This post is guest authored by Marie Waung
I am a puzzler – a person who solves puzzles for fun. My favorite puzzles are those that require a re-framing of the question or problem to arrive at a solution. For example, in a recent (1/30/22) Sunday New York Times crossword, the clue (97 down) “one who may have attachment issues?” sparked me to consider attachment theory – a theory involving emotional bonds that form in relationships. But this was not an effective approach to this clue. After some mental rejiggering I arrived at the correct solution which was “emailer”. And haven’t we all had attachment issues when emailing? Tricky, yet obvious once you know the solution.
I had a similar experience when I was asked to come up with a solution for a problem involving student letters of recommendation. Students, after enduring several semesters of remote learning, were finding it difficult to get faculty to write letters of recommendation. Some faculty declined to write letters, indicating that they did not know the students well enough to attest to their skills and characteristics. This is clearly a problem as it jeopardizes students’ graduate and professional school opportunities. My first attempt at “solving” this problem was a tip sheet for faculty to assist them in writing letters of recommendation. However, this did not seem like a particularly effective approach. Perhaps, I needed to rejigger my thinking. The faculty members who previewed the tip sheet suggested that I take a different tact, and consult with the Hub. There one of the Hubsters made the connection between faculty declining to write letters of recommendation and feelings of disengagement.
This got me thinking about teaching. How we rely heavily on cues from our students as we teach. Head nods, eye contact, smiles, and if we are very lucky they may even laugh at our jokes. And, of course, the ultimate – when their faces light up with understanding. How we miss those cues in zoom lectures full of blacked out screens. When I find myself speaking to those empty zoom boxes the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s song “Comfortably Numb” invariably start cycling through my brain “Hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me, is there anyone at home?” But if I have felt numb at times, then how have my students been feeling? Probably worse than numb. Maybe the solution to the letter of recommendation problem is to find ways to better engage students in remote and/or online courses. How do we get them to fully participate in the course? This participation will gain us back some of those cues that we so strongly rely on to adjust our class lectures and activities as we deliver them, and that make teaching fun.
The Hub has a number of tips and resources to engage students. In addition, we might rely on some basic tenets of reinforcement theory (i.e., behaviors are shaped by their consequences). What’s in it for students to turn their cameras on or to respond to polls or chats? How can we sweeten the pot? Of course we can award points for participation. But it may be more powerful to convey to students the importance of professional relationships. That getting to know faculty may be important to their future plans – that we write letters of recommendation and serve as references; that we invite students to assist us with our research. We need to communicate to students that we are committed to serving them, but that we also need to know who they are before we can be of much help. And we need to remind them that we learn about them as they engage in our courses – no matter the format.This may be particularly important to convey to our first generation students who may not understand the role that faculty serve beyond giving lectures and assigning grades.
And, of course, if students engage more fully in our courses, then our teaching benefits from the cues they provide to us. When I taught introductory psychology, I would share an anecdote with my students about a group of psychology students who tested the power of reinforcement on their hapless professor. They came up with a plan to ignore their prof unless he was standing in the right hand corner of the room by the window. The students would only send positive signals when he was in that particular corner. By the end of the class period that poor professor was stuck in a corner teaching the class. After telling my students this story – not wanting to be a victim of their new knowledge – I would invite them to try this on the professor in their NEXT class. I’ve always felt a little guilty about unleashing these students on my colleagues. However, after several strange pandemic semesters I think that many of us would welcome teaching in a corner if it meant finding a way to strengthen that student-faculty connection that can seem so tenuous these days.
About the guest author
Marie Waung is Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. She is an Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychologist and earned her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. She enjoys teaching I/O psychology courses, as well as statistics and research methods courses.
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