Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning

Rigor as Skill Building with Larry Jackson

How can academic rigor be defined and enacted in humanities courses to promote learning and skill building? How can we engage and challenge our students while also supporting them? In this episode, we tackle these questions with Larry Jackson, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum at Columbia College. Columbia’s Core Curriculum comprises the required courses for Columbia undergraduates in literature, philosophy, history, music, art, and science.

What does rigor look like in a healthcare setting? How can instructors achieve both excellence and equity in teaching in such a high-stakes area as healthcare education? In this episode, we speak with two faculty members at Columbia University Irving Medical Center: Jean-Marie Alves-Bradford, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Associate Dean for Medical School Professionalism in the Learning Environment, and Associate Director for Clinical Services and Director of the Washington Heights Community Service at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Hetty Cunningham, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Director for Equity and Justice in Curricular Affairs, and co-director of the Anti-Racism Coalition at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Drs. Alves-Bradford and Cunningham answer these questions and discuss how they and their colleagues have been transforming their instruction and medical care by embracing values such as humility and collaboration, while also maintaining standards and evidenced-based, scientific practices. 

In today’s episode, we approach the topic of rigor from the lens of social work instruction with Elwin Wu, Professor at Columbia University’s School of Social Work (CSSW), and Kelsey Reeder, a Clinical Social Worker and PhD student in Advanced Practice at CSSW. We dive into the tensions between rigor, skill development, and providing care and compassion, and how instructors can maintain rigor while also seeking liberation. 

What does rigor mean in a science course? How can it encourage learning and engagement? And how can we support students while maintaining standards of excellence? In this episode, we dig further into the topic of rigor with David Helfand, a faculty member at Columbia University for 45 years, who served nearly half of that time as Chair of the Department of Astronomy. Professor Helfand answers these questions and shares his thoughts on everything from curving, to what inspires him to believe in the possibility of change in higher education teaching.

Is rigor necessary to teach more inclusively? What is a deficit ideology and how does it affect students? In this episode, Jamiella Brooks, director of student equity and inclusion initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and Julie McGurk, director of faculty teaching initiatives at Yale University’s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, answer these questions, and discuss three principles that instructors can use to reframe their thinking about rigor.

This discussion stems from a session hosted by Drs. Brooks and McGurk, “Rigor as Inclusive Practice: Beyond Deficit Models,” presented at the Fall 2021 POD Network conference. This session was also written about in the Chronicle of Higher Education article, “The Redefinition of Rigor” (March 2022). 

Note: at the time of recording, Jamiella Brooks served as an Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Pennsylvania.

Resources:

• “10 Dysfunctional Illusions of Rigor.” To Improve the Academy (2010). Craig E. Nelson. Volume 28, 2010. 
• “Readers Respond on Rigor” (February 2022). Matt Reed in “Confessions of a Community College Dean,” Inside Higher Ed. 
• The work of Uri Treisman, executive director of the Charles A. Dana Center, The University of Texas at Austin 
• Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (TILT)

John Warner, educator and author of the Inside Higher Ed blog, “Just Visiting”, wrote in a May 2022 post titled “You Can’t Ignore That a Pandemic Happened”: “I am concerned that the understandable desire to get beyond the extreme challenges of trying to educate in the midst of the worst period of the pandemic is interfering with some deeper questions, some more nuanced conversations we should be having about teaching and learning.” In our first episode of the fall semester, we discuss with John the debate over the “return to normal,” and what will happen to the practices that teachers engaged in as we move away from pandemic teaching conditions.

John Warner is a writer, editor, speaker, researcher, consultant, and author of eight books, including Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (Johns Hopkins UP) and The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing (Penguin), which is widely used in writing classrooms from middle school through college. John has become a national voice on issues of faculty labor, institutional values, and writing pedagogy. John is an affiliate faculty at the College of Charleston, and his most recent book, Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education (Belt) is now available.

Over the past two years, Columbia students have made multiple transitions between online, hybrid, and in-person learning during the pandemic. In today’s episode, Emma Fromont, a senior at Columbia’s School of General Studies, and Victor Jandres Rivera, a sophomore at Columbia College, discuss how these different modalities and contexts have shaped them as learners. Emma and Victor share dead ideas they have discovered in topics such as learning with technology, building community, and grading. They also share strategies that their instructors have used that have been particularly helpful in their learning. 

Resource

• Resources and reflections developed by the Undergraduate Student Consultants on Teaching and Learning with CTL staff, as part of the Students as Pedagogical Partners initiative

Transcript available at http://ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Today we speak with Susan Hrach, author of the book Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning (2021), which “shifts the focus of adult learning from an exclusively mental effort toward an embodied, sensory-rich experience, offering new strategies to maximize the effectiveness of time spent learning together on campus as well as remotely.” Along with co-host Caitlin DeClercq, Assistant Director at the Columbia CTL, Professor Hrach expands upon how movement and space impact cognition and learning, and discusses some of the dead ideas this research debunks. 

Resource: Minding Bodies: How Physical Space, Sensation, and Movement Affect Learning (2021) by Susan Hrach

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

Today we speak with Drs. Chavella Pittman and Thomas Tobin, authors of the article “Academe Has a Lot to Learn about How Inclusive Teaching Affects Instructors”, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February 2022. In the article, they write, “A key tenet of inclusive teaching asks faculty members to intentionally give up or share some of their power and authority in the classroom, so that students can experience a greater sense of ownership and choice over their own learning. Advocates of this approach tend to assume that every instructor has plenty of authority, power, and status to share. But what if you don’t?” In this episode, Chavella and Tom compare their experiences of student resistance to their use of ungrading and flexible deadline teaching practices. Along with co-host Rebecca Petitti of the Columbia CTL, they discuss why they wrote the article, and share what they believe are the most important action steps that can be taken to address these inequities. 

Resources

• Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice by Maryellen Weimer 

“Academe Has a Lot to Learn about How Inclusive Teaching Affects Instructors” by Chavella Pittman and Thomas Tobin

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast

What is anti-racist pedagogy and how is it different than inclusive teaching? Is it a new pedagogy? How can instructors enact anti-racist practices in the classroom, and what structural changes should universities make to support these efforts? In today’s episode, Frank Tuitt, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of Connecticut, helps us answer these questions. Dr. Tuitt also shares his own journey in the work of anti-racist pedagogy, as well as the dead ideas he has encountered along the way, and what keeps him inspired and motivated to believe in the possibility of change. 

Resources 

• Race, Equity, and the Learning Environment (2016). Edited by Frank Tuitt, Chayla Haynes, and Saran Stewart
• “Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Action: First Steps”. Resource from the Columbia CTL.

Transcript available at ctl.columbia.edu/podcast