Category: Academia

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Stepping in the same river twice?

Not stepped in this river at all: much too cold

I found myself at a dinner with a bunch of academics the other day and we fell, as one goes, into the cultural reference points we use to connect with students.

One colleague had been struck by someone they work using cultural objects from the 1970s; something they felt was a push even for co-workers to understand, let alone the pimply youth in our classrooms.

However, I’ve not let that stop me using an allusion to a saying from the 6th Century BCE as my title. If you don’t get it, then GIYF.

Any way, this saying occurred to me as I continued my exploration of BlueSky, even as Twitter/X/whatever becomes ever more useless.

The immediate prompt was the arrival on the new platform of several of the best Twitter-era politics snark accounts (Berlaymonster and General Boles, if you fancy following them). These are the accounts that helped to make Twitter not simply a great networking site but also an enjoyable one. Doomscrolling is considerably less taxing when you have someone willing and able to skewer it all.

But that was then.

BlueSky isn’t Twitter, for which there are many reasons to be thankful. But that also means recognising that we lose something too. And even if we can frame that as ‘different’, rather than ‘better’ or ‘worse’, it still needs our engagement to recognise and adapt to that.

This is also true for our teaching practice.

Not only do our students change composition over time, but so too do our technological options, our institutional obligations/constraints and we ourselves.

That can be a joy: I love that every time I take a politics-focused class it will be different and unique because of this accumulation of changes. But it’s also rather disorientating.

Central to managing this is our own self-awareness. Just as we want students to be critical learners, so too must we practise this, recognising what the relevant factors and dynamics might be.

That can be understanding that a class late in the semester will have students both more focused on assessment for your class and more distracted by work for other colleagues. It can be reflecting on how recent real-world developments in your field of teaching might impact on how you present cases or theories. It can also be about the lessons you took from the last time you ran the class and where the pinch points of understanding came.

Again, all this falls into a framing of things being different. Hopefully, we all have moments when it all came together and was amazing, but the best way to get that happening again (or for the first time) is to continue flexing and adapting, rather than trying to recreate what is now past.

Remember, the full quote is: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and it’s not the same man.”

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Little by little: Challenging awarding gaps in UK higher education

We have another great guest post by Jeremy F. G. Moulton at the University of York!

The Financial Times recently published an analysis of data from HESA (the UK’s Higher Education Statistics Agency) which revealed a troubling trend in UK universities. As the analysis’s headline read: ‘Non-EU international students at UK universities less likely to get top grades’. The data was clear – undergraduates from outside the EU were twice as likely as UK students to receive a lower-second or third-class degree in 2021-22 (and therefore missing out on the upper-second or first-class degrees that employers most favour).

This trend is especially concerning given the significant growth in the number of non-EU international students studying at UK universities in recent years, with almost three times as many studying in the UK today than in 2007. With these students making up a larger proportion of those within our classrooms, there is a need to ensure that universities are not providing them with a second-class education.

The problem with awarding gaps is not, however, limited to the difference in degree outcomes between non-EU international students and EU and “home” students. There is a wealth of data already covering racialised awarding gaps, socio-economic awarding gaps, and disability awarding gaps, for example. 

The question is – what can be done to help challenge these trends?

I work at an institution which has the ambition of ‘eradicating’ awarding gaps by 2030. This has given those working on teaching and learning a serious opportunity to engage with the issue, to understand the challenges, and to make some early steps to address those gaps.

Of course, there are many factors that shape awarding outcomes where we have limited power to respond. Structural issues will often be the deciding factor on, for instance, whether students will have to take on part-time work to fill the increasing gulf between the costs of student life and the student loans provided. 

This is not a niche issue, over half of undergraduates in the UK are now in part-time employment. Some universities are already experimenting with compacting students’ timetables so classes only cover three days of the week. This gives students clear days for paid work and, hopefully, ensures that they don’t miss any teaching. This compartmentalisation of the week might also be of benefit to academics by providing set days for research, writing, and tackling that ever-growing pile of emails. 

However, there are also opportunities for individual, course-level initiatives to achieve the ambition of combatting awarding gaps.

The first opportunity is to reflect on how we are assessing our students. In particular,  optionality could be one particularly effective path forward. Letting students select from a range of assessment formats, tailored for respective modules, would allow students the choice of assessment to best suit their learning style and the skills that they are seeking to develop through their studies. A recent report on optionality in assessment highlighted its potential to limit awarding gaps, making the recommendation that ‘Educational institutions should prioritise the introduction of diverse assessment formats to explicitly address accessibility and concerns about fairness, ensuring access to necessary resources and skills development to prevent the unintentional widening of awarding gaps’. 

The second opportunity is to take the time to consider the range of cultures and approaches to learning that are present in our increasingly diverse classrooms, and to engage students on these matters. It is easy to take for granted that the approaches to teaching and learning that have been taught or socialised to us are in some way the ‘standard’ but this is a practice that risks alienating some students. 

For example, research on students from China’s learning styles has highlighted that they often do not have experience in or enjoy some of the norms of active learning that are the mark of much of the teaching and learning in Western institutions. Therefore, engaging all students at the start of courses about the hows and whys of the approaches to learning that will be utilised will provide at least some shared understanding of the expectations and benefits of getting involved in seminar discussions. 

Finally, taking the opportunity to support students’ confidence in engaging with learning should never be missed. Learning students’ names; encouraging students to interact and learn with each other outside of the classroom; giving students the chance to speak individually (ending teaching sessions a few minutes early but sticking around can give students the chance to ask questions that they might be self-conscious about asking in front of a group) – these are all relatively easy ways to try and give students more confidence in themselves, as well as the learning process. This, in turn, has the potential for increasing engagement and attainment. 

In sum, these above suggestions boil down to one simple but key idea – that we should find space for empathy in our teaching. Certainly, there are a host of other pathways to begin combatting awarding gaps. Whilst sector- and institution-level data is vital in identifying problematic trends, it will take a more granular approach to understand the specific, course-level issues and responses. This is a big issue but it is also one that academics can begin engaging with and combatting by instituting small changes.

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Tools for Discussion: An Interpersonal Growth Toolkit

Today’s guest post is from Dr. Allison Anoll at Vanderbilt University!

Classroom discussion is a common pedagogical tool, but many instructors and students alike find themselves lost with the lack of structure.  Equally problematic, standard approaches to grading participation that simply count how often students speak can (re)produce racial and gender disparities.

How can we, as instructors, lead effective discussions? How can we help students grow in their interpersonal skills while also ensuring classrooms are inclusive spaces?

In my small, seminar classes I use a tool for structuring and assessing participation I call the Interpersonal Growth Toolkit.This tool relies heavily on a framework developed by Stephen Brookfield in The Skillful Teacher, where he argues that classroom discussion skills need to be taught just like any other learning goal. The Interpersonal Growth Toolkit provides students with learning goals for classroom discussion, tools for achieving these goals, and regular sources of feedback from the instructor about progress.

Here’s how it works. I start by identifying skills I want students to learn and practice in the discussion setting. In my classes, that’s: 1) humility; 2) confidence; and 3) social science thinking. I provide students with a detailed list of tools for how they can practice each of these themes. For instance, to practice humility, students can,

  • Provide credit to classmates for ideas and inspiration by using their name in comments.
  • Ask the group for a moment of silence to slow the pace of discussion and allow you (and others) time to gather your thoughts.
  • Find a way to express appreciation for what is new, interesting, or challenging in the discussion. Be specific about what has helped you understand something new.
  • Make a comment or ask questions that encourages others to elaborate on their ideas.

I then ask my students to identify which of the three areas—humility, confidence, or social science thinking— they are weakest in as a discussion participant.  My students then develop an individualized growth plan by identifying 2-3 skills in their area of weakness they want to try out in class. They write these skills on an index card that I hand back to them at the beginning of each class for the first two weeks. At mid-term, they write a brief reflection on how they think they are doing in their area of growth and what they want to work on for the rest of the semester. In combination with my own notes, I prepare mid-term feedback for each student about their performance in the three areas and tools to try in the second half of the semester. Students receive a final grade for their participation based on their growth and performance in each of the three areas.

This approach increases the quality of classroom discussions immensely. Not only do students and the instructor have a clear sense of what people are supposed to be doing during discussion time, but students themselves can become advocates of inclusivity in the classroom. Students who lean towards dominating a discussion are asked to think about how they can use their skills to draw others in; students who are nervous speaking up are provided with skills for finding their space and ways into a discussion. Using this technique, I have seen students grow immensely over the course of a semester with quieter students getting bolder and more dominant students using their skills to build bridges between other’s ideas. In my seminar courses, it is the norm to hear from every student multiple times over the course of a discussion.

This approach and assessment are well-suited for relatively small classes (less than 20 students). In larger classes, it is more difficult to build a community of trust that fosters vulnerability and to find enough time for all the students to practice their skills. However, this tool is suitable for any level of instruction: I use it with freshman, seniors, and even new graduate students. Instructors should feel empowered to adapt the skills they want students to learn in the discussion as long as they also provide specific tools to complement these skills. Want students to practice intellectual curiosity as a core skill instead of humility? Develop a list of tools that students can practice in a discussion to build this skill. You can look at chapter 8 of Brookfield’s The Skillful Teacher for more tools to consider.

To implement this assessment, remember to include a learning objective in your syllabus that highlights interpersonal growth as a key goal of the course.  I use, “By the end of the course, you will be able to:demonstrate growth in discussion techniques including close listening, speaking with evidence, challenging with respect, and summarizing others’ contributions.’’

Keeping track of student contributions and how they fit into each assessment category can be difficult to do on your own while also leading the discussion. When I use this tool, I hire an advanced undergraduate or graduate student to sit in class with me and keep track of student contributions. I use these notes to develop feedback and grades for my students.

You can find details about The Interpersonal Growth Tool Kit here. The document also includes a rubric. (In general, I’m a big fan of rubrics, but that’s a topic for another day.) Happy discussing!

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“The Joy of Asking for Help: Getting students to read (anything?)”

I found myself in an all too well-known situation this week: my students didn’t read the assigned readings. In my opinion, I had set up the most fascinating set of readings to address an important issue in one of my classes. Every should want to gobble that knowledge up, said my hybris. But nada. Maybe a handful had read; the rest of the class became experts at looking straight ahead or down to their screens. I am not rediscovering the wheel with this not-reading problem, but the wheel certainly ran me over this week.  

Credit: Mercy Pilkington (Good E Reader)

I left the classroom after the lecture, wondering how I had created this environment, and how I could pivot away from this mid-way through our semester. Frustrated at myself, but knowing that somehow it had to change, I reached out for help on social media and in real life to people in academia.  I was in awe of the number of helpful responses I received. Although, I did not plan to write about it for ALPS (see Chad’s earlier work on that here), I decided to at least have – for the record – a collection of thoughts and ideas for others, who might find themselves in a similar situation at any point in their academic lives.

  1. Clarify for yourself and the students why we are reading (anything); what the purpose of the readings are; how they aid us in or learning process; and – importantly – do not assume that a one-time explanation covers that. Frequent reminders are helpful and necessary to the learning environment.
    • Here, I also received some online and offline advice about having a session at the beginning to demonstrate how to read articles. Folks have developed different techniques on how to guide students through a sample reading, including developing key questions students should keep in mind when reading (as guiding posts).
  2. I noticed an interesting debate regarding the use of reading quizzes or some sort of grading mechanism regarding doing the readings (or not).
    • I am not in favor of reading quizzes. For one, selfishly I do not want to have more grading work throughout the semester, and I am not sure how effective these quizzes are in motivating the students to read for understanding. And two, I do not want to create this sort of potentially punitive environment in our shared learning space.
  3. Nonetheless, there were some interesting grading mechanisms for readings: 
      1. This includes several recommendations for Perusall, which encourages more a communal reading practice, in which students engage with one another and can annotate readings. I am certainly not sponsored by them, and it also depends on whether your institution has a subscription to the service, but I like the idea.
        1. See similar thoughts on CritiqueIT by Dr. Colin Brown at ALPS.
      • Some faculty structure their entire lesson plan based on students’ reading reactions (required prior to class), focusing on things students did not understand or want to know more about. My planning anxiety stands in the way of this method.
  4. Similarly, the idea of cold calling was brought up. I have fallen to these temptations in the classroom, but at the same time, that does not really solve – for me at least – the reading issue. Then, I am just embarrassing folks in the classroom (if they haven’t done the readings).
    • Folks have suggested to use tools such as Menti, PollEv, or JamBoard (even though the last one is being phased out). They are interactive online boards, that you can project in the classroom. You can pose a question about the reading, and students can (anonymously) respond to that. The collection of the answers as well as the anonymity can overcome social anxiety and the fear of saying “something wrong”.
      • Anecdotally, I already tried a PollEv exercises in one of my classes this week, and I received responses from approx. 2/3 of the class vs. the usual 2-3 hands that shoot up when I start talking about the readings. I did not ask specific questions but rather focused on what stood out to them in the reading or if they had any questions (as the mind-hive suggested). Given my mid-semester pivot, I will stick with that for now.  

The beauty of having a problem with anything in this day and age is that none of us are special enough/unique enough to encounter it for the first time in all of human history. I realized relatively quickly that my problem is not just about “why aren’t they reading” but more importantly “what can I (!) do about this to improve our shared learning space”. And I think that is a better motivator than frustration. Reaching out and asking for help was probably the best way to handle this problem for myself. Aside from the fact that people provided advice/technique, what stood out to me what the fact that there are folks who care and that they care enough to help me out. Thank you!

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Getting on to BlueSky

Some sky

Since we are (once again) in a “Twitter is a hell-hole” period, I thought I’d do a short piece on this year’s contender for Twitter replacement, namely BlueSky.

Readers with any memory will recall I did something similar for Mastodon almost a year ago. While there’s certainly a community there, it never really got enough momentum to build the kind of volume needed to make it a realistic home for everyone.

However, it’s still a really pleasant vibe, so do consider it for your more general well-being.

BlueSky comes in as a more direct Twitter-style platform, partly because it’s created by ex-Twitter employees who miss How Things Used To Be, and partly because as a result their GUI is spookily familiar to any Tweep.

The functionality is very similar (although no GIFs, boo!) and there’s a pretty good flow of people both well-known and less-well-known into the site over the past week. Including me. And this blog.

There are really only two difficulties.

Firstly, all those new users mean it’s a pretty slow site, so don’t go expecting the nippiness of Twitter for now, and probably not until the financing model balances out server capacity. Try accessing via a computer rather than mobile, as that seems to help matters.

Secondly, and more pertinent here, you need to be invited to join.

BlueSky generates invite codes for its members based on engagement: I got my first one the other day based on some tweets and talking with the various people who engaged with it. You put in, you get out; so if you’re a lurker then you’re not going to be able to invite friends/colleagues/that person who does that thing.

As you might have seen on Twitter, invites are often tricky to get hold of, so unless you’ve got lucky with your online buds, what can you do?

Well, several people have set up clearing houses for people to donate codes. I used this one, established to get researchers on the site. You pop in your details and you’ll get an email to confirm it all, with a code following not long after.

Remember that this is being done by people out of their generosity, so patience on the timeline, and you can give your codes as you get them to help others (like I’ve just done with that one I got the other day).

Once you’ve got your code, head to BlueSky and set up your account. Again, capacity issues mean it might take overnight for you to be able to access your profile, but you’re a grown-up, so you’ll manage.

Posting is as you think it is, as is everything else, so no special instructions on this. Look for Feeds to see contribute to particular content.

The thing that’s still a bit tricky is finding your fellow migrants from Twitter: until Mastodon, there’s not a quick, bulk way to find-and-follow, so instead you might use this, or this.

And that’s about it.

We’re still at the ‘hello everyone’/’So-and-so’s just joined too!’/’it’s like old-skool Twitter’ phase, but already I see plenty of Poli-Sci and L&T people there, so the initial signs look promising for being able to stop saying that you should leave Twitter.

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“How to spark curiosity”

Hi everyone, my name is Jennifer Ostojski. I am a Visiting Assistant Professor in International Relations at Colgate University. In August 2022, I defended my dissertation on European identity. I recently joined the ALPS team, handling some of the day-to-day stuff, contributing weekly (on Fridays) my thoughts on teaching, and also soliciting guest posts to present new and exciting teaching tools. Looking forward to our time together!

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What is it that we do in Political Science? That’s a question a faculty member prompted us to think about in a department meeting I recently attended. The Geology department “produces” geologists”. The Physics department “produces” physicists. But what do we mean by “producing” political scientists? I could give you the old spiel of pre-law tracks and policy-oriented folks. They have clearer expectations of what happens in the great beyond when they leave their undergraduate institutions. But what about my students, who focus on International Relations or Comparative Politics, who have internships in consulting firms, architectural firms, or even on the stock market? I don’t know about you, but I am not producing consulters, architects, and stock market experts in class.

Reflecting on this question, I realized that the “what I do” in class is to try just genuinely spark curiosity and excitement for everything that politics is (see Chad’s three-part series on the Death of Curiosity here, here, and here). I find that when students come to class, their perception of politics is much more limited to distant actors, processes, and things they think they have no power over. Missing from their radar is the consciousness that ultimately everything they do, engage with, and consume is and can be tied to politics. And more importantly, they are not passive observants but actors in the political world. This realization does not happen organically, but when achieved it can create a curious mind about the world around them – maybe not in perpetuity but at least for the length of the semester.

Over time this transformation and realization can take place when prompted by the instructor (you and me!). Over the last couple semesters, I have put more emphasis on creating activities and classroom designs to elicit this realization in my students and involve them and their ideas more strongly in our classroom environment. Below, I outline some of examples that I am currently doing in my two courses.

1. Participation now makes up 20% of my students’ grade. It is a lot – I think – compared to other courses, but ultimately I decided that I need to motivate my students to speak up in any capacity, share their ideas, and allow themselves to play around with concepts without necessarily feeling the need to say the “right” or “correct” thing.

  • Caveat: I have seen an uptick in participation. But the hurdle of “saying the right thing” is ever present. I had a student recently apologize to me after class for not knowing the answer.

Assuring and reminding my students about the opportunity the classroom provides to freely exchange ideas has worked so far only in parts for me. 

2. I begin every class session with a 5-minute news recap session. It wakes up the students (especially those pesky early Monday morning sessions), and it allows students to share news stories that peaked their interests about domestic or international issues.

  • Caveat: If students don’t read, and I come across that a bunch (maybe you too?), it can become an exercise in cricket sounds. I counter that by keeping in my metaphorical back pocket a couple of stories when students are not sharing anything on their own. They can then at least respond to that and communicate their thoughts.
    • The cynic in me is a bit baffled when I encounter folks who just don’t read anything. But that is beside the point here.

3. A core assignment in my class, which I have done now for a couple of semesters, is a short in-person presentation, in which each student picks their own topic in relation to the class theme (this semester it is broadly “International Relations”). For me, it is Important that they are free to choose the topic and put their own mark on our class. Often, they contribute fresh new case studies that enrich our understanding of core concepts. Also, if they choose on their own, they are more likely to genuinely like the topic, which can be felt in the way they approach the presentation research itself. Students in the past have talked about Princess Diana as an international diplomat, the efforts of the NBA to start an African basketball league, the emerging norm of returning stolen artifacts to former colonized states, and the rise and fall of the Adani Group.

  • Caveat: I have found that when first confronted with the assignment, some students “get it”, while other students are a bit overwhelmed. Two reasons stand out: (1) the freedom of choice is almost too much, but providing examples helps quite a lot for students to be able to narrow down; and (2) a lack of interest in seemingly a lot of things, which then transpires into not knowing where to start and how to proceed. In the case of the second option, I have found that it takes a lot of probing and pulling to define half-heartedly some “interesting” topic.

These three are by no means perfect, but they have created a warmer and more engaged back-and-forth that I appreciate and prefer over my monologues. I try and improve upon that regularly. No empirical evidence exists on the effects of my efforts (yet), but I see it as my responsibility of “what I do” to instill – especially in introductory courses – a sense of curiosity and ownership by our students over politics. Maybe in twenty years one of them will reach out about their international political efforts in architectural design.

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Breaking: There’s a problem with something

Surely redundant when no one ever takes a phone in the toilets anyway, right?

The discussion that prompted my previous piece also gave me opportunity for more reflection on the long journey back home from the conference: another benefit of using surface transport only.

The position that most of us – I think – would take on AI is that it’s here and we have to live with it. It might be causing our colleagues inconveniences or making us change what we do, but the use-case of the technology is so much broader than university assessment (or applications, for that matter) that the thing will keep on rolling forward.

If that’s so for AI, then it’s also so for other technologies. The noughties cry of “don’t use Wikipedia: it’s trash!” is an obvious example. That site has a lot to condemn it, both in breadth and in ever-more instances depth, as its editorial model has proven its value.

Likewise, we all seem to have accepted students with laptops in our classrooms, after all those years of grumbling that they couldn’t be up to any good and weren’t paying attention. Which they might not be, but again, that say more about what’s happening in class than what’s happening on their screen.

But I’d take it one step further.

There are lots of things about the world that aren’t – how to put this? – helpfully aligned with what we want to happen in our classes. Our students are people, and like people everywhere, they have a bunch of other stuff going on.

Moreover, each of them thinks and acts for themselves. Which is great, but also sets up the possibility that the zone of overlap among the class on How We’ll Be gets smaller.

Often, that’s not an issue, because the range of what a student might have to do in class is itself constrained: drawing down and pulling up knowledge and experience with others.

But as we move towards more active environments, the issue becomes more salient, because we are relying more on the students to create for themselves the space for their learning. At that point, there is a need to have a more engaged approach to Everything That’s Not Directly On The Syllabus.

A case in point was the course on negotiation I used to run at my former institution. Classes were all about students practising their negotiation with each other and then debriefing. My role was to facilitate and support.

A frequent theme was that “So-and-so is an arsehole”. Which, often, they were, in that situation. They didn’t play by the rules, or didn’t know how to, and sometimes they just liked to stir. Like I said, students are people.

The import of this theme was typically that I should stop it happening. Which I understand, but which I always pushed back on.

The course was designed to create a relatively safe place to try out negotiating (none of the behaviours displayed would have merited me seeking disciplinary behaviour under our student code, for clarity), so part of that practice was exactly about handling people who aren’t all conveniently on the same page.

You’ve dealt with arseholes and I’ve dealt with arseholes and it’s not fun, but sometimes you don’t get a choice.

For some of my students, this sounded like just throwing my hands up in the air and saying they had to suck up all the bad things in the world. But that was never the intention.

Debriefings were communal and part of that was about trying to get the arseholes to understand why their actions were counterproductive to their objectives (both academic and personal). Often that did result in them trying out different ways of interacting that were less antagonistic.

Just as important was getting everyone else to reflect on how to manage problems like these. Even if you can’t stop some arseholes being arseholes, you can find ways to limit their impact.

I won’t pretend that everyone came out of the class all on top of such things, but it speaks to the wider point already made that as much as we seek to build agency in our students, that agency will eventually find limits. At those points we want our students to have the self-reflection to make sense of that, the adaptability to continue and the resilience to press on.

We might not be able to stop the world being a problem, but we can work to improve our chances of riding those problems out.

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What ChatGPT can never do

It’s a belated summer here in Belfast, where I’m attending the UACES conference. As well as a lot else, we’re running a series of L&T panels, including one on assessment.

The prompt for this was the bruhaha over ChatGPT and Why All Assessment Is Impossible (I paraphrase): while we might understand that the problems lie much more with the assessment design than the scary AI, that’s still not really filtered through to all of our colleagues.

Our discussion was really stimulating, both for its breadth and for its reflection on what we are trying to achieve in our assessment – and, by extension, in our teaching.

A concern that was raised was that if AI can produce more encompassing integration of knowledge than any human, almost instantaneously, does this mean the ‘end of thinking’ for our students? Even if the lurid framing might rile, the idea is not to be dismissed.

For me, this prompted the thought that even in an era of all-knowing technology there is still a clear role for us as teaching, instructors and facilitators: to help emancipate our students by giving them the tools to build their agency in the world.

We frequently talk about building self-reflection and criticality in our students. In an age when the challenge is parsing and navigating through too much information, getting students to make informed choices about what to use and how to use it is essential.

And we do that because it gives them a way of standing more firmly in the world, to achieve what they want to achieve.

We don’t (I think) want to produce reproductions of ourselves, but autonomous individuals who can both define their own purpose in life and find ways to realise that purpose.

In this framing of education-as-emancipation, it becomes irrelevant what AI can do, precisely because it’s AI doing it, not the student. As one colleague noted, almost all our students don’t come to university to cheat, but to learn and to develop themselves.

Put differently, if everyone can just turn to ChatGPT, then what gives you the edge is understanding that that technology can and can’t do and understanding how you can use that to your own purposes.

This points to assessment that valorises reflection and critical engagement with knowledge and with arguments, so that the student is able to apply such tools to other situations. It also suggests that we as instructors have to spend more time on assessment that is grounded in individual experience and that recognises there is as much value in being able to articulate your self-awareness as in nominal achievement of a particular task.

A case in point in our discussion was groupwork. Yes, you can mark how well a group functions together, but we know from our own lives that sometimes we have to work with people who aren’t our optimal partners [cough], so there’s as much value in understanding how to cope with and mitigate that scenario as there is in everything being super-positive.

When we can pick up a device and find out a pretty decent amount about any given subject at the drop of a hat, ‘knowing stuff’ isn’t useful in the way it used to (even if we go to lots of pub quizzes), and we need to recognise that in all of our teaching practice.

Indeed, you might argue this is a great example of being self-aware and self-critical that we should be applying to ourselves, even as we apply it to our students.

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Building a community of practice

As you’ll know, we’ve been looking for people to join ALPS blog since Chad has to start thinking about his post-retirement golf swing and I’ve ended up at a university that doesn’t do face-to-face teaching.

That our call got any response is already a big win, a bit for us but much more because it reflects on the community we have been able to build since the blog’s inception in 2011.

I was reflecting on this just the other day, when I was on a call about promoting research culture in my university.

A lot of the discussion was about the difficulty of engaging colleagues in a sustainable way, especially when there are so many other demands on everyone’s time. It’s easy to say we should do stuff together, but someone’s got to organise the stuff and others have to attend the stuff.

It’s not dissimilar to here, except that I know that all of the original crew at ALPS benefited from Albuquerque’s lack of sightseeing options (and its excellent margarita provision) in generating initial interest in each other’s work.

But what sustained us beyond the memory of New Mexico was the realisation of the value of writing about our practice.

For a dozen years, this space has been central to the development of my teaching, both because I’ve read hundreds of insightful posts from others and because I’ve tried to work through what I do in my own writing. Teaching is learning, indeed.

That others have also found the same over the years is a constant source of happiness for me: our guest contributors have added a depth of richness to this blog that I hope you have all found as rewarded as we do.

So as we continue our discussions with the various people who’ve been in touch, I just want to thank you all for being part of this blog, whatever you’ve done and to encourage you all to keep on being very excellent people.

(Obviously, I’m now about to have a bit of a holiday, but the point still stands).

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From knowing what you want to do to actually doing it

It’s that time of year when one’s attention turns to writing. In the past couple of weeks I’ve had several conversations about books; mostly other peoples’, which is also good.

Those conversations have prompted me to think a bit more about how you translate an idea into a thing.

Regular readers will know that I often start with asking ‘what are you trying to achieve?’: it’s good for teaching, for communication, for lots of things. After all, if you don’t know what you’re trying to do, how can you do it?

But that rather ignores the subsequent challenge: even if you know what your goals are, turning that into a plan of practical action is not automatic.

Writing is a case in point, especially if we’re thinking about long-form text, like books.

Case in point is the renewed discussion with a colleague about a new edition of a short introduction to the EU.

Since we’ve not worked together on this project before, we’re taking the opportunity to go for a wholesale reworking, rather than a update-the-graphs-and-examples.

But how to go about that?

It seems to me that there are three main options, each with advantages and disadvantages.

The classic model is the long-run-up approach. You set out all the Things You Need To Know, so the reader knows all the Things, and only towards the back end of the text do you get to more synthetic analysis.

This is comprehensive, but also suffers from the same issue as when we try it in class: it’s not very engaging, mainly because there’s lots of content where’s it’s not evident why it matters.

So we could jump to the opposite model and build out from an engaging vignette. Think Freakonomics.

Yes, the “this weird thing tells us so much” approach is much more stimulating, but if you’re aiming to generate a rounded overview, then unless you get really lucky, your weird thing(s) is/are unlikely to cover all the bases, making it either scrappy or incomplete.

So the third path is the strong analytical frame. Here you’re driven not by A Weird Thing, but a Big Idea. For me, Hix and Hoyland‘s volume is the best example of this, taking the reader around the EU, guided by a very clear theoretical framing. You’re clear from the off about why you’re reading what you’re reading and how it all fits together.

The difficulty here is, obviously, that there’s more than one way to look at things. Any theoretical framing comes with normative agendas of some kind. Even if that’s an inoffensive agenda (as in Hix and Hoyland’s book), it can hinder the development of the reader’s critical engagement, something that matters with political subject matter.

There’s no right answer to this and I’m still turning over options with my co-author. However, as you do your own writing, it’s worth considering whether there’s value in changing approach, not because it’ll be better but because it’ll be different, letting your readers get something they might otherwise have missed out on.