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From: Beth McMurtrie
Subject: Teaching: Getting students off screens and into the conversation
This week, I:
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This week, I:
In recent weeks I’ve been focusing on the problem of students coming to class less prepared. When that happens, discussions fall flat and frustrations rise. How can you meaningfully teach anyone if they’re not doing much work in between classes?
This week I’ll share how Mark Clayton Hand, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington, designed an approach to boost engagement and preparation. Here are his key strategies:
Taking attendance. In all of his courses, graduate and undergraduate, Hand takes attendance and grades on participation. He tells his students that he believes it’s important to come to class and be in conversation with each other.
Selective reading. Hand cut back on reading assignments after realizing that students were not accustomed to reading at length. Rather than assigning an entire speech by Mussolini, for example, he chose excerpts that reflect the main tenets of fascism. Hand encourages his students to see the joy in reading, but says he refocused his approach to acknowledge the difference between reading for pleasure and reading to learn. At the same time, by being selective, he is signaling to students that the readings he assigns matter and he doesn’t want them to get a summary from AI.
Engaged reading. Hand often prints and hands out the readings for students to mark up at home. Then he asks them to show their notes and highlights in class. Or he starts class asking them to write down three key words, two sentences and one question for the author of something they had been assigned to read. The first half of the semester is also more reading intensive, he says, because he knows that students start the semester strong then often get overwhelmed with all they have to do once midterms are over.
Real-world experience. In an introductory course on American government, everyone had to find a local campaign to volunteer for. In a democratic theory course, students had to think about an organization they belong to, such as a church or workplace, and report on how democratic it is. He also has students interview professionals in fields they are interested in. Students often tell him this work was the most meaningful part of the course.
Tough grading. On the first day of class, Hand tells students he wants them to win and will help them win if they put in the work. As he puts it, “I front load that I care about students and then I feel the latitude to push really hard.” He also scaffolds assignments, and students are allowed to redo what they turn in. If someone uses ChatGPT to do their work for them, he will give them a zero and ask them to try again. If a student repeatedly ignores his feedback, he will require them to come in and talk to him, then redo their work. He is also pragmatic. If a student tells him that they’re fine with a B because they have other obligations, then he will focus on helping that student get to that B grade.
Student-led reading presentations. Hand assigns students to be leaders of a given reading, based on their interests. He asks that they design a group activity that communicates the main points. In one class, a student assigned to teach about Elinor Ostrom’s ideas in Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, created a simulation in which everyone played a different role in the caring of a lake at risk of drying up — a fisherman, an Indigenous tribe, a nonprofit focused on sustainability, a government worker, and so on — to work toward a common agreement. Students may not hit all the points he wants them to hit, Hand says, but they are much more engaged with ideas this way. He can always come in after and emphasize any points they might have missed.
My takeaways: I was struck by how flexibly Hand approaches his teaching, while also holding on to non-negotiables, such as showing up for class and putting in the work. He acknowledges students’ limitations without judging them harshly. And he is game to try new things. Perhaps that has to do with the fact that he’s relatively new to teaching. As he put it, he’s only had one ChatGPT-free semester. But he also really likes this generation of students, which I think comes through in his approach. He finds them discerning, probably because they’re so busy juggling work, school, and other activities that they have to be. And he cuts them slack for being, as he puts it, trained to think of education as transactional. “To me if something isn’t working then the first place we should look is the institution,” he says, “not the individuals that are going through the institution.”
Do you have thoughts on Hand’s approach? Have you found ways to ensure students come prepared and stay involved? Write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com and your ideas may appear in a future newsletter.
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