Welcome to the Intentional Teaching newsletter! I'm Derek Bruff, educator and author. The name of this newsletter is a reminder that we should be intentional in how we teach, but also in how we develop as teachers over time. I hope this newsletter will be a valuable part of your professional development as an educator.
Culturally responsive teaching; also, more office hour strategies
Culturally Responsive Teaching with Emily AffolterOn this week's Intentional Teaching podcast episode, I talk with Emily Affolter, who teaches in the PhD program in sustainability education at Prescott College in Arizona. Her students come from all different professions, some even already have PhDs. They’re in the program to pursue what Emily describes as “social and environmental justice as enacted in teaching, learning, and leading.” How do Emily and her colleagues meet these diverse students where they are and help them achieve their goals? That’s where culturally responsive teaching comes in, which Emily describes as reimagining a class with equity at the center. In the interview, Emily talks at length about what this looks like in her program at Prescott. Sometimes when I hear educators talk about disrupting hierarchies in the classroom, I want to say something like, "Yes, I get why that is important, but, at the end of the day, isn't the instructor still the person in the room with a unique position of power?" So I asked Emily that, and I really loved her answer. You'll need to listen to the episode to hear the whole answer, but this was my favorite line, describing how an equity-minded instructor might approach that position of power: "You are in a leadership role that’s dexterous and curious about the needs, the skills, the desires, and the purposes of the folks in the room.” Emily also has some great advice for equity-minded teaching in large lecture courses, a teaching context that makes it hard but not impossible to practice culturally responsive teaching. She also introduces me to the idea of decolonizing marine biology, something I didn't expect to be talking about with her when we started the conversation! And if none of that interest you in listening, here's a recommendation from listener Jenn Wicks: "This might be the best podcast episode I’ve listened to this year! Emily Affolter is speaking my language." You can listen to my conversation with Emily Affolter here, or search for "Intentional Teaching" in your podcast app. And if you'd rather read than listen, hang on, I'll have the transcript up soon. More Office Hour StrategiesLast week in the newsletter, I raised a question that I hear from faculty all the time: How can I help more students make good use of my office hours? I suggested three approaches: not calling them office hours (or, more specifically, explaining to students what these blocks of time are for), encouraging some peer-to-peer learning during your office hours (since some students find you intimidating, believe it or not), and getting out of the office (moving these sessions to more student-friendly locations or onto Zoom or Teams). It's been a while since I published a newsletter that got the same level of response as last week's! This topic clearly resonates with a lot of you. Although since last week, I heard one faculty member in a workshop mention that he has too many students in office hours. It wasn't clear if he was joking or not. Many of you responded with your own office hours strategies, either via email or on LinkedIn, and I wanted to share some of your stories here in this week's newsletter. Instructional designer Ian August echoed the concern that students often don't understand what office hours are for: "I have heard talk that students believe office hours are only for struggling students. Even when students struggle, they don't like to admit they are struggling. I also read a study recently that said students want to build stronger relationships with their professors. So, maybe we can rephrase office hours to engage that need." Ian makes a great point. It's not just that students don't know what office hours are all about, some bring with them preconceived notions about the purpose of office hours that can be unproductive. Reframing office hours can be an important move. Julia Gossard, whose use of Slack as a backchannel in her history courses I mentioned here in the newsletter earlier this year, reframed her office hours to great effect a few years ago: "In 2019 after attending Utah State University's annual USU Center for Empowering Teaching Excellence Conference, I was encouraged to make similar changes to office hours. I renamed them 'student hours' and let students know on the syllabus, the first day, and throughout the class that I welcomed them to come to talk about ANYTHING or just grab a snack. That semester I had 82 students come to my students hours to just say hi, ask about an assignment, share a thought, or grab a snack. (Many students on my campus are working students who face food precarity so I invested $40 at Sam’s Club to buy nutritious snacks). I saw a massive shift in my understanding of our students. And my students saw me as a human." I love that Julia keeps healthy snacks in her office for students. My former University of Mississippi colleagues Emily Donahoe and Liz Norell do that, too! I was the beneficiary of their snacks at least one or twice this past summer. Anna Brandt wrote in to recommend an early semester strategy for helping students understand office hours: "One strategy that I used that seemed to help was to require all students to set up a 30-minute meeting with me at the beginning of the semester (I passed out a sign-up sheet during class and then sent them calendar invites after class to confirm) and used that time to get to know more about them (their interests, their goals for the class/semester, etc.). This seemed to make it more likely that they would connect with me in the future, as we had already built a rapport. This was manageable for me because class sizes were usually about 20 students, and I understand that this may not work for larger class sizes; however, a short meeting typically goes a long way, I’ve found." I was given similar advice early in grad school when I was getting to ready to serve as instructor of record for the first time in a calculus course. It was perhaps the single best piece of advice I was given while preparing to teach that semester! (Thanks, Ian!) And I've done something similar in all my courses since, including the 100-student statistics courses. Monica Linden, who shared her syllabus statement on generative AI this time last year in the newsletter, wrote to share another part of her syllabus, the part where she talks to her students about office hours. Like me, she heard Anthony Jack talk about the misconceptions that students bring to college about office hours, so she tried to address those in her statement. I would love for each and every one of you to come to my office hours. You don’t even need a reason to come by – you can just say hi and tell me your name. As of now, office hours will take place in my office: OFFICE LOCATION HERE If you are the only one at the office hours, you can ask me about anything – it can be course related about logistics or course content, workbook questions, assessment performance, etc., or about neuroscience in general, or advising questions at Brown, grads school or med school (or neither of those!), my career path, my kids (you may hear more than you are interested in about my kids), my pets or anything else. If there are multiple students at the office hours, I generally have you all come into the room together and take turns asking questions. We try to cover all the course related questions first so that people can leave if that is all they are interested in. We try to answer each other’s questions together, but it is perfectly ok if you don’t know something. If you have personal information to share with me at office hours, for example related to exam accommodations, please either come right at the beginning of office hours so you’re the first person there, right at the end of office hours, or schedule a private meeting, as I cannot guarantee privacy during the main part of the office hours. It is easy to schedule a private meeting using this link GOOGLE CALENDAR LINK (Please make sure your Google Calendar is in the time zone you are actually in when scheduling, or you will come at the wrong time!) Please be cognizant of whether these private meetings are in-person or on Zoom, as that does vary. Zoom is always an option (just let me know!) Mary Wright, author of Centers for Teaching and Learning: The New Landscape in Higher Education, which I blogged about earlier this year, shared a newsletter she wrote in 2019 for the Sheridan Center at Brown University, also in response to Anthony Jack's work. (Seriously, go listen to my interview with Anthony.) In "Invitational Office Hours," Mary outlines some of the benefits of office hours to both students and instructors according to research and details strategies for being more transparent with students about office hours, normalizing the use of office hours through incentives, and modifying times and locations of office hours. Mary's piece also includes a number of recommendations about office hours from students. It's a must read for instructors wanting to fine tune their approaches to office hours. Thanks for reading!If you found this newsletter useful, please forward it to a colleague who might like it! 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Intentional Teaching with Derek Bruff
Welcome to the Intentional Teaching newsletter! I'm Derek Bruff, educator and author. The name of this newsletter is a reminder that we should be intentional in how we teach, but also in how we develop as teachers over time. I hope this newsletter will be a valuable part of your professional development as an educator.
The paradox of textbooks During a recent online workshop, I wanted to introduce the idea that students might need help organizing the new information they encounter in our courses. I told the faculty in the room to imagine they were going to sit down with some friends to play a board and when they opened the game's rulebook, they were confronted with this: I asked the workshop participants to share an emoji in the chat that represented how they felt about that. Here's a recreation of their...
Neurodivergent Students in Active Learning Classes A lot of the accommodations that have traditionally been given for students with learning disabilities, like notetaking assistance and extra time on exams, assume that a college course is mostly lectures and tests. That's not as true as it once was, especially for STEM courses where years of research on active learning have directed faculty to structure their courses differently. What is it like to experience an active learning class if...
Surfacing Students' Prior Experience with AI Last week I helped lead a two-day institute for faculty members participating in the University of Virginia's new Faculty AI Guides program. These faculty have signed up to explore the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their own teaching and support their colleagues as they make informed, intentional decisions about the roles of AI in their teaching. We covered a lot of ground in our two days with the AI Guides, as you might...