulfill physics requirements course, too. Students arent scored strictly on the
for majors in other science disciplines. A few uni- accuracy of their answers but on their effort and
versities are adopting the model on their own how well they evaluate their work. If one of them
campuses. skips a problem set, the score for the entire group
Project-based learning is the center of the new suffers. Peers, Mr. Mazur says, are a far greater
course. Students work in teams. Many projects source of motivation than a professor.
have low-stakes competitions attached to them, His syllabus dedicates two paragraphs to the
like constructing the most secure safe by using virtues of failure. Students are warned that some
magnets as locks. Other projects have an explicit of their scores may be lower than what theyre used
social benefit, like building musical instruments to. They should see failures, he writes, as learning
for an orchestra for poor children in Venezuela. opportunities, not negatives, as steppingstones to
If peer instruction forced students to participate success.
in class, the new course makes them take it over. Repeated failure, as he has learned, is necessary
Professors are often urged to place more onus for for success.
I
n his research, Philip B. Stark pinpointed form their decisions.(At Berkeley, professors un-
something that he believed professors already dergo assessments every two to three years at the
suspected to be true: that student evaluations start of their careers, then less frequently as they
of their teaching are biased. progress.)
Mr. Stark and several other researchers As chair, Mr. Stark revamped the process. He
recently examined student evaluations in online had professors submit portfolios of materials they
courses and found that implicit gender bias had had created for their classes, including syllabi,
seeped into end-of-semester evaluations. The stu- exams, and lecture notes, as well as examples of
dents routinely rated professors higher when they student work. He sent other professors into class-
thought they were male, even though the class- rooms to observe their peers before major reviews
room experiences were standardized and students and write up assessments that those being evalu-
and professors never interacted in person. ated could read and respond to. Student evalua-
The scores also did not correlate with how much tions were not eliminated, and their input was still
students actually learned, as measured by the final valued, said Mr. Stark. He just aimed to widen the
examination. lens through which to view a professors teaching.
Whatever it is the students are responding to, Deandra Little, director of the Center for the
its certainly not what theyre learning, said Mr. Advancement of Teaching and Learning at Elon
Stark, who is associate dean of the division of University, said many colleges are bolstering their
mathematical and physical sciences at the Univer- assessment process with metrics other than stu-
sity of California at Berkeley. dent-evaluation scores. Mr.
Mr. Starks research built on Starks system is unique be-
existing studies that suggest cause many departments are
a professors race, age, accent, not recommending peer eval-
and even physical attractive- uations so frequently, said Ms.
ness could alter evaluation Little.
scores. Now, armed with statisti-
When he was chair of the cal evidence of bias in student
statistics department, Mr. evaluations, Mr. Stark wants
Stark analyzed those stud- to graft a similar approach
ies and eventually published onto the entire mathemati-
a paper concluding that stu- cal- and physical-sciences di-
dent-evaluation surveys were vision, which encompasses five
a poor measure of effective departments, for next fall. He
teaching. He was also aware and others in the division agree
of Berkeleys reliance on sur- that the evaluations are flawed.
vey feedback during the facul- But how to mitigate those flaws
ty-review process. is still up for debate.
Every semester students
ranked their professors teach-
OUT WITH THE OLD
ing effectiveness on a scale of COURTESY OF PHILIP STARK
one to seven. Department and Philip B. Stark, associate dean Elizabeth Purdom, an assis-
university committees used of the division of mathematical tant professor in the statistics
an average of that score and and physical sciences at the U. of department, started teaching
sometimes little else to in- California at Berkeley at Berkeley in 2009. She re-
Central Connecticut State U. professors (left to right) Abigail Adams, Jacob Werblow, and Catherine R. Baratta are part of a broad,
standardized effort to analyze the real stuff of college students work.
SIMSBURY, CONN.
T
he long search for an answer to one of higher educations most
pressing questions led here, to the basement of a bistro outside Hart-
ford.
What do students really learn in college?
To find answers, about 20 faculty members from Central Connecti-
cut State University came to spend the waning days of summer break analyzing
hundreds of samples of students work.
Carl R. Lovitt, their provost, gave them a pep talk over bagels and coffee:
You are engaged in work of meaningful national significance.
Academe has been pilloried for decades, he said, for its lack of accountabili-
ty. This project could remedy that. Its the kind of acronym-heavy, jargon-laced
endeavor thats easily overlooked. But by measuring students intellectual skills,
A
arent connected to the curriculum, and students ssessment often gets caught in a tug of war
have little motivation to take them seriously. Other between accountability and improvement.
measures, like students self-reported attitudes or Those who embrace improvement see as-
study habits, are widely used but tend to give insti- sessment as the domain of the faculty. Quizzes,
tutions few clues for how to improve. So the quest tests, essays, and the informal back-and-forth of
for a faculty-endorsed, broadly useful measure of class discussion reveal what students have learned
student learning has continued. in a course, allowing professors to take stock and
The professors at Central Connecticut State are adjust instruction accordingly. The end product is
part of a large-scale project, involving 900 faculty a grade.
members at 80 public two- and four-year institu- But some say thats not reliable. Maybe grade-
tions in 13 states, called the Multi-State Collabo- point averages used to mean something, before
rative to Advance Quality Student Learning. Its grade inflation. As the price of college continues
being led by the State Higher Education Executive to rise, assuming without any verifiable proof that
Officers Association and the Association of Amer- students have learned something is unacceptable,
ican Colleges & Universities. The projects scale, the argument goes. Accountability requires some
novel approach, and strong faculty support have external measure of learning, like a standardized
many assessment experts hopeful that it will make test.
a big impact. The tensions have produced a stalemate, and ed-
Perhaps, they say, this collaboration will help ucational quality has remained opaque.
establish common understandings and measure-
ments of some of the most important outcomes
of a college education. Though the project is still
young its getting ready to publish its second
year of results its leaders hope that by 2019-20 You are engaged in
work of meaningful
it will have enough data, including from similar
efforts at private colleges, to paint an accurate pic-
ture of learning nationwide and, in turn, to spark
continuing improvement.
What makes the effort notable is its subject of national significance.
analysis: the authentic stuff of college the home-
work, problem sets, and papers that students regu-
larly produce. From those, evaluators like the ones
being trained at Central Connecticut State can We know less about what our students know
produce generalizable and comparable findings and are able to do than just about virtually any
across disciplines, institutions, and states about other aspect of the enterprise, says Mr. Kuh, who
students critical-thinking, writing, and quantita- is evaluating the 13-state effort for the Bill & Me-
tive-reasoning skills. linda Gates Foundation, which is also supporting
To do so, theyre using tools called Value ru- the project. Its a national embarrassment.
brics (its an acronym for Valid Assessment of Tensions between accountability and improve-
Learning in Undergraduate Education). Devel- ment characterized the No Child Left Behind Act,
oped nine years ago by faculty members at more the unpopular federal law that set targets and
than 100 institutions, under the guidance of measured progress in reading and mathematics
AAC&U, the rubrics have a 0-to-4 scale on which for elementary- and secondary-school students.
evaluators rate how well students demonstrate Replaced late last year, it has served as a bogey-
various components of each skill. man for many college educators. They feel they
The project is sure to face challenges. Long- must develop a broadly applicable measure of
standing tensions in assessment arent easily re- learning themselves, or something like No Child
solved. The tradition of faculty control over edu- will be imposed on them.
cation makes it difficult for any effort to take root It hasnt been easy to come up with one. Stan-
widely. Feeding useful data back to professors to dardized tests of core skills, like the Collegiate
help them improve their teaching is a perennial Learning Assessment, ETS Proficiency Profile, and
problem. ACTs Collegiate Assessment of Academic Pro-
But the rubrics fundamental connection to the ficiency, have attracted widespread interest. But
daily work of education, says George D. Kuh, a many faculty members have chafed, seeing the
A
ssignments are pivotal to a college educa- intellectual skills and habits that should charac-
tion, but professors get little guidance on terize an educated person from any discipline, and
how to create them. A common approach thats what this project wants to capture.
is to gauge students content knowledge. Helping The shift sometimes proved difficult for the
Cassandra Broadus-Garcia, an art professor (center), led a group scoring students critical-thinking skills. The
goal is to capture the intellectual skills and habits that should characterize an educated person from any
discipline.
Faculty members, like Marianne Fallon (left) of Central Connecticut State U., are part of a broad effort to
understand what students learn, based on their completed assignments.
group, even though the process was designed to fessor of political science, with some frustration.
discourage grading. For one, the professors didnt Grading crept into the conversation in other
know the discipline or the purpose of the two-page ways. Several professors wondered about Singu-
homework assignment they were evaluating. All larity University, which the student identified as a
the group had were five prompts and one students university (its a think tank that promotes techno-
answers. Knowing the goal of an assignment tends logical solutions to social problems). Would choos-
to focus attention on how well students meet ex- ing such a site matter if the point of the exercise
pectations. And that leads back to grading. was to evaluate sources of health information?
The first prompt was to choose a health treat- If that was the assignment, then the student, by
ment to study. This student opted for the libera- choosing unequal sources, seemed to be construct-
tion procedure for multiple sclerosis, based on the ing a straw man, said Jason Snyder, an associate
idea that poor blood drainage from the brain caus- professor of business. It was a form of selection
es the diseases main symptoms. bias, he said, as the biologist next to him nodded
The next prompt was to evaluate the credibili- vigorously. After all, how difficult is it to weigh
ty of two websites describing the treatment. The competing claims when one source is WebMD and
student chose WebMD and a page published by the others author profile features, the student not-
Singularity University. The latters reliability had ed, a picture of a cartoon?
raised questions for the student because it linked But regardless of the assignment, the profes-
to Wikipedia, and the author seemed to have few sors werent impressed by the students handling of
relevant credentials. context and assumptions. Four of the scorers rat-
The article seems like more of a blog posting, ed the sample a 2 out of 4. The student had ques-
the student wrote. WebMD, in contrast, was writ- tioned a few assumptions, but not necessarily his
ten by people with expertise in medicine, health or her own.
communications, and journalism.
P
The five professors a biologist, two from busi- rofessors using these rubrics have long
ness, and another two from political science been able to score individual pieces of stu-
quickly found themselves drifting toward grading, dent work like the group at Central Con-
especially as they debated one category of critical necticut State did. Whats different now is that
thinking, influence of context and assumptions. hundreds of faculty members in 13 states are being
Were the students supposed to analyze a contro- trained to do the same thing, allowing researchers
versial health treatment? Or was this exercise to aggregate the numbers and look for patterns.
about information literacy? Thats part of what worries John D. Hathcoat.
This goes back to the problem of not having the The assistant professor of graduate psychology
assignment, said Robbin Smith, an associate pro- at James Madison University will be leading the
Central Connecticut State U. professors score student work using a widely shared rubric. They are among
900 faculty members nationwide who are learning a standardized method to measure students skills.
I
mproving teaching can seem like a huge task. rector of learning-outcomes assessment for the Mas-
It may sound like it requires wholesale changes sachusetts Department of Higher Education.
or a radical rethinking of the professors role in Ms. Orcutt is an unlikely convert. Early in her
the classroom. career, she thought of assessment as one more
The changes driven by the rubrics tend to be hoop to jump through. Teaching well was a mat-
comparatively modest. But a small adjustment can ter of how on she was during her lectures, she
still be powerful. It might mean drawing a clearer says, and how much course content her students
connection between an assignment and the goals absorbed. She still cares about whether they know
of the course, or giving more-explicit directions. their stuff, of course, but now she thinks about
Those minor modifications have huge impacts on how to help them apply it.
students, says Ms. Jankowski. Creating the right conditions for that kind of
Professors have described how the rubric scores learning is an intellectual challenge, like research,
have helped them look with fresh eyes at what they that is both invigorating and aggravating. The
assign students. Bonnie L. Orcutt is one of them. work of teaching well is a continuing process, she
For a microeconomics assignment, the professor says, of creating assignments, analyzing the re-
at Worcester State University often asked students sults, and making more changes. Its work thats
to analyze an article from The New York Times on never finished.
M
any years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel
Aureliano Buenda was to remember that distant after-
noon when his father took him to discover ice.
In a conversation I had with Ken Bain, my longtime
mentor and favorite education writer, he cited that quote
the first sentence of Gabriel Garca Mrquezs novel One Hundred Years
of Solitude as one of the great openings in literary history. Its hard to dis-
agree: The sentence plunges us immediately into a drama, acquaints us with
a character on the brink of death, and yet intrigues us with the reference to
his long-forgotten (and curiosity-inducing) memory. That sentence makes us
want to keep reading.
When I teach my writing course on creative nonfiction, we spend a lot of
time analyzing the opening lines of great writers. I work frequently with
students on their opening words, sentences, and paragraphs. In that
very short space, I explain to them, most readers will decide
whether or not to continue reading the rest of your essay. If
you cant grab and hold their attention with your open-
ing, you are likely to lose them before they get to
your hard-won insights 10 paragraphs later.
The same principle, I would argue, holds
true in teaching a college course. The
opening five minutes offer us a rich op-
portunity to capture the attention
of students and prepare them for
learning. They walk into our classes trailing all in the closing minutes, to help them recognize
of the distractions of their complex lives the how their understanding has deepened over the
many wonders of their smartphones, the argu- course period.
ments with roommates, the question of what to What did we learn last time? A favorite ac-
have for lunch. Their bodies may be stuck in a tivity of many instructors is to spend a few min-
room with us for the required time period, but utes at the opening of class reviewing what hap-
their minds may be somewhere else entirely. pened in the previous session. That makes per-
It seems clear, then, that we should start class fect sense, and is supported by the idea that we
with a deliberate effort to bring students focus to dont learn from single exposure to material
the subject at hand. Unfortunately, based on my we need to return frequently to whatever we are
many observations of faculty members in action, attempting to master.
the first five minutes of a college class often get But instead of offering a capsule review to stu-
frittered away with logistical tasks (taking atten- dents, why not ask them to offer one back to you?
dance or setting up our technology), gathering In the teaching-and-learning world, the phe-
our thoughts as we discuss homework or upcom- nomenon known as the testing effect has re-
ing tests, or writing on the board. ceived much ink. Put very simply, if we want to
Logistics and organization certainly matter, remember something, we have to practice re-
and may be unavoidable on some days. But on membering it. To that end, learning research-
most days, we should be able to do better. In this ers have demonstrated over and over again that
column, the second in a series on small changes quizzes and tests not only measure student
we can make to improve teaching and learn- learning, but can actually help promote it. The
ing in higher education, I offer four quick sug- more times that students have to draw informa-
gestions for the first few minutes of class to fo- tion, ideas, or skills from memory, the better they
cus the attention of students and prepare their learn it.
brains for learning. Instead of testing effect, I prefer to use the
Open with a question or two. Another fa- more technical term, retrieval practice, because
vorite education writer of mine, the cognitive testing is not required to help students practice
psychologist Daniel Willingham, argues that retrieving material from their memories. Any
teachers should focus more on the use of ques- effort they make to remember course content
tions. The material I want students to learn, without the help of notes or texts will benefit
he writes in his book Why Dont Students Like their learning.
School?, is actually the answer to a question. On Take advantage of that fact in the opening
its own, the answer is almost never interesting. few minutes of class by asking students to re-
But if you know the question, the answer may be mind you of the key points from the last session.
quite interesting. Write them on the board editing as you go
My colleague Greg Weiner, an associate pro- and providing feedback to ensure the responses
fessor of political science, puts those ideas into are accurate to set up the days new materi-
practice. At the beginning of class, he shows four al. Five minutes of that at the start of every class
or five questions on a slide for students to consid- will prepare students to succeed on the memo-
er. Class then proceeds in the usual fashion. At ry retrieval they will need on quizzes and exams
the end, he returns to the questions so that stu- throughout the semester.
dents can both see some potential answers and One important caveat: Students should do all
understand that they have learned something of this without notebooks, texts, or laptops. Re-
that day. trieval practice only works when they are retriev-
For example, in a session of his American ing the material from memory not when they
Government course that focused on the separa- are retrieving it from their screens or pages.
tion of powers, the first question of the day might Reactivate what they learned in previous
be: What problem is the separation of powers courses. Plenty of excellent evidence suggests
designed to address? And the last: What forc- that whatever knowledge students bring into a
es have eroded the separation of powers? Those course has a major influence on what they take
questions are also available to the students in away from it. So a sure-fire technique to improve
advance of class, to help guide their reading and student learning is to begin class by revisiting,
homework. But having the questions visible at not just what they learned in the previous ses-
the start of class, and returning to them at the sion, but what they already knew about the sub-
end, reminds students that each session has a ject matter.
clear purpose. The accuracy of students prior content
So consider opening class with one or more knowledge is critical to teaching and learning,
questions that qualify as important and fasci- write Susan A. Ambrose and Marsha C. Lovett in
nating. You might even let students give prelimi- an essay on the subject in a free ebook, because
nary answers for a few moments, and then again it is the foundation on which new knowledge is
I
remember sitting in a movie theater with my children in December of
2003, watching the final minutes of the third film in The Lord of the Rings
trilogy, and feeling a deep sense of closure as Gollum and the ring toppled
into Mount Doom, and Frodo and Sam were rescued by the eagles. What
a glorious finish to an epic film series, based on a book series that I loved
as well.
Only it wasnt the finish. Once the ring melted we got to see the members
of the original fellowship united again in the land of the elves. OK, I get that.
Feel-good closure. I prepared to get up and leave. Oh, wait, another scene: The
hobbits receive public recognition for their heroism. Thats nice. Time to go.
Not yet. Now we have to follow the hobbits back home. Finished now? Nope.
Sam gets married.
And on and on it seemed to go. I believe I prepared
to get up out of my seat five times before that
film finally ended. A series that could have
finished with a nice dramatic punch
instead lurched along wrapping
up every possible thread
that had loosened over
the past nine hours
of film.
All of which
reminds me
of nothing more than your typical college class- students to remember something from class and
room. articulate it in their own words (more about that
In my experience having observed many doz- in a moment), but it also requires them to do some
ens of college courses over the past two decades quick thinking. They have to reflect on the mate-
most faculty members eye the final minutes rial and make a judgment about the main point of
of class as an opportunity to cram in eight more that days class.
points before students exit, or to say three more The second question encourages them to probe
things that just occurred to us about the days ma- their own minds and consider what they havent
terial, or to call out as many reminders as possible truly understood. Most of us are infected by what
about upcoming deadlines, next weeks exam, or learning theorists sometimes call illusions of flu-
tomorrows homework. ency, which means that we believe we have ob-
At the same time, we complain when students tained mastery over something when we truly have
start to pack their bags before class ends. But why not. To answer the second question, students have
should we be surprised by that reaction when our to decide where confusion or weaknesses remain
class slides messily to a conclusion? Were still try- in their own comprehension of the days material.
ing to teach while students minds and some- On my campus, most students do not bring lap-
times their bodies are headed out the door. We tops to class, so I might ask them to answer those
make little or no effort to put a clear stamp on the two questions on a half-sheet of paper. Reading
final minutes of class, which leads to students eye- their responses, even if I dont grade them, will
ing the clock and leaving according to the dictates give me a quick picture of how well the class went.
of the minute hand rather than the logic of the If everyone writes down as the most important
class period. point of the day a throwaway example I gave, I
When it comes to the deliberate construction know I have some work to do. Likewise if everyone
of our course periods, we can do better. As I have expresses the same question in the second part of
been arguing in this series, small changes to our their answer, I know how I have to start the next
teaching such as the way we approach the clos- class. But even if I dont collect what they write,
ing minutes of class can make a big difference. and simply stroll around and ensure pens are mov-
Like most of my fellow professors, I know I could ing on paper, students will still benefit from some
be doing many things better in my teaching. But retrieval and reflection at the end of class.
the prospect of change can be overwhelming. For- If students in your classes are on various elec-
tunately, a substantial body of research on learn- tronic devices, you might create a discussion
ing in higher education offers us strategies for im- thread in your course-management system and
proving our teaching in ways that dont require ask them to post their responses to these ques-
a major overhaul, and yet that have the power to tions at the end of every class period. In this mod-
boost the learning, motivation, and mind-set of el students can read each others responses, and
our students in substantive ways. you can throw the thread onto the screen at the
In a series of essays for The Chronicle which beginning of the next class period to highlight an-
draw from my book, Small Teaching: Everyday swers that either nicely captured the main point
Lessons From the Science of Learning I have ar- of the previous class or raised questions that need
gued for the power of small changes in the minutes answering.
before class starts, in the first five minutes of class, Closing connections. If we want students to
and in the connections we can help students make obtain mastery and expertise in our subjects,
between the course material and the world around they need to be capable of making their own con-
them. In this column, let us turn to ways we can nections between what they are learning and the
make better use of the final five minutes of class. world around them current events, campus de-
The minute paper. You cant wade very far into bates, personal experiences. The last five minutes
the literature of teaching and learning in higher of class represent an ideal opportunity for stu-
education without encountering some version of dents to use the course material from that day and
the Minute Paper, a technique made justly famous brainstorm some new connections.
by Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross in their Most faculty members seed such connections
book Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Hand- throughout our lectures. The other day, for in-
book for College Teachers. The Minute Paper comes stance, I used a Taylor Swift song to introduce
in many variations, but the simplest one involves students to the dramatic monologues of Robert
wrapping up the formal class period a few minutes Browning. In offering such examples, we can mod-
early and posing two questions to your students: el the sorts of connections we expect of students.
n What was the most important thing you Finish the last class of the week five minutes
learned today? early, and tell students that they can leave when
n What question still remains in your mind? they have identified five ways in which the days
Taken together, those two questions accomplish material appears in contexts outside of the class-
multiple objectives. The first one not only requires room. Youll be amazed at how quickly they can
What Should
Graduates Know?
By NICHOLAS LEMANN
T
en years ago, I was teaching the first ing place in undergraduate education at least
cohort of students in a newly designed in the liberal arts, the part of undergraduate edu-
professional masters-degree program cation that wasnt always mainly devoted to skills
at the Columbia University Graduate instruction. What to teach and how to teach it are
School of Journalism. From the earliest likely to become central issues for colleges in a way
days of journalism education in universities, a that they havent been for a long time.
never-ending debate has pitted an approach that Professional schools first. Each of them has had
emphasizes skills associated with various formats to find a way not only to feel like part of the larg-
for presenting the news against one that stresses er enterprise of the university, but also to demon-
understanding of the complex subjects about strate a tangible career value to prospective stu-
which journalists are supposed to inform the pub- dents and to employers. At schools that train peo-
lic. Our program was meant to represent a pendu- ple for fields that require licensing, like law and
lum swing in the latter direction. medicine, whats taught tends to be bound up in le-
We left in place our established masters-of- gal requirements and is therefore not overly fluid.
science program, which focuses on skills. In Journalism schools are more like business or pub-
stages, we reworked its curriculum to introduce lic-policy schools in being able to change quickly
the new skills associated with the digital revolu- and substantially, if that seems to be required, and
tion in journalism. Both of our main degree pro- in having to justify their utility to students who are
grams are based on courses that all students are free to enter the field without taking a degree.
required to take, but our masters of arts offers no Professional education usually migrated into
courses on the various ways of presenting news. universities from apprenticeship systems in the
It focuses on a journalistic method of on-the-fly workplace. In the early going, the apprenticeship
epistemology; on teaching students to understand model seemed appropriate: Hire veteran prac-
and write about complicated and important sub- titioners as faculty members; try to replicate a
jects for a general public; and on a thesis project practice environment as much as possible; focus
that entails substantial original research, often on conferring the skills that students would most
done through reporting abroad. We teach statis- likely be using in their first jobs. Employers often
tical literacy and state formation, monetary poli- like that model because, in effect, it puts them in
cy and ethnography, literature reviews and public charge of what happens in professional schools:
health. The schools mission is to emulate what employers
If youre reading this, you probably dont have are doing.
to be persuaded that those studies should be part In most cases, forces within universities, like
of the equipment that journalists take into the the requirement that faculty members produce ac-
world. But that would still be a minority position ademic research, have over the years moved pro-
within journalism itself. And it isnt just in jour- fessional schools away from the apprenticeship
nalism education where arguments pitting em- model. Such forces, however, have had remarkably
ployment-related skills against understanding and little effect on journalism schools. A hundred years
complex thinking take place, but, also increasing- ago, when journalism education was just begin-
ly, throughout universities. ning, state press associations relentlessly and ef-
fectively lobbied for a focus on basic news report-
P
rofessional schools are naturally contest- ing and writing, with little or no intellectual or an-
ed ground, because by definition they are not alytic content.
purely academic institutions. But the argu- Today the argument that journalism schools
ment about what should be taught is now also tak- have to embrace the digital revolution has led to a
T
hat these remain openly contentious is- student life, work that rests on an understand-
sues is a contrast with the situation in un- ing of college as a community, a site of matura-
dergraduate education, where the conver- tion, where purely academic questions are second-
sation about the content of education is much less ary. Significantly, the most spirited discussion of
developed. Colleges, which are increasingly re- whats taught in college is about getting more top-
garded by the people paying for them as proto- ics about diversity into courses, and adding more
professional schools, have something to learn courses about diversity. In other words, its occur-
from professional schools about better defining ring in response to a student movement that be-
themselves academically. gan in another realm, not because whats taught is
The great majority of college students in the the obvious main topic of discussion.
United States are taking mainly skills courses, Harvard University provides an interesting
which are aimed at getting them jobs in white- example of the difficulty of establishing an un-
collar fields that are not the ancient and hon- dergraduate curriculum, even in a supremely es-
orable professions that college graduates once tablished and well-off institution that strongly
looked to. They are studying to be providers of feels it needs one. Charles William Eliot, Har-
human-resource services, bookkeepers, computer vards president from 1869 to 1909, established an
programmers, early-childhood educators, and so elective system, which freed undergraduates to
on, and much of their coursework pertains to their take courses in any field, in the 1880s, as one ele-
career aspirations. ment in a great institutional transition to the re-
In the better-resourced, more-selective col- search-university model. After the Second World
leges that a lucky minority of students attend, the War, the college established a General Education
curriculum is usually both less practical and less program out of a felt need to give more definition
prescribed. A few, like Columbia, the Universi- to what it meant to have a Harvard education, so
ty of Chicago, and St. Johns College, have a core that a students learning could not be limited to
curriculum required of
all students; a few, like
I
f a college is presenting itself to prospective Confidence that a college education will pay off
students and their families as a living environ- no matter what it provides academically seems
ment, as much as or more than an academic ex- misplaced. Against the felt need of students and
perience, it has to try to take on the implied cost: their families to get something intellectually
pleasant dormitories, athletics facilities, counsel- specific out of college, heartfelt commencement
ing services. And if it is presenting itself as an in- speeches about how important a broad humanistic
stitution offering a wide variety of options from education is to good citizenship and a meaningful
which students can select, it has to maintain a life make for a pretty weak countervailing force.
large, expensive set of departments and courses. It would be disingenuous for me to argue that
At many colleges, those pressures set off a dynam- what I believe colleges should do move in the
ic of relentless competition for students with peer direction of a more defined curriculum, with a
institutions that are not obviously very different; concomitant greater emphasis on teaching as a
that, in turn, has increased the importance of rat- primary faculty responsibility is merely an un-
ings systems and tuition discounting. The harder avoidable necessity. But I do believe that colleges
it is to state your intellectual mission, the more will find it more and more difficult to stay the pres-
Confidence that a
students habituated me to thinking
about curriculum, and I have been noo-
dling around with ideas about under-
graduate education. What would pro-
duce a version of what it means to be a college education will
pay off no matter what
college graduate, regardless of ones ma-
jor, that would be as clear and strong as
stipulating what it means to be a profes-
sional-school graduate? My own pref-
erence is to create a canon of methods it provides academically
seems misplaced.
rather than a canon of specific knowl-
edge or of great books that is, to de-
fine, develop, and require instruction
around a set of master skills that togeth-
er would make one an educated, intel-
lectually empowered, morally aware person. suite of experiences, which they provide mainly in
Here is a quick list of possibilities: Rigor- person rather than as pure transmitted informa-
ous interpretation of meaning, taught mainly tion but the lesson of my experience in journal-
through close reading of texts. Numeracy, in- ism is that anticipating change leaves you in much
cluding basic statistical literacy. Pattern and better shape than betting that it wont ever come
context recognition. Developing and stating an and then having to react under duress. In under-
argument, in spoken and written form. Visual graduate education, the best way to anticipate
and spatial grammar and logic. Understanding change would be to define, state, and put in effect
how information is produced, how to locate it, a clear academic mission.
and how much faith to put in it. Empathetic un-
derstanding of other people and other cultures. Nicholas Lemann is a professor of journal-
Learning to explore rigorously the relationship ism and dean emeritus at Columbia Universi-
between cause and effect and to draw plausible tys Graduate School of Journalism, and a staff
inferences. I should emphasize that I am advo- writer for The New Yorker. He is a member of
cating developing courses that are specifically the Commission on the Future of Undergraduate
aimed at creating those capabilities, rather than Education, sponsored by the American Academy
declaring that existing courses that are notional- of Arts and Sciences.