I’ve been back on the Mahara podcast to discuss my work on relational grading. I am very happy with the title of the podcast.
Continue reading “A rebel with a cause!”A Slacker’s Guide to the Teaching Track
It’s been very fun being one of a rare breed: a Professor in an education-focused role! One really big perk has been getting invited hither and yon to talk about my career and give dubious advice. Since it’s August and hopefully even go-getting and driven academics are managing to slack off a little bit (with all solidarity and many apologies to the Admissions Tutors amongst us), I thought I’d take my chance to poke to a bit of fun at all the strategic careers advice out there and reflect on some of the ways I’ve managed to be modestly successful by ignoring it. No-one reading the ALPS blog in August is a slacker, admittedly, but if you have any aspirations to slack more, please pull up a chair….
Teaching Day at ISA 2027: Call for Proposals
Consider submitting your proposal to present at Teaching Day at International Studies Association (ISA) 2027, which will be offered in both virtual and in-person formats this year (Tuesday, March 2, virtual, and Saturday, March 20th, for in-person in Atlanta). This third Teaching Day will be a great opportunity to share your teaching practice and exchange ideas with colleagues at all career stages on this fundamental part of our jobs. You can propose to lead a session on a core teaching and learning topic or skill (such as grading and giving feedback, course design, assignment design, active learning, or creating community and trust) or on the teaching innovation of your choice, as part of the Faculty Showcase. I encourage anyone who considers themselves to be a scholarly educator to submit–this is going to be a lower cost, add-on event to ISA that will provide a space for educators of all levels, regions, and perspectives to share ideas on teaching and learning, and fill in the gaps in training that many early career instructors experience. We hope to get a really varied set of presenters to ensure a wide range of perspectives are represented.
Submissions are due July 1, and also mark your calendars so you can plan for your attendance at this signature event planned by the ISA Pedagogy Committee. Read the call for proposals at https://isanet.org/Portals/0/Media/Conferences/Atlanta2027/Teaching%20Day%202027%20CFP-Final.pdf.
Where’s Cathy? Joyful reflections on tricky times
I felt a bit bad when I read Pigeon’s post apologising for a short absence from blogging for Very Serious Reasons! (Happy to note that he seems to have survived the avian vet’s ministrations, though.) Although I’ve been editing the blog here and there with guest posts, I’ve had a much longer period of absence without explanation. This is despite the fact that I’ve got a long and growing list of things I want to write about, including replies to other people’s ALPS blogs that are buzzing round in my head. I will get to this, though possibly in the autumn, as rumour has it that people won’t be reading blogs about active learning in the summer. (Tell me in the comments if this isn’t true!) But today I can at least give you a bit of an update about what I’ve been up to and a few links to teaching-related things that might be of interest.
Continue reading “Where’s Cathy? Joyful reflections on tricky times”Have fun, be flexible and encourage feedback….
It has been an exciting month for me and podcasts. Here I am again, this time talking on the Mahara podcast about portfolio assessment, which I am sure I will write about here again.
This could also be a good moment to re-up a previous episode I did for the same pod:
Let me know if you have any questions about portfolio assessment that you’d like me to write more about for ALPS!
Outdoor Learning and the Politics of Hope
Readers of the blog might enjoy my appearance on UCL Uncovering Politics talking about my latest book chapter on outdoor learning.
The chapter itself is: Cathy Elliott, ‘Chapter 6: Hope in the Garden: Outdoor learning as politics’, in Outdoor Learning in Higher Education. Educating Beyond the Seminar Room. Edited By Wendy Garnham, Paolo Oprandi. Feel free to buy the book!
Things I Learnt About Teaching From My Teachers
I was passing through Cologne this week, en route from the UACES Annual Conference in Trento (which was excellent, by the way). I’d decided to take the train – despite the slowness and cost – to show my support for more sustainable practices around conferencing, and because I like trains.
To help pass the time, I was blurping – or whatever it’s called on BlueSky – my travels. Which was good for me to get more practice using the site, and to think about the different stimuli a journey like that can produce.
Cologne matters here as the place where I was thinking about teaching and how I learnt to teach. At the conference, I’d had a couple of conversations about how I coped with having to do an after-dinner speech in my capacity as Chair of the Association, since they felt it to be a bit daunting.
Part of my answer then was just about practising and being confident in your ability to do it, but I also realised that another part came from learning from the practice of others. Hence this post.
Many years ago, as part of my undergraduate degree, I came to Cologne on a field trip with my Geography professor, who hoped we’d learn about urban geographies and the relationship to political organisation.
What I actually learnt was that my professor didn’t know how to eat a kiwi fruit.
Continue reading “Things I Learnt About Teaching From My Teachers”On Writing Recommendation Letters
Few things send my calendar into a spiral like a sudden recommendation letter request for graduate school (and sometimes plural, such as a letter I customized for twelve different programs). My hang-up is that I’m a slow writer–think thumbless sloth on a high-gravity planet. How I made it this far in my academic career with a process similar to a toddler fist-gripping sidewalk chalk, I have no idea.
Yet, few requests are so rewarding–especially when students are accepted–and I’ve written them long enough that students still thank me years after graduating and embarking on careers.
However, no single person taught me how to write letters, so I’m merely assuming I’m using a sound method (it’s worked so far, at least). Riffing on a Chinese proverb, the best time to rethink my letter-writing assumptions was almost 20 years ago, while the second-best time is today. My method is as follows…
I ask the student to provide the following information. While I could track some of this down myself, having the student do so is a small measure of their commitment:
1. Their overall GPA and Major’s GPA.
2. Double-check their major and any minors. This seems silly, but I almost wrote a fantastic political science major’s letter for a history major and another for an international studies major.
3. Their academic interests.
4. Their relevant work and extracurricular experiences. I ask them to think broadly on this: to wit, last year, I parlayed a student’s ability to play a dozen instruments and play new instruments live without fear as evidence of discipline, creativity, and willingness to take risks. The student was accepted into their top program.
5. Answer why they want to go to grad school or the internship.
6. Answer where they’d like to see themselves 5 years after finishing the program.
I then review the program they’re applying to and speak directly to that program. I fit everything onto a single page, including my signature block. That means every word must count: action-packed with no deadweight (anyone who quips “you mean, unlike your post” will be docked a beer at their next conference).
Here’s the kicker: I never blow smoke. I write with belief based on data and am willing to look the program director in the eye without blinking or flinching.
Although my method seems effective, I’m definitely open to suggestions for improvement–share your methods in the comments!
Teaching Political Science: A Practical Guide for Instructors
I’m excited to announce the publication of my book, Teaching Political Science, now available from Springer (Palgrave). This has been a project more than 3 years in the making, ever since Jamie Frueh asked me if I’d ever thought about writing a book. With his and the encouragement of many others, I’m thrilled to share this with you. My hope in writing this book was to provide a practical resource for the grad student, early career instructor, or polsci professor at any stage who hasn’t had the chance to systematically study the literature on teaching and learning in our field. While there are many incredible articles, chapters, handbooks, and edited books out there, I saw the need for a single-authored volume focused on the nuts and bolts of teaching from philosophy, to course design, to execution and assessment. Most of us learn as practitioners, I’m hoping with this book to provide a scholarly path toward learning how to teach, and to inspire others to share their approaches.
In defence of slides
Yesterday, James Fielder published a blog post here detailing his ‘hate/hate relationship with slides’. I had another piece that I wanted to share today but having read James’s impassioned post I felt an equal surge of emotion – but with a need to defend the slides that make up so much of my working life.
Sigh – life really comes at you fast. One day you’re young and cool and the next you’re dropping everything to write a 600 word blog post defending the use of slides…
But, in my mind at least, slides really are worth defending.
There is an old joke about the (very real) Swiss ‘Anti PowerPoint Party’ that goes something like “Switzerland’s Anti PowerPoint Party has got a cause that could convince millions… just as soon as they find an easy and clear way to communicate their message”.
Of course, that such a party even exists shows that James is certainly not alone in his hatred of slides. I can see why one might take such offence to them. There are endless examples of people using slides in ways that are wildly off putting, both in terms of design and delivery.
I certainly wouldn’t claim that I am the rare third type of slide-user that James describes as one that ‘builds a New York gallery-esque deck and briefs confidently without superstitiously looking back at their deck like some sort of mythic totem’. I’m fine with the basic templates that come automatically with PowerPoint and don’t want to spend too much time on fancy production. Occasionally, if I feel the content really demands it, I might add a nicely chosen background image but that’s probably as good as it’s going to get.
So, what’s the ‘sell’ with slides? Simply, I think everyone benefits.
For the instructor, spending time putting together slides for a course means that, next year, when it comes time to teach that course again, you can relax knowing there is something there to turn to and use. Sure, the slides might need a little updating but you are not back to square one. Slides are also a convenient way to pace and structure one’s lectures. It might be great to have the time to rehearse a lecture so slides aren’t necessary but it’s highly unlikely that space will be found in workload models for that.
For the students, the benefits are also clear. Students are often keen to stress some of these reasons – slides are good for taking notes around, they are good for revision, etc. But I also think that there is a benefit of slides that students might not want to fess up to – they are good when the audience stops paying attention. Now, obviously, one hopes that this never happens. But, if and when they do start to daydream about what they’ll be having for lunch, at least they will have the slides to quickly anchor their attention back onto once they’ve decided that it will be beans on toast again today.
Controversially, I also like using slides in seminars. There aren’t a tonne of them and I don’t rely on them too much. But, again, I find that they are a useful anchor point for discussions. I’ve become even more certain in my use of them in recent years of teaching in mixed-language ability classrooms. I’ve seen that they can be a comfortable point of reference for those that might otherwise feel less confident in their ability to engage.
So, I’ll put myself proudly in the other faction and declare that I am and shall remain an ardent slidist.
See, what’s not to love?