Resources

A while back I read an interesting, if not somewhat problematic, book called Hunt, Gather, Parent. The author, NPR science reporter Michaeleen Doucleff, went all around the world, along with her young daughter, trying to learn how people parent. She noticed that, in many other places, children seem to be calm, motivated, flexible, responsible, helpful, confident, cooperative contributors, unlike the tantrum-prone toddler she had in tow. These families functioned more like teams, with both parents and kids playing important and integrated roles. Doucleff offers the apt acronym TEAM to convey what these parents do differently: Togetherness, Encouragement, Autonomy, and Minimal Interference. Dishes need to be washed? TEAM effort. Tortillas need to be made? TEAM effort. Other kids need corralling? TEAM effort. I got to thinking, as I do, about teams (and even toddler-like behavior) in another context: the college classroom. There is no shortage of information about group learning, cooperative learning, and team-based learning, such as Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups in College Teaching (2004), available in the teaching literature. Fields like business and engineering have done a particularly good job of helping educators understand how to compose teams, how to create projects that actually require team effort (vs. a divide-and-conquer approach), how to grade group work, and how to teach students the skills needed to collaborate, such as establishing norms or navigating conflict. Journals devoted to the teaching of these disciplines are well worth the read (e.g., Journal of Education for Business and Journal of Engineering Education), even for those of us in the humanities. Such skills are, I believe, important for life, since working successfully as part of a team is something we’ll all have to do at some point, no matter what type of job we end up in. Even religion professors, lone wolves many of us, still have to serve on committees or attend department meetings with… other humans. But this kind of team isn’t what I’m talking about here—and not just because I always did hate group work. When we talk about teams in the classroom, what we usually mean are teams of students. Teach them how to work well together, teach them how to take personal accountability, teach them how to resist “social loafing.” But what about us? Why is there always a distance, a separation, a distinction, between us and them? Could we, instead, think of our classes as opportunities for TEAMwork, similar to what Doucleff found in functional families across the world? Could we, instead, conceive of ourselves as being on the same team as our students? Athletic analogies, like teachers as coaches, abound in educational writings, so this idea isn’t exactly far-fetched, though there are a lot of people who don’t love these metaphors. And, of course, there are some real differences between professors and students, including differences in power (which can go both ways: we can give them bad grades, sure, but students can also give us poor evaluations, for instance), that we must keep in mind when considering a team approach. But let’s give it a try. In a previous blog post, I wrote about how I spend time in class co-creating community norms with my students. I realized, after reading Hunt, Gather, Parent, that part of what I am doing in this activity is positioning all of us on the same team, responsible for one another and working toward common goals. Another example, one focusing on the T-for-togetherness part of Doucleff’s TEAM, is that we might start taking a closer look at our own role when students’ performance goes awry. On a team, everyone is responsible for everyone else as well as the success of the team; nobody is exempt. When mistakes or failures happen, we support one another and we try to do better, next time, together. So students bomb the midterm. Okay, well, maybe they studied poorly or not at all. Maybe they didn’t take proper notes in class. Maybe they stayed up too late, cramming or partying, the night before. This happens. But could it also not be that the test was poorly designed, that it didn’t align with what was taught in class? Could it also not be that we didn’t teach students how to study, so the midterm was actually testing not what they had learned in the course so far, but rather their test-taking skills? So students turn in sub-par final papers. Okay, well, maybe they came to college unprepared. Maybe they procrastinated and started writing too late. Maybe they have an overinflated sense of their own writing skills. Yes, of course. But could it also not be that we didn’t provide them proper instruction about how to write this kind of paper, in this class, in this discipline, in the first place, or didn’t give them a rubric or set of criteria to lay bare our expectations? Could it also not be that we didn’t scaffold the assignment into manageable chunks with ample opportunity for feedback and improvement? So students cheat, lie. Okay, well, maybe they’re just entitled, lazy, looking for any opportunity to cut corners. Sure. But could it also not be that our learning environments and assignments incentivize dishonesty? Could it also not be that there are too few and too high-of-stakes assignments that their entire grade is riding on? Could it also not be that we haven’t conveyed why this subject is important for them to know? Could it also not be that we’ve made ourselves so intimidating and unapproachable that they can’t come to us when they’re struggling and simply tell the truth? I’m not saying that we need to use the idea of a team to start blaming ourselves for every bad behavior on the students’ parts. This would be a mistake. Students are adults and, ultimately, responsible for their own learning. (And this is an important life lesson they need to learn, too.) But thinking of ourselves as on or as part of their team, rather than something separate, opens up new ways of thinking about common and perennially frustrating teaching problems. What are some possibilities that the idea of teaching as teamwork opens up for you?

I have a confession to make. For the longest time I have approached distance learning as the second best way to teach. I thought of it as a necessary evil in order to deliver theological education to those who could not receive instruction through the traditional face-to-face (hence F2F) classroom. Consequently, I approached teaching online as an effort to approximate the F2F experience but feeling that no matter what I do, I’ll always fall short of the “real thing.” I have since changed my mind. In my experience designing and implementing an online course to teach Biblical Greek for seminary students, I have discovered that there are principles and practices which do more than simply approximate the F2F experience—they surpass it. So what practices in the F2F setting can and should be approximated online? Here are two quick suggestions: 1) Create instructional videos as a means for students to receive course content. There are no short cuts to teaching the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of any language. Over the course of one summer, I developed over 80 instructional videos of approximately 7-10 minutes each to cover the entire scope of beginning Greek grammar. Across two semesters, students will watch me on YouTube explain the pronunciation scheme of the Greek alphabet, read the biblical text out loud, and then address nouns, verbs, and other parts of speech. The instructional videos are the backbone to the content of the course. 2) Have students write out their homework assignments in a “messy” way. The textbook I use for the course is William Mounce’s The Basics of Biblical Greek. I ask students to work through the homework exercises by hand since no electronic version of the Greek workbook is currently available by the publisher. Students do the work in a “messy” way: they scribble notes, circle words, draw arrows, cross out and self-correct their assignments. Then they scan their work and upload it as a PDF onto the course management system (hence CMS) for grading. The “messy” way of completing the homework adds a tactile, motor-memory component to learning that many find helpful. It is worth trying to approximate this online as much as possible. When, or if, an electronic version of the workbook exercises becomes available from publishers, students can easily use an iPad or other tablet device plus stylus to approximate the “messy” by-hand learning experience. Now here are two methods of online instruction that I think supersede the F2F experience: 1) Assign audio and video recording exercises to students to upload for instructor review. Currently I am teaching Greek online and on campus. To my surprise, I have found that, overall, my online students read biblical Greek out loud better than the on-campus students. In the on-campus classroom, we practice pronouncing Greek during the first weeks of the course by reading 1 John 1 out loud. Students take turns reading a verse and we make the rounds until we corporately finish the whole text. For the online course, students don’t take turns reading just a few verses of 1 John 1. They have to read large sections of it on their own, record their reading, and upload it onto the CMS for me to grade. It takes time, but I listen to their recordings and write out my comments, or make my own recording, to send back to them so they can adjust their pronunciation. Every week, online students complete an A/V recording assignment but the on-campus class does not. As a result, the former read Greek better. 2) Form student-to-student cohorts. I cannot take credit for what follows. On their own, my online students formed a Facebook group where they exchange best study techniques, commiserate about the difficulties of the language, answer questions for one another, and share resources. While on-campus students also form study groups, these are typically much smaller in size, meet less frequently, and do not involve the entire class. The Facebook group invites the entire class to participate and they do. The level of collaboration is much more intense. I may even suggest to the on-campus students that they form online cohorts. Sometimes commuters don’t have access to study groups. Forming a Facebook cohort would allow them to join. These are just a few suggestions I offer as I stumble my way through teaching Greek online. I have been just as much a learner as an instructor in this journey. The pedagogical discoveries have been exhilarating!