Novel teaching practices?

Judging by my social media feed, many of my philosopher friends and acquaintances are doing what I am right now: syllabusing, putting together syllabi for the fall semester. In my case, it's been unusually fun. As I shared last week, I'm putting together a pop culture and philosophy course featuring all kinds of media: films, songs, poetry, short stories, etc. (by the way, thanks for all of the recommendations in that thread; they've been super helpful!). It's been cool to put together a new course like this--one I'm truly excited about. It's helped rekindle my enthusiasm as a teacher, reminding me how fun teaching can be.

Anyway, one of the things I'm doing in the course is experimenting with some new teaching practices--things I haven't done before. As with all experimentation in teaching, some of things may work out well, others not. But it occurred to me this morning: why not share our novel teaching practices? Sharing the different things we do and try out in the classroom might be a fun and mutually beneficial exercise, giving us all insight into new things we might try ourselves. So, in the comments section below, I'd like to ask those of you who are willing to share some of the novel things you do as teachers. Allow me to begin by sharing a few of mine.

One thing I increasingly do in my courses is, in addition to a traditional term paper, have students finish up the semester giving in class presentations applying course material to real-world problems outside of the regular course material. For instance, in my Morality of War class, I have groups of two or three students select a historical war (usually but not always a recent war). The group as a whole is tasked with summarizing relevant facts about the war, and then one group member analyzes the war jus ad bellum (viz. the justice of waging war), a second student jus en bello (justice of how the war was conducted), and so on. In biomedical ethics, students do an analogous kind of presentation on some emerging issue not covered on the syllabus (such as the ethics of cosmetic surgery, pharmaceutical advertising, etc.). Similarly, in philosophy of law (which I taught last semester), I have students apply theories of law, and moral theories of what the law ought to be, to recent Supreme Court cases. This semester I am going to have students in my International Justice class apply theories of international justice to current-affairs issues of their choosing--topics which may (or may not) include things like Trump's border wall, relations with North Korea, Russia's election interference, etc. Their task will then be to make a case for why one theory or another provides the best analysis of what justice requires in the case.

I find ending courses this way fun and illuminating, as you never know which topics students will pick--and I almost always learn a ton from the presentations that I didn't know beforehand myself! More importantly, it seems to me really good pedagogically. Few, if any, of my students will go on to become professional philosophers. The best I can do, generally speaking, is help them better understand the world they are going to live and work in after they graduate. And I think--or at least hope--that these kinds of presentations serve them well in that regard. 

This fall, in my pop culture class, I am planning to put a new twist on this practice. I am going to give my students two options for their final presentations. The first option will be to find some element(s) of pop culture--some film, essay, song, poem, fad, etc.--and make a case that it offers some kind of novel and worthwhile philosophical insight on an issue we examine in the course. I think that will be a fun and useful exercise, given the aims of the course (which is to get them to think philosophically about the pop culture around us). However, the other option I am giving them is more exciting (albeit a bit risky): I am going to give students the option of creating some cultural object -- an original song, poem, story, etc., and then make a case for it offering some worthwhile philosophical insight. While I expect few students may be willing to take this option on--and it remains to be seen whether those who do can do so effectively--it struck me as a risk very much worth giving a shot. It's a way of getting students to see that philosophy can be done in more than one way: not just by talking or writing essays, but by creating the kinds of films, stories, songs, etc., that in one way or another challenge their audience philosophically. The risk here may not pan out--but, as I explain below, teaching risks I have worried might not turn out well in the past unexpectedly turned out well on more than one occasion. So I figured, why not give it a shot!

One final, rather unique thing I have experimented with in the past is having students contribute to designing their own in-class assignments. In an upper-division Philosophies of Race and Gender course I taught a couple of years ago, I began each session with a wed video somehow related to the daily course content. I showed the class the video, and then asked them to meet in their assigned groups of 4 or 5 (which they are placed in at the beginning of the semester, and then reshuffled into new groups after each exam). I gave each group several minutes to formulate the best philosophical questions they could regarding the video in relation to the reading content for the day. I then asked each group to share their question(s), along with their rationale. Then, after writing each of the questions on the board, I either took a class-wide vote on which questions to work on--or, in cases where I felt strongly that one set of questions would be best, I would choose the assigned questions myself. The first day I tried this, it seemed like it would be a disaster. None of the groups spoke up. But I just let them sit there in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, and then they began to pipe up...and some of the questions they posed were just stellar, ones I probably never would have thought of myself. It turned out to be one of the most exciting in-class activities I've ever experimented with, as it gave each class an unusually organic feel, examining unexpected questions my students cared about--and which, often enough, I found fascinating myself!

Anyway, these are just a few things I've experimented with. What about you? What novel teaching practices have you played around with? What was your rationale for them? And how did they pan out?

Comments

[James Lee]

Here are a few that I'm toying with.

1. I have a paper in Teaching Philosophy (Vol 41, Issue 1) that argues for using a kind of Socratic dialogue in the form of email exchanges as an alternative form of student assessment over tests and paper.

2. I'm currently working on a paper that argues that it is better to teach Philosophy 101 as an introduction to philosophical methodology. That is, rather than placing primary focus on topics like skepticism or free will, or historical figures like Plato or Descartes, I place primary focus on methods like conceptual analysis, thought experiments, and inference to the best explanation.

3. At the beginning of the semester I have students engage in some metacognitive reflection. The more evidence they give me that they are self-directed learners, the more freedom I give them to design their own forms of assessing mastery of course material.

[guy]

In my intro class, I have an in-class group assignment attached to every lecture. Assignments consist mostly of intuition testing cases (trolley problems and the like). On the last day (following the ethics unit) I have the students do a mock trial for three different cases (where the defense/prosecution/judges positions are randomly assigned). When I cover functionalism about phil mind, I have the students do a "McTuring test" where they have to try to prove to their friend that Siri/Google Assistant/Cortana is not a real person by asking it questions the answers to which reveal that it's not a person.

I have my phil religion class make a video presentation of a research project of their choosing.

I have my logic class explain how in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, Sarah solves the certain death door puzzle (the classic knights/knaves puzzle) by representing her solution in a (somewhat complicated) constructive dilemma.

[Sam Duncan]

In my ethics and applied ethics classes I have my students do an ethics bowl at the end of class rather than doing a final. I'll randomly split them into teams and then use cases from the National High School Ethics Bowl Competition or ones that I wrote. It usually works pretty well as a way of getting them to apply moral theory to real world issues and even to learn the moral theories a little better than they might have through lecture (I just had a student tell me she didn't really understand Kant's FH until a team applied it in the ethics bowl). As with any group project there are issues with people freeloading on more hard working group members. But on the whole it seems to work and I've had really good feedback with it on course evaluations barring grousing about a few instances of freeloading. (Also, to be completely fair here I cribbed this idea from my friend Ryan Windeknecht).

[Amanda]

James I think that sounds like a really cool idea for a course. Whenever the next time I teach intro happens to be I might do something similar.

Sam or anyone else, can you point me to a resource that explains how ethics bowl works? I am considering not only doing some in class activities with ethics bowls, but starting a team at my university. But I really don't even know what an ethics bowl even is or how it all works.

[slac chair]

Here's the procedure for the national college ethics bowl, with cases from past years.

https://appe-ethics.org/cases-rules-and-guidelines/

[slac chair]

I would add that many of the cases are pretty well-done, and could furnish exam/paper topics for applied ethics classes.

[Amanda]

Cool thanks slac chair!

[Pendaran]

I'm curious when universities starting teaching courses like 'philosophy and pop culture.' I'm not insinuating that it's a silly topic, but it's certainly not something I ever encountered. I'm only 33. Is it just that I didn't go to the kinds of places that had courses like this or is it that things have changed a lot in a relatively small amount of time? Are these kinds of courses a result of the struggles humanities departments are having, so they're trying to attract students with courses they think will appeal to more people? I'm really just curious. Don't take this the wrong way. When I was applying for jobs I would run into schools here in the UK but also the US that wanted courses taught that I'd never heard of before.

[Marcus Arvan]

Pendaran: My class is a special topics course. But, to answer your question (sort of), the very first philosophy course I took was a 'Philosophy and Literature' course at Stanford in the summer of 1993. That course was not entirely dissimilar to the one I'm now teaching. It paired philosophical readings with novels, short stories, and a poem or two. It was *awesome*.

For my part, I think 20th century analytic philosophy did no one any favors--not our students, not society, and not philosophers--by distancing our discipline from the rest of the sciences and humanities. It isolated us, both methodologically (in a bad way, I believe) and politically (in the academy). It also, I believe, made our courses less appealing to undergraduate students, and less relevant to the world we live in (insofar as the most prestigious areas of academic philosophy tend to be the most abstract and removed from daily life).

One thing I don't think is highlighted enough is just how much the founding figures of the Western tradition--Plato and the Socrates that figures in his dialogues--were engaging with the 'pop culture' of their time. The people Socrates was speaking to were ordinary people--politicians, spoiled sons of politicians, etc.--steeped in the cultural values and thought of their age. Socrates was engaging them where they were, getting them to critically examine their cultural presuppositions. This is what philosophy done best involves in my view--and it is what courses like "pop culture and philosophy" can help offer our students.

[Sam Duncan]

slac chair already beat me to the punch on this I suppose. Thanks for posting the link! One thing I will say is that if you do end up doing the ethics bowl spend some time explaining the assignment on the first day and then again later in the semester when you actually group people off. Some students freak out a little with any novel or unknown assignment so it's good to let them know what they're getting in for. Also, I give my students the cases they'll be covering about a weak in advance rather than spring anything on them that day. So what I'll do is have two teams go each class period and they'll know in advance what the two cases are, but they won't know which one they'll be commenting on and which one they'll be presenting on.

[Amanda]

Thanks Sam. Especially for intro students I think giving the cases in advance seems a really good idea. I do a lot of moral dilemmas in my classes, and I think I need to find a way to given them in advance because so many students have trouble thinking on the spot.

Pendaran - I am 32 and I had plenty of options like pop culture and philosophy (also sex and philosophy, harry potter and philosophy, movies and philosophy, and many others). I think they have been around for a long time. I'm sure there is some motivation to fill seats, but also other motivations like it is fun, relevant, and simply a good topic.

[Amanda]

...realizing what I wrote above wasn't clear. I had all of those options as an undergraduate (moves and philosophy, sex and philosophy, etc.)

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