Choose the Award You Want to Win

Quick Announcement:  On occasion, I make the following announcement and I usually have quite a few people contact me.  I post between 5-15 essays on teaching in college every year.  In fact, this is my 308^th essay covering a span of more than a decade.  At the moment, the blog has had a total of 631,721 pageviews (or an average of about 2,050 for each essay).  If you would like to receive a short email whenever a new essay is posted, send me a note at Jhoyle@richmond.edu.  I will not use your email for any other reason.  You will always know when each new essay is available. 

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"The fact remains that declining domestic enrollment will force colleges of all political leanings to compete harder to provide genuine value to students.”  I read this assertion in my newspaper over breakfast this morning.  (“Colleges face fewer customers but more competition” by Matthew Yglesias, Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 29, 2021)  Colleges must compete harder to provide genuine value to students.  Now, that is an interesting assertion with implications that should make faculty and administrators both pause for a moment.  What does that really mean?

 

This past week, I had lunch with my dean (he had salad while I went for the oyster platter).  We talked about many things, but one topic in particular is a favorite obsession of mine.  In colleges and universities around the country, I believe most schools and departments have a reasonable number of good teachers.  I have had the pleasure of knowing many such people.  However, I do not think we have a sufficient number of great teachers.  I believe that is a primary reason why college education is so often maligned.  We are not able to coax enough of our good teachers to become great teachers.

To provide a great education, schools need great teachers.  That seems so self-evident that I am hesitant to say it. 

We could have an interesting debate over the definition of “great teaching,” but I will take the easy way out and fall back on Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, “I know it when I see it.”  Maybe, rather than establish a definition, we should list characteristics. 

--Great teachers change lives. 

--Great teachers awaken student curiosity. 

--Great teachers promote a love of the subject matter. 

--Great teachers inspire students to do their best.

--Great teachers have an effect on students that carries on for years and even decades.

--Great teachers help students learn to think.

--Great teachers push students to work incredibly hard.

This list could go on and on.

Going from good to great.  I am sure that Jim Collins has made a fortune writing about specific businesses that managed to bridge the gap from good to great.  It is a tricky challenge.  How can we encourage more professors to make that leap?  If, after seven years, they are good teachers, how can we entice them to be great after 14 years?  That seems like a reasonable transition.  That seems like a reasonable goal.  How do we encourage more to make it?

Maybe more importantly, does anyone actually think about that?  Or, is it a subject that is simply ignored at colleges and universities?  When is the last time that an administrator looked at a faculty member and said, “You are a good teacher.  I want you to become a great teacher.”?  The true answer might be, “Never.”   We need more great teachers to change more student lives.  We have a large number of good teachers.  How do we prevent them from settling for good? 

I have taught in college now for more than 50 years and that is a conversation that I have never heard anyone bring up.  Most teaching conversations seem limited to helping poor teachers improve.  That is important, but more good teachers need to consider how they can grow into great teachers.

So, I want to offer one piece of advice today that I believe can help.  I was reading something yesterday that I wrote years ago and it contained the following quote from Ellen Johnson Eirleaf who served as president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018, “If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.”

I believe that one thing that prevents many teachers from becoming great is a lack of ambitious goals.

When it comes to teaching, do you have goals that are so big and demanding that they scare you?  Because it is the drive to achieve those goals that will push you to become great.   Be honest with yourself, in the upcoming spring semester, what are your teaching goals and do they scare you?

Here is my suggestion.  You belong to some group:  a department, a school, or a college.  Assume that the students within this group are going to give out teaching awards next May.  They will invent several awards and all the students will vote for the winners. 

What award would you want to win? 

Design a hypothetical award that you truly want to win.  Most demanding teacher.   Kindest teacher.  Funniest teacher.   Smartest teacher.   Trickiest teacher.  Most caring teacher.  Teacher with the best Power Point slides.

What award fits your goals?  Of all the teachers in your group, you want the students to name you as the winner of this specific award.  How would you make that happen?

This will help you focus.  Even though the award is not real, creating an idea of what you want to become can be transformative.  Ambition is so important for growth but it has to be specific.  “I want to be a great teacher” is not very helpful.

Focus on one area that you deem important and it will serve as a springboard for overall teaching greatness.  You have to start somewhere and identifying “your award” will help you establish a greatness that works for you.

I always know, each semester, what hypothetical awards that I would like to win from my students.  It is essential to know who you want to be as a teacher, the role you want to play.  So, design an award that you would like to win and then consider what it would take for students to vote for you over all of the other faculty in your group.  Trust me, that can be (and probably should be) scary.  Ambitious goals usually are scary.

We need more greatness in college teaching.  That begins when you think about what greatness means to you.  What award do you want to win in the upcoming semester?

MARKETING YOUR COURSE

Author’s Note.  Before I start today’s essay, I want to make an offer.  In the fall of 2020, I created an online financial accounting course for the Robins School of Business here at the University of Richmond.  Rather than try to mold a live class into an online course, I honestly tried to rethink the whole process from start to finish.  I used some of what I had learned from the book Make It Stick as well as my 50 plus years of college teaching.  The online course seemed to go quite well.  We started in August with 74 students and we finished in December with 74 students.  No one failed. 

One of the common arguments against online education is that it is “watered down” and of a lower quality than live classroom education.  I focused on that challenge as I created each component of the course.  In the fall of 2020, approximately 70 percent of my students completed the school’s student evaluation forms.  From my perspective, here are two of the most interesting results.

--The course required you to think critically -- 4.672 on a 5.0 scale.

--The course significantly increased your knowledge of the subject -- 4.629 on a 5.0 scale.

For an introductory level course where virtually none of the 74 students would ever take another financial accounting class, I thought those results were good.

My point is this – for many important reasons, the world needs better online education.  That should not be the only alternative for student learning but it needs to be a better alternative.  As teachers, we need to educate more people.  We need to educate them better at a lower cost.  If it is well done, if it well designed, if it properly carried out, an online course can be a very efficient way for students to learn.

Online education does not have to be watered down.  It does not have to be a weaker version of a live class.  We need to really focus on how to make online education work better so that many more people can learn our subject matter. 

I have all of this material left over.  I have spent the last six months getting it organized.  If you are interested, I would be happy to share it with you. 

--I can show you how to use it to supplement your live or blended class. 

--I can show you how to use it to create your own online course. 

--Even if you never teach financial accounting, you can study it to stimulate your personal thoughts about online education.  We need more teachers thinking more deeply about online education. 

I used videos, guided readings, sequenced learning questions and answers, audio questions and answers, and a whole lot of quizzes.  I emailed the students each morning at 6:30 and said, “Here is what I need for you to do today.  We will have a quiz in 3 days.” 

It is not a perfect system, but I think it can be used to teach students efficiently.  Or, the materials can be used as a foundation for an even better program. 

If you are interested in seeing some of this material, send me a note at Jhoyle@richmond.edu.

If you know someone who might be interested, please pass along this message.  Thanks for your help.

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Blog.  My spring semester classes start on January 10, 2022.  Registration for those classes took place last week.  I waited two whole days and then I emailed a long note about the upcoming semester to each of the students who had registered. 

Why would I do this?

--I want every student to walk in on the first day of class excited about the possibility of learning.

--I want every student to walk in on the first day of class understanding what I want from them. 

--I want every student to walk in on the first day of class feeling that they have the ability to do well in this class.

--I want every student to walk in on the first day of class believing that the material will be worth learning.

My students have all been in school for a large portion of their lives.  Too often, they are full of dread rather than anticipation.  Over the years, many of them have suffered through some dreary education.  I think this is one of the saddest parts of my job.  Students rarely arrive at class thrilled by the prospect of learning.  For them, there is just not enough joy in the idea of learning.

So, I will spend the next two months trying to get them to believe in me, to believe in themselves, and believe in the value of what I am going to teach them.  If I can win this marketing campaign, the quality of the learning in these spring classes will have no bounds.  That is what I want.  I want every class to be the best that anyone has ever seen.

So, what did I actually say to these future students in this introductory email?  How did I market my course to them?  Here are a few of the comments I thought were most relevant.

“I am delighted that we will be working together. I have taught this class most semesters for the past 50+ years.  I firmly believe that it is the most important course in the B-school and, in my opinion, the most interesting course (and, despite its reputation, it can be the most fun).”   

“There is not a day that goes by in this class when we are not trying to understand something important.   I’m not here to waste your time.”

“Attitude is always important.  Teaching students with a mediocre attitude is a trial.  Teaching students with a positive attitude is a joy because you can help them leap tall buildings with a single bound.”

“I want YOU to make an A.   There is no crime in making a B or a C in such a challenging course but there is a crime in shooting for a B or a C. The world needs more bright young people with serious ambition.”

“Go to any of the junior and senior accounting majors you know (in your fraternity/sorority, your dorm, or wherever) and ask the simple question, ‘I want to be one of those people who makes an A in Professor Hoyle’s 302 class.   What is the key?   Don’t try to scare me because I’m not going to run and hide.   I am not a timid, frightened mouse.  I want to make an A.  How do I go about reaching that goal?’  My guess is that they’ll give you good advice.” 

“The list of students who are well prepared every single day for my class and the list of students who make an A are pretty close to the same list.”

Okay, I could go on and on, but the message needs to come from you.  What message do you want to convey?  You are trying to get a head start.  You want to get the students interested in the class before they start dreading it as a dreary chore. 

I will write my students a few more times before the spring semester begins to give them other suggestions on getting ready for my class.  Nevertheless, the marketing key is this first communication where I try to set the tone for the entire spring.  “This course is interesting and fun and challenging and worthwhile” rather than letting them tell themselves, “This is going to be soooo boring and useless.” 

When it comes to convincing students to do the work you require, aggressive (but thoughtful) marketing is never a bad idea.