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Drawing on their extensive experience training instructors in all disciplines to incorporate writing in their courses, Gottschalk and Hjortshoj provide time-saving strategies and practical guidance in this brief, well-written reference. Accommodating a wide range of teaching styles and class sizes, Elements offers reliable advice about how to design effective writing assignments and how to respond to and evaluate student writing in any course.
Annual DeadlineUp to $30,000 for activities that enhance teaching and learning in in the fields of religious and theological studies as taught in colleges, universities, and theological schools.Small Project Grant Proposals (up to $5000) are accepted throughout the year.
At many schools, the new academic year will begin with an interim Dean at the helm of the academic administration office. That's not a stretch for a guess as most deans in theological schools have a 4.3 to 4.5 year tenure. In most cases the interim deans will have come out from among the faculty---these are well-meaning, generous people willing to step up to the need of the moment. Most will likely not have previously served as dean, but will do a good enough job keeping the academic enterprise of the school going smoothly to some extent or another. They are to be thanked, for they'll give up a lot during their interim, and take on a responsibility that is critical to the institution; challenging, often thankless, and at times, overwhelming. Meanwhile, another group will step up to a different task: searching for the next dean. Before coming up with a list of questions to ask the candidates, the search committee will do well to answer the following questions for themselves: 1. How do we define success? Getting clear about what success means in your context and offering that vision to prospective deans is more fruitful than asking the question of them (e.g., "What is your vision of success for our school?" The honest answer to which is, "I can't know that yet."). What constitutes success is contextual to your school. The answer lies in the culture, shared values, academic intent, and the aspirations of your particular school. Some indicators of success are measurable, while others are aspirational. The one will keep you grounded, foster accountability, and inform strategies; the other will pull you forward---especially during difficult times. The clearer you as a search committee are about these, the more helpful in discerning your best choice among candidates. 2. What are the biggest challenges we face? While a search committee will put on a good face for a prospective dean and share all the good things about the school, a dean needs to know what challenges she or he will face coming to the position. To the extent the committee has done due diligence in identifying those challenges, has avoided self-referencing ("We're a great school because we believe we are."), and can be transparent and honest, will be the extent a prospective dean can discern whether or not there's a good "fit." That "fit," however, goes beyond personal likability, transactional familiarity, or cultural affinity. The best "fit" for a dean goes more to function than to role. All deans play the same role (they all have the same job description). Function, however, goes to the needs the school has at a particular point in its trajectory and within its contexts. A school in the midst of an institutional transition requires different functions of its dean than a school entering a period of development. A school requiring significant strategic re-organization needs a different dean than does a school in the midst of a crisis. No mature or experienced dean will be naive enough to think the job will be smooth, easy, or challenge-free. But deans need to know what the school requires of them that may not appear in the job opening announcement. The "right" dean will be the one who can help the school address its challenges. 3. In what areas must our new Dean create change and development; and how much change can we stand? Helping a school address its challenges will mean bringing about some level of change. A worthwhile conversation with a prospective dean will be about how well the school handles change and responds to challenges. If a school has change-fatigue from recent developments or transitions, it's not likely it will respond to an energetic, enthusiastic dean who sees herself as a "change agent," or to the impatient dean who "wants everything done by yesterday." Deans will of necessity bring about change in the institution---it's the nature of the job. How much change a school can stand is a product of capacity and willingness. Let the dean know where you stand. At the end of the day, one can only lead the willing. When it comes to making changes and following through, how willing is the school (Faculty, administration, Trustees)? 4. In what ways will the new Dean add value to our school? Let's face it, the hiring interview process is a process of seduction. Each party does its best to look good and be desired. Even the best-prepared search committee can get snookered by a slick candidate or fall in love with a personality. Secondary characteristics, inconsequential capacities (she's a good skier; he's an avid hiker; she knows Brad Pitt!), and "good feelings about" the candidate can tip the vote in favor of a safe, cool, or comfortable candidate. One question that can provide a corrective to bias is being clear about what value a particular candidate will bring to the school. What will the prospective dean bring to the institution that you need and which another cannot provide? 5. What was the President's relationship with the last dean? What will be the new relationship? While the search committee cannot take responsibility for the relationship between a president and dean---past or future---it is critical that the importance of the relationship be recognized. To a certain extend, a President's relationship to the dean will make or break the job. A common question during the search interviews with deans is about the triangulation between dean, president, and faculty. Typically, the question is couched in terms of "How strong an advocate will you be for the Faculty?" While insecure faculty members may wish to hear that will be the new dean's primary focus, a seasoned dean will likely take a different perspective. Certainly an effective dean will be supportive and a resource for the Faculty in its work of research and teaching. But deans are stewards of the institution, and not advocates of one group over others. At the end of the day the dean needs to ensure that decisions benefit the institution in order to benefit all. That stance inherently sets the dean up for dealing with perpetual internal competing interests and needs. To the point, "Making Faculty happy is not my job," may be the most honest response. Happy interviewing! There's a good dean out there for your school. Choose wisely.
When I was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer, everything seemed to cave in on my body as questions narrowed: first, what to take out via surgery, then what to put in via chemotherapy and food, and eventually, to possible internal causes due to genetic flaws. Although everything and everyone seemed to be focused on my body, my thoughts were occupied with things outside of my body--from environmental carcinogens, to students, to writing deadlines. While much of the focus on trauma in the classroom has been on how to deal with traumatized students (links below), there has been less discussion of traumatized faculty, as if professors are somehow immune to the trauma students bring into the classroom. Yet, professors, like students, are embedded in environments that often cause trauma. How do we teach not only in the wake of the trauma of students, but also in the wake of our own traumas? Moreover, how can we shift individualistic narratives about trauma toward a cultural narrative, particularly in the context of the classroom? While we might idealistically like to keep personal trauma separate from the classroom, the realities of trauma tend to be messy. Trauma exceeds the boundaries we have worked so hard to establish. This is as true for professors as it is for students. To tell or not to tell When I was diagnosed, I was teaching two courses: one entirely online as part of the Council for Independent Colleges's Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction and one at a correctional institution using the inside-out model. I knew that I would not be able to continue shuttling students back and forth to a correctional institution following my surgery and that it was going to be difficult as I started chemo. My online students had grown accustomed to near-daily interactions in the spaces we had created for dialogue. My options, as I saw them, were to tell the students about the diagnosis, tell the students that I was sick, or not to tell the students anything. Regardless of the choice I made, my diagnosis would affect students and classroom dynamics. Do we invite students into our personal traumas or keep them out? What do we risk by putting students in proximity to personal trauma? What do we risk by trying to keep them out? What might students learn from watching their professors deal with illness or other personal traumas? Both classes had fewer than 20 students enrolled and I had formed connections with many of the students, so I weighed the options in this context and decided not to shield students from the details. I would be as honest as I could. Shifting the narrative One of the things that students might learn if we invite them into our personal traumas is how to shift the narrative of trauma from a narrative about individuals to a cultural one. In the case of my cancer, this means considering the "how did this happen question" without resorting to blaming my genetic line, the decisions of my parents, or my decisions about food and exercise. It is easy to like individualistic reasons for trauma. If you can figure out why I got colon cancer, you feel like you can protect yourself from this particular trauma by making better decisions. This is not unlike feeling that you can avoid rape by dressing modestly and not walking alone at night. While many have recognized the problem with responding to rape by calling on potential rape victims to change their habits, people with cancer continue to be advised to change their personal habits. Such advice shields the broader collective from having to make difficult decisions about the way we have organized our lives together, how that organization might be contributing to the rise in cancer, and the effects of a politics that marginalizes people with pre-existing conditions. Because my diagnosis coincided with the first-full scale attempt to dismantle the ACA, bringing my personal trauma into the classroom created space for students to see how collective decisions shape what might appear to be individual trauma. By naming trauma in the classroom, we invite students into the kinds of questions that can shift the narrative of blame from individuals who experience trauma toward systemic problems that reveal an economy willing to sacrifice some for the benefit of others. In shifting this narrative, students learn how to think about trauma as something that affects individuals, but often does not have individual causes. Trauma is often rooted in social decisions. Links: The Ethics of Trigger Warnings in the Classroom No Trigger Warnings in my class You Are Triggering Me!
This chapter outlines the best teaching strategies to use in intensive courses to achieve the best possible learning outcomes. It explores how students experience intensive courses differently than they do traditional scheduling formats and the factors that contribute to high-quality intensive course experiences.
This study provides insight into how highly rated instructors approached teaching compressed summer session courses, and offers a set of best practices that others might use when teaching in similar settings. Top-rated instructors indicated differences in the way they taught compressed-format summer session courses, with respect to course planning, classroom instruction, student assessment, and interaction with students. The study is of value to continuing educators, as universities are increasingly challenged to think about flexible delivery models, including teaching and learning in compressed formats.
Intensive mode teaching involves classes on fewer days and for longer on each day than is traditional in the discipline. The mode is used increasingly in universities in Australia. In a national research project, we developed an Intensive Mode Teaching Guide based on a survey of 105 coordinators of intensive mode units at 26 universities, and investigations in 8 intensive mode units at 4 universities. The guide was reviewed by 161 university staff members at 10 workshops, and 27 students in a survey. Threshold capability theory and threshold concept theory were used. We found that intensive mode offers opportunities including a retreat-like focus; development of learning communities; and time and flexibility for interactive, practical, and authentic activities that provide exposure to practice and/or practitioners. However, intensive mode also increases risks such as students falling behind. We recommend that teachers intentionally design to optimise the benefits and mitigate the risks.
In this study we explored faculty and student experiences of accelerated learning. We conducted interviews with faculty members who had delivered the same course in 12 and 6-week timeframes, and we analysed a student survey. Students reported overall positive experiences in the accelerated courses, particularly in the social aspects of learning, higher than usual motivation, and confidence in their learning. However, both faculty and students raised concerns about the scope and timing of assessment tasks, student workload expectations, faculty workload, and administration of courses. We offer recommendations regarding implementation, assessment practices, and management of learning in an accelerated timeframe.
This guide is designed to support academic staff at the University of Canterbury teaching in time-shortened settings. The process of transitioning standard semester-length courses to intensive or summer school formats requires more than the compression of lectures and teaching and learning resources. The following guidelines have been developed following an extensive review of the most recent research literature with respect to course compression. Subsequent to a brief summary of the benefits of course compression, we will address five main areas. These are: 1. approaches to teaching, 2. course design, 3. the classroom setting, 4. the blended/online environment, and 5. assessment. For each area we highlight relevant issues and what staff can do to address those in the context of their own teaching.
How is PhD pedagogy conceptualised in contemporary discourse? Doctoral pedagogy is usually figured as supervision, often, in particular in literature and popular culture, in the traditional dyadic form. Like other kinds of teachers, supervisors seem to hold a fascination, particularly for writers of novels and television dramas. In research literature, the attention garnered by supervision stems from another goal, a sense of needing to be more reflexive about it as a form teaching, usually by showing supervision at work through transcripts of supervisory meetings or through student and supervisor accounts of their experience of supervision. This examination of what is (or was) essentially a private form of teaching has operated in tandem with an increased scrutiny on supervision by institutions, as articulated in institutional policies, and a fostering of self-induced scrutiny through manuals on supervision. Both of these trends are suggestive of a perception at the end of the twentieth century, aided by studies showing high attrition rates and lengthy times to submission, that supervision was often not going well.